Brian Helgeland‘s 2015 film ‘Legend‘ is a biopic of the Kray twin brothers, two gangsters who dominated the London underworld from the late 1950s until 1968 when they were both arrested, tried and sentenced to life in prison for separate murders. The style of the cinematic saga dedicated to crime families immediately brings to mind the films of Coppola and Scorsese dedicated to the world of the American mafia in general and New York one in particular. From a cinematic point of view ‘Legend‘ stands up to the comparison quite well, especially thanks to an extraordinary acting performance in a double role by Tom Hardy, even if it does not manage to reach the level of plot complexity and character richness of the best films Americans of the genre. But perhaps this is also due to the fact that even the phenomenon of organized crime in Britain and London has not reached the proportions of the crime empires overseas.
Reggie and Ron Kray were children of the war, living their childhood in Blitz London in the poorer neighborhoods of the East End of the metropolis. Their true path in life was influenced by their parents – the very ambitious mother and the deserter father who lived as a fugitive for many years after the war – but the screenwriters chose to deal very little with this aspect and almost completely left out their characters. At the beginning of the film we already find the two brothers involved in the world of crime. Ron is a true psychopath, violent and sadistic. His brother Reggie, more cerebral and apparently less inclined to violence, is the brains behind the business, which starts in a pub in East London, with ambitions to expand into the clubbing and casino world of the wealthier West End of the city. The two brothers are surrounded by a gang of henchmen, including accountants and corrupt lawyers, who are their accomplices. In the world of London vice they know and buy or blackmail politicians from both sides of the British political spectrum who support them, promote their businesses and often protect them when they get into conflicts with the police and the law. The appearance of Frances, the beautiful sister of Reggie’s driver, risks changing the balance of relations between the two brothers for a moment. Frances extracts Reggie’s promise that he will abandon the illegal business and transform himself from a gangster to a legitimate businessman, but abandoning the life of crime proves to be impossible for Reggie. The marriage of the two is opposed by Frances’ mother, but also by Ron, who sees in her a rival who can divert his brother from ‘business’. Ron and Reggie’s bond is inevitably headed for tragedy.
The film is based on a biographical book dedicated to the two brothers and accomplices in crime, written and published several years after their fall. The script shifts the focus of the story to the romantic connection between Reggie and Frances, making her the film’s voice-over narrator as well. The two twin brothers are described as very different in personality despite their physical resemblance. Tom Hardy‘s performance is virtuoso, supported by perfect editing. This is the strongest part of the film along with the authenticity of the reconstruction of the landscape of London 60 years ago. The vast majority of the scenes were actually filmed on location, on the streets, in the clubs and pubs where many of the events depicted on the screen took place, or in the interiors of carefully and accurately reconstructed London houses. Emily Browning interprets with sincerity and sensitivity the role of the girl in love who at one point becomes the chance of moral salvation for Reggie, but who in the end cannot escape the fate of becoming his victim. It’s a shame her role wasn’t given more consistency by the writers. This seems to me, by the way, to be the main problem of the film. Focusing on the figures of the two brothers and relying on Hardy’s excellent performance in the dual role, ‘Legend‘ very loosely draws the lines that define the surrounding characters, be it the gangsters who surround the two brothers, members of the Kray family or the policemen who are constantly following them and who will bring them to justice in the end. ‘Legend‘ is more than just a gangster film or yet another violent entertainment. It’s a masterfully rendered cinematic study of two underworld characters, but it misses the opportunity to also be a fresco of the complex underworld of London at the time.
I always look forward to the films of Richard Linklater, whom I consider one of the most interesting American filmmakers. His films manage to bring to the screens novel landscapes of American reality and characters that involve their viewers. His persistence in long-term projects has managed to transform time perspectives that span many years and decades into plots and images. Linklater is constantly looking for new characters to turn into stories on screen and new forms of expression to tell their stories. However, not all of his experiments are successful to my taste. This is also the case with ‘Hit Man‘, an original combination which, however, failed to convince me.
‘Hit Man‘ is inspired by a real-life character named Gary Johnson, who lived in Houston and assisted the local police as an undercover agent, posing as a professional killer to those looking to buy assassination services and gathering evidence (mostly taped recordings of conversations) to arrest and prosecute them for planning murders. The script moves the action to New Orleans and assigns Gary the job of art teacher, showing him giving moral and life lessons to his young students. As long as he builds the character of the teacher who masquerades as different variants of professional killers, adapting his physiognomy and attitude to the ‘clients’, the film is interesting and funny. When the romantic component is added, it becomes less believable, not to mention the moral and legal ambiguities. What doesn’t work? To a large extent, the role and activities of the police assistant hero are based on the first impression, or if you want, on the prejudices through which people judge those around them. The police disguises may fool the buyers of crime services, but the identity game on which the romantic story is based is more difficult to believe. A relationship based on false identities has no chance of standing the test of time. Or maybe the script wants to tell us that true love can overcome even lies about identity? Such a message is too trivial to support the surprises in the second part of the film. Linklater uses tools from the film noir toolkit mixed with romantic comedies and a little eroticism, but the combination just didn’t work for me.
Glen Powell is a good actor, but what he does in this movie constantly reminded me of Ryan Gosling and in cases like this I prefer the original. His romantic partner is played by Adria Arjona, who looks fantastic but whom I need to see in other roles to convince myself of her acting qualities. ‘Hit Man‘ is a movie that many will like, OK as entertainment, but I found it to be one of Richard Linklater‘s weaker movies. In my opinion, this is one of the highly overrated movies of this season.
After ‘Le beau Serge’, that I had watched a few days ago, I now saw ‘Les cousins‘ (1959), the other film in the diptych that launched Claude Chabrol‘s career and was one of the first successes of the French New Wave . The two films have many elements in common. Both were produced, directed and written (‘Les cousins’ in collaboration) by Chabrol exemplifying and reinforcing the concept of auteur film. The same two actors appear in the main roles – Gérard Blain and Jean-Claude Brialy. Cinematography belongs in both to Henri Decaë. The two films express the same feelings of rebellion of the generation of young people of the late 1950s, a generation whose childhood had been marked by the war and the years of restrictions that followed. Filmmakers who wanted to make films differently chose as their heroes angry young people who wanted to live differently.
Watched together, as I did this week, the two films inevitably invite comparison. It was only a coincidence of lack of funds to film in Paris that led to ‘Le beau Serge’, set in Chabrol‘s childhood village, to be filmed and released before ‘Les cousins‘ . In the filmography of the French director, however, this order is better. Even if Chabrol would shoot again later in the countryside, “Les cousins” takes place in the apartments and on the streets of Paris, where many of the plots of many other New Wave films take place. We encounter for the first time in this film the sarcastic vision of the more or less intellectual French bourgeoisie that will eventually become the collective favorite character of his films and the target of the merciless satires they contain. The world of students is also presented, another social category that will play an important role not only on the screens but also in the political life of France in the decade that would follow. In both films one of the heroes is the outsider, the one who tries to enter (or re-enter) the society of the place without adopting its rules, but also without having the power to change them. In this case young Charles comes to Paris to live with his cousin Paul. Both are Law students, but their lifestyles are as different as can be. The cynical Paul explores not only the volatility of love relationships but also the power control in relations of the extremes. The naive and provincial Charles promotes his innocence and makes the mistake of sharing his feelings when he falls in love with the beautiful Florence. Paul tries by all means to corrupt him, including stealing his girlfriend and manipulating their feelings. The game becomes dangerous, especially when several firearms hang on the walls of the luxurious Parisian apartment.
Gérard Blain and Jean-Claude Brialy are formidable, as they were in ‘Le beau Serge’, although here the roles are completely different. The romantic triangle is completed by Juliette Mayniel, a beautiful and talented actress with a magnetism that propelled her among the stars of the New Wave, but whose career faded after the Wave passed. Stéphane Audran also appears for here for the first time in a film by Chabrol. She who would become his wife a year later and would be his partner and muse for the next two decades. From many points of view ‘Les cousins‘ seems a more complete and mature film than ‘Le beau Serge’. I couldn’t help but wonder what the two films would have looked like if they were made in reverse order, as originally intended. But perhaps even in film history chance sometimes plays a winning card.
It takes a lot of courage and immense self-centeredness to write and direct a film about your own death. This is exactly what the director and choreographer Bob Fosse did in 1979, the creator of some of the great successes on Broadway between the ’50s and ’70s of the last century and of several memorable films among which this one – ‘All That Jazz‘ – was declared by Stanley Kubrick as ‘the best film I’ve ever seen’. Creating the character he named Joe Gideon in the film, Fosse transformed his own life and a possible path to death into an exuberant musical spectacle as only he knew how to imagine and create in images, sets, music and dance. Bob Fosse would die 8 years later in the arms of his ex-wife, as if wanting to prove that sometimes not only life imitates the film, but that death can also imitate the film.
I think the best way a viewer can enjoy watching a movie like ‘All That Jazz’ is to approach it like a Broadway musical. To sit comfortably in the armchair, to listen to the music, to enjoy the ballet numbers, to appreciate the performances of those on the screen especially by their vocal qualities and physical presence. The difference is in the case of this film that the subject matters too. The stressful life of the actors and producers of such shows is not for the first time the subject of self-exposure (see ‘The Producers’ or even ‘Chicago’), but here the personal element is added. Bob Fosse brought his own life and even some of its protagonists to the screen. The raw honesty of the revelation cannot fail to impress.
To a large extent the success and quality of the film is also due to the impressive acting performance of Roy Scheider. It was probably the best role of his career and the one that earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Dustin Hoffmann won that year for ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’, the other nominees being Al Pacino, Jack Lemon and Peter Sellers). Scheider acts, dances, sings, lives and dies, but most of all he breaks down the character in all its details and presents it to the audience like on a dissecting table. The intense and ruthless, competitive and creative world of Broadway is presented under the harsh light of the strongest spotlights. The cast around is formidable, but the main goal is to put the character at the center of the universe in this film. The notion of ‘the movie of his life’ has never been better exemplified than in ‘All That Jazz‘.
Nu toate programele de software aparțin Inteligenței Artificiale (AI). Nici toate sistemele digitalizate. Cititorii rubricii CHANGE.WORLD știu deja acest lucru din articole precedente. Entitățile internetice, roboții sau programele care sunt utilizate în viața economică, aplicațiile medicale sau aparatura casnică pot fi considerate aplicații AI doar dacă sunt prezente cel puțin una dintre funcțiile specifice care emulează inteligența umană – capacitatea de auto-învățare sau de predicție a fenomenelor din domeniile în care acționează. Câteodată ni se pare că suntem invadați și copleșiți de AI. În realitate suntem invadați de multă reclamă (etichetele ‘AI’ vând bine), dar și de propagandă și de teorii conspirative. Ca în orice domeniu, pentru a distinge între informație și dezinformație este necesar puțin studiu.
Voi începe însă prin a aduce în discuție un film pe care l-am văzut într-un avion, pe drumul de întoarcere peste Oceanul Atlantic, căruia i-am supraviețuit în călătoria mea recentă. Este un film de anticipație din 2023, regizat de englezul Gareth Edwards (născut în 1975), cel care a regizat, printre altele, și o versiune a legendei lui Godzila dar și thrillerul cibernetic ‘Rogue One’ despre care am scris și aici cu câțiva ani în urmă. Titlul filmului este ‘The Creator’ și conceptul AI ocupă un loc important. Acțiunea se petrece în anul 2065. Lumea este segmentată în două blocuri geopolitice, așa cum chiar s-ar putea să se întâmple la acea dată. În blocul – să-i zicem – ‘occidental’, Inteligența Artificială a fost abandonată, ba chiar interzisă, după ce orașul Los Angeles fusese distrus într-un accident atomic de care sunt considerate răspunzătoare sistemele AI. În schimb, în Noua Asie (un imperiu care face aluzie la ceea ce ar putea deveni China în viitoarea jumătate de secol) roboții dotați cu inteligență artificială s-au dezvoltat în paralel și s-au integrat în societate, preluând și executând majoritatea activităților productive, dar și creative, ale oamenilor. Inclusiv lupta împotriva sistemelor militare ‘occidentale’ care au ca scop distrugerea tuturor formelor AI.
Perspectiva oferită de scenariști este diferită de cea din majoritatea filmelor genului (cum ar fi seria ‘Terminator’). Roboții dotați cu inteligență artificială sunt atât de perfecționați, încât au dobândit calități creative și emoționale care le depășesc pe cele ale majorității oamenilor. Sistemul social uman dotat cu o forță militară distructivă copleșitoare se confruntă cu rezistența locală întărita de alianța cu roboții AI. În context american este vorba, desigur, și de un fel de metaforă a războaielor succesive în care au fost implicate Statele Unite de la războiul din Vietnam încoace. Pe mine m-a interesat însă în special aspectul AI. Omenirea ‘rea’ în luptă cu Inteligența Artificială ‘buna’? Este exact contrariul teoriilor conspirative care ne copleșesc în ultima vreme. Pot fi considerați roboții din film într-adevăr ca fiind entități AI, după definițiile pe care le folosim în mod curent? Răspunsul este pozitiv. În ‘The Creator’ viitorul omenirii aliate cu sistemele AI depinde de un copil în care a fost programat nucleul cunoașterii. Este o formulă nu foarte originală din punct de vedere cinematografic, pe care am întâlnit-o în câteva alte filme post-apocaliptice, dar ceea ce este diferit aici este că acest copil este în fapt… un robot, pe care capacitatea de auto-învățare îl va propulsa în viitor în rolul de lider al lumii sale. Nu voi insista cu critica de film. Vă recomand să vedeți ‘The Creator’ și pentru partea de acțiune de anticipație și pentru calitățile sale vizuale, directorul de imagine fiind Greig Frazer, cel care este răspunzător și pentru felul (impresionant) în care arată filmele din noua serie ‘Dune’ regizată de Denis Villeneuve.
În lumea reală, progresele cercetării și proiectării sistemelor AI sunt impresionante. Fascinația pentru AI a fost declanșată cu doar 18 luni în urmă, odată cu lansarea ‘chatbot’-ului ChatGPT al firmei OpenAI. De atunci, am fost martorii lansării unei versiuni majore, ChatGPT-4, a acestei aplicații, precum și a apariției pe piață a unor sisteme similare: Gemini al lui Google, Llama al lui Meta și Claude al firmei start-up Anthropic. Fiecare dintre acestea a lansat sau are în plan lansarea în lunile următoare a unor noi versiuni, care perfecționează modelele mari de limbaj (large language model – LLM) care constituie infrastructura acestora, cu capabilități extinse de prelucrare a informațiilor de imagine sau a posibilităților de analiză și predicție. Toate aceste sisteme vor trebui însă să treacă printr-o perioadă de intensă acumulare de informație și de auto-învățare. Costurile acestei faze se măsoară în bani (miliarde de dolari fiecare), în consum de energie și în capacitate de calcul. OpenAI, de exemplu, are ca partener în acest domeniu pe Microsoft, care construiește în acest scop un centru de date cu o investiție de 100 de miliarde de dolari. Resursa cea mai prețioasă în acest proces este însă informația. O resursă care în ultima vreme, în urma apetitului nemărginit al acestor sisteme pentru date, apare din ce în ce mai prețioasă, mai limitată decât părea inițial, și nu lipsită de probleme de tot felul, inclusiv legale. O parte dintre dolarii alocați pentru această etapă de creație a viitoarelor generații de aplicații AI vor ajunge în conturile de bancă ale juriștilor.
Ce se întâmplă atunci când un produs AI creează ceva, acel ceva putând fi un răspuns la o întrebare pusă de noi unui chatbot ca ChatGPT, un eseu pe care un elev l-a solicitat ca răspuns pentru o temă de casă, o lucrare grafică, un poem sau o piesă muzicală create pe teme date la cererea utilizatorilor? Sau chiar un nou program software! Entitatea AI generează cu o rapiditate care depășește cu mult orice capacitate umană un răspuns, care se bazează pe informațiile acumulate în cursul procesului de auto-învățare și bazate pe algoritmii de predicție creați de inginerii software. Sistemele AI combină ca într-un joc de puzzle infinit tot ceea ce au învățat și folosesc drept cărămizi de bază ale răspunsurilor lor cuvinte, culori, forme, imagini, sunete, melodii, secvențe de cod digital. Cui aparțin însă acestea? Nu cumva avem de-a face cu o formă sofisticată de furt intelectual? Să zicem că am cerut aplicației AI să genereze o imagine a casei în care locuim ‘pictată’ în stilul lui Adrian Ghenie. Pictura are mare succes, devine ‘virală’ și poate chiar se vinde. Cui îi aparțin drepturile de autor și eventualele venituri generate? Nouă, celor care am formulat întrebarea? Inginerilor de software care au produs aplicația AI? Lui Adrian Ghenie? Poate și arhitectului care a creat clădirea? Aceste întrebări au început să fie puse în realitate și avocații s-au pus pe treabă. ‘The New York Times’, cel mai mare ziar din lume după numărul de abonați, a dat în judecată OpenAI și Microsoft pentru încălcarea drepturilor de autor a trei milioane dintre articolele sale. Universal Music Group, cea mai mare companie de discuri muzicale, dă în judecată firma Anthropic pentru că i-a folosit versurile cântecelor fără permisiune. Getty, una dintre cele mai mari biblioteci de imagini, dă în judecată firma Stability AI pentru copierea imaginilor sale (precum și pentru utilizarea greșită a mărcii sale comerciale). Toate firmele de tehnologie neagă acuzațiile.
Un moment, însă! Este diferit ceea ce se întâmplă aici de ceea ce creatorii de conținut (poeți și scriitori, pictori, compozitori sau ingineri de software) au făcut dintotdeauna? Nu au absorbit ei din copilărie produsele generațiilor precedente? Nu au urmat cu toții programe (unii individuale, alții în cadrul sistemelor academice) în care au asimilat valorile intelectuale create de generațiile precedente? De ce ar fi procesele de învățare ale mașinilor și de generare a noi produse bazate pe cele învățate judecate după criterii diferite în cazul mașinilor? Răspunsul acuzatorilor este că tocmai caracterul de reproducere combinativă al mașinilor face ca în cazul lor criteriile să fie diferite decât cele folosite în cazul creației umane. Precedentele juridice sunt însă mai degrabă de partea apărării. Jurisdicția actuală se bazează pe precedente din primele decenii ale erei digitale. În Statele Unite, producătorii de modele se bazează pe conceptul legal de utilizare echitabilă (fair use), care oferă excepții ample de la legile de drepturi de autor, altfel foarte stricte. Un precedent încurajator provine dintr-o decizie legată de Google Books din 2015. Sindicatul autorilor (Authors Guild) a dat atunci în judecată gigantul căutării internetice pentru că a scanat fără permisiune cărți protejate prin drepturi de autor. Instanța a constatat că utilizarea de către Google a materialului – făcând cărțile „căutabile”, dar afișând doar fragmente mici – a fost suficient de „transformatoare” pentru a fi considerată o utilizare echitabilă. Firmele de AI generativ susțin că utilizarea pe care o dau materialelor protejate prin drepturi de autor este la fel de transformatoare. Deținătorii de drepturi, între timp, își pun speranțele într-o hotărâre a Curții Supreme de anul trecut, potrivit căreia o serie de lucrări de artă de Andy Warhol, care modificase o fotografie protejată prin drepturi de autor a vedetei pop Prince, nu au fost suficient de transformatoare pentru a constitui o utilizare echitabilă.
Nu toate tipurile de media se bucură de protecție egală. Legea drepturilor de autor acoperă exprimarea creativă, nu ideile sau informațiile. Codul calculatoarelor, de exemplu, este slab protejat, deoarece este mai degrabă funcțional decât expresiv. Un grup de programatori în domeniul public își propune să testeze acest lucru în instanță, susținând că GitHub Copilot de la Microsoft și CodexComputer de la OpenAI le-au încălcat drepturile de autor prin instruirea aplicațiilor cu produsele muncii lor. Știrile pot fi, de asemenea, dificil de protejat: informațiile de la sursă nu pot fi ele însele protejate prin drepturi de autor. Întreaga presă americană era, de fapt, deschisă copierii înainte de 1909. Mai bine protejați sunt creatorii de imagini sau cei de lucrări muzicale. Aceștia din urmă au fost de altfel cei mai dur loviți în generația precedentă de aplicații digitale. Întreaga industrie de discuri a fost aproape complet distrusă de folosirea aplicațiilor de tip Napster, și chiar dacă și acestea au dispărut la rândul lor, transformarea a fost radicală. Din ce în ce mai mulți creatori de conținut – imagini, sunete, text – își protejează site-urile contra programelor (boților) de tip „crawlers” sau „spiders”. Un „web crawler”, uneori numit „spider” sau „spiderbot”, este un bot de internet care navighează sistematic pe World Wide Web și este de obicei operat de motoarele de căutare în scopul indexării articolelor de informație. Aproape jumătate din site-urile de știri cele mai populare blochează boții lui OpenAI.
Resursele de informații ale Internetului riscă să devină din ce în ce mai scumpe dacă vor fi plătite drepturi de autor posesorilor de surse primare de informație. Ele sunt însă și finite. Are loc în prezent un proces de ‘minare’ a datelor pe Internet sub formele lor textuale, video sau în alte formate. Noile generații de boți AI ‘minează’ în ritm mai rapid decât cel în care este creată informație nouă, și estimările arată că prin 2026 resursele de informație textuală pe Internet vor fi epuizate. Informațiile de imagine (statice sau video) vor urma câțiva ani mai târziu. Una dintre soluțiile propuse este folosirea de programe AI care să genereze informații pentru învățarea viitoarelor generații de boți. Unii experți consideră că acest mod de ‘învățare în buclă’, în care și informația digerată în procesul de auto-învățare este artificială, este inferioară calitativ și potențial periculoasă, putând duce la tare similare acelora genetice ale reproducției în cadrul aceleiași specii. Acest domeniu este încă în plină dezvoltare și explorare. Orizonturile par largi, promisiunile imense. Drumul însă nu va fi ușor și nu este lipsit de pericole. Nu vom ajunge, poate, la conflicte armate inter-civilizații, precum în filmul ‘The Creator’, dar trebuie să fim foarte atenți cu monstrul care pe care îl creștem alături de noi.
(Articolul a apărut iniţial în revista culturală ‘Literatura de Azi’ – http://literaturadeazi.ro/)
Not all successes of yesteryear stand the test of time. ‘Les Ripoux‘ (‘My New Partner‘ in English distribution) is one of the successful films of Claude Zidi, a director who was very popular in the 70s and 80s, especially with his comedies. The film received three César awards, was a considerable domestic success and was the head of a series of three films with the same main heroes. I didn’t see the film when it was released, but I had high hopes for solid entertainment thanks to the cast and its belonging to the genre of French crime comedies that often gave me healthy laughs. I confess that I was partially disappointed. ‘Les Ripoux‘ has not aged very well, many of the gags and effects have completely or partially faded out, and the schematism of the formula is too obvious, despite the nostalgia. There remains, of course, the pleasure of viewing two great actors together, but that is not enough.
The main hero in ‘Les Ripoux‘ is a corrupt policeman from a Parisian arrondissement. He takes bribes here and there, from shop owners and organizers of clandestine gambling, eats for free in restaurants and – without shame and without paying – grabs pork legs from the butcher in the market. He squanders his money on horse races and gifts for bosses. Everyone seems happy, especially since he doesn’t make many arrests either, as the police station had received a warning note about making too many arrests because the jails are overcrowded. His life gets a little complicated when a young inspector from the province lands as his partner, inexperienced but enthusiastic and apparently incorruptible. How will the two get along and which one of them will lead the other on the path he sees as the good one?
Philippe Noiret was already an established, popular and award-winning actor, loved by the public and appreciated by critics. Thierry Lhermitte, although much younger, had also recorded some successes in theater and film and was at that time on the rise. The two work very well together and make up one of the first partner cop couples in a series that has become something of a sub-genre of cop comedies in general. Their acting peering is the strong point of the film along with Francis Lai‘s music. The premises of a good cops comedy exist. The comic effect and success with the audience was, I think, mainly due to the sharp and unmitigated satire of corruption – personal and systemic – in the police. None of the characters, from the ordinary inspectors to the minister of the interior, seems to be safe from moral contamination. Perhaps the film’s lack of impact today and the feeling of ‘déjà vu’ is also due to the fact that we, the viewers, have become somewhat accustomed to encountering and tolerating these misdeeds in everyday life?
Israeli early viewing: ‘Hemda’ – written and directed by Shemi Zahrin. The film will be released in the commercial network of cinemas in Israel, starting on June 6.
‘Hemda’ is only the 8th feature film made in almost 30 years of career by director and screenwriter Shemi Zarhin. Almost all of his films depict complex relationships and unconventional families, where generations clash and ally in surprising ways. The worlds of his films are those of everyday Israeli reality, with people working hard and struggling with life’s problems, seeking but seldom finding peace or fulfillment. The casts of his films bring together some of Israel’s most talented and popular actors and give them the opportunity for consistent roles with deep dilemmas and emotions. This is also the case in ‘Hemda’, which I had the opportunity to see at a preview, two weeks before the official release of the film.
Right from the scene that opens the film we learn the ages of the principal characters that make up the couple that is at the center of the story. Sassi is 73 years old, Efi is 50 years old. For him their relartionship is the second marriage, he has children and grandchildren. The two live in the Israeli countryside and work from dawn to sunset, in at least two places each, and in addition, at night, in a kitchen of theirs making pastries that they deliver to different places the next day. I will not reveal the reasons for this intense pace of life because the script is built in such a way that family and character relationships are revealed gradually and only towards the end we get the full picture. I will avoid spoilers, respecting the secrets of the screenwriters and will only say that the bet of this narrative structure in which the relationships and the past of the heroes are revealed gradually, like in a puzzle, is risky. As a viewer, I had the feeling for a large part of the film that the heroes live intensely without a clear motivation and willingly enter into artificial crises. By the time the (logical) explanations came, it was already a bit late, and sequences that could have aroused emotion had passed. Returning to the story in the film: the lives of the heroes are disturbed by the appearance of Sassi’s nephew, his son’s son who lives in Belgium. Another generation, another style, other emotions under the same roof. For her part, Efi is dealing with a mistake from her past and the reappearance of a much younger man with whom she had a relationship. Will the relationship between the two last?
The answer is yes, and the secret lies in the notion of ‘hemda’ that appears in the film’s title. I am very curious if upon release the producers will provide a different title for the English version and what it will be. The word comes from the Hebrew of the Bible. The approximate translation would be ‘passion’ with a merely positive connotation and can be applied to the love between a man and a woman, but also to human relationships in general, to the attraction to beauty or even to patriotic feelings. Sassi, Efi and other characters in the film live and share this feeling. The couple of well-known and beloved actors Sasson Gabay and Assi Levy never disappoints. The entire cast is exceptional, and writer-director Shemi Zarhin is generous with the actors, giving them roles with complex emotions, intense dialogues, and close-ups where emotions cannot be faked. I also appreciated the honest and discreet approach to the problem of relationships at older ages, a subject too rarely addressed in films outside of the comic register. For Israeli viewers, ‘Hemda’ offers the opportunity of a return to everyday life beyond the acute crises of recent reality, and for foreign viewers a look at life in authentic Israel, at times when it is not forced to be in a state of war.
‘Le beau Serge’ (1958) is Claude Chabrol‘s first film, considered by many film historians to be the first film of the French New Wave. There are enough arguments in favor of this categorization. Chabrol was the first of the directors of the group associated with ‘Cahiers du cinéma’ to sit behind the camera in the winter of 1957 and 1958 to make a feature film. He is the screenwriter, producer and director and films on location in Sardent, the place where he spent part of his childhood, including the war years, using the houses, streets and surrounding nature as a setting and as actors in secondary roles and as extras the inhabitants of the village. The music of the film (composed by Émile Delpierre) and the cinematography (signed by Henri Decaë) stylistically anticipate the innovations of the New Wave. On the other side, the story in the film is told linearly, and the plot has a moralistic line that belongs more to classic French cinema than to the New Wave. The heroes of ‘Le Beau Serge’ are rather reminiscent of the ‘angry young men’ movies that were dominating American and British cinema in the mid-50s. Chabrol returned, moreover, to this debut of his with a documentary signed by Francis Girod in 2003, which unfortunately I have not seen yet.
François returns to his native village, which he left more than a decade ago, to recover from a lung disease. He had traveled to the big world, to Paris and Switzerland, and the village seems frozen in time as mentalities, with aging people and morals falling apart. Even the village priest has resigned and no longer believes in the mission of bringing his believers to the right path. Serge, his best friend, falls into alcoholism and is unhappy in his marriage with Yvonne. Paul aims to save him, and through him, perhaps, to revive the whole village. In parallel, he has a love affair with Marie, the beautiful and capricious sister of Yvonne, who is probably looking for a way to escape from the status environment in which he lives and from the tyranny of his father, who is also addicted to alcohol. We shall meet the character, reaching the Big City, in future New Wave films. Is recovery possible?
The story seems moralistic but, viewed a little in perspective, I think that when Claude Chabrol wrote it, the intention was to say something more general about France after the war, about its people – especially the young – who were fighting to do something else than the previous generations, in order to change for the better a society frozen in concepts and rituals without a horizon. The expressive power of the two actors who play the lead roles (Jean-Claude Brialy – François and Gérard Blain – Serge) supports the central thread of the story. The film had a duration of almost two and a half hours in its initial form. Chabrol cut about 50 minutes of it to bring it to the standard format of a cinematographic representation at that time. He later regretted this decision, especially since the sequences left out mostly presented documentary aspects about the life of the French village in the years after the war. I haven’t seen the initial version and I don’t know if it still exists somewhere. I regret. I think that if the full version had been released, both ‘Le Beau Serge’, and, perhaps, other films of the New Wave and of Chabrol would have looked different.
Arnaud Desplechin does not make light movies. His characters seem to have been born and live permanently among dilemmas and crises, and the director’s cinematic visions transport his viewers into the troubled worlds of his heroes. This is also the case with ‘Les fantomes d’ Ismaël‘, his 2017 film which takes a classic ‘love triangle’ formula to confront his heros with painful questions about the ages of love, about presence and absence in relationships, about reality, fantasy and nightmares in artistic creation. The result in this case is a quite chaotic film, but also full of essence, with a charm amplified by an exceptional cast.
The scene that opens the action in ‘Les fantomes d’ Ismaël‘ (although it is not the first scene of the film) seems to mirror the key scene in ‘Sous le sable’, the 2000 film by Francois Ozon. Both take place on a beach and are shot from similar angles, as if it were the same beach. In Francois Ozon’s film, the manleaves his wife on the beach and goes swimming in the ocean. He will disappear and the rest of the film will be about the search for him. In Arnaud Desplechin‘s film, one of the heroines, Carlotta, aseems to appear from the sea, retracing the route in reverse. The woman is the 21-year-old missing wife of Ismaël, a screenwriter and film director. ‘Les fantomes d’ Ismaël‘ will be about the consequences of the absence and reappearance in the man’s life of the woman who had left him suddenly and without trace or explanation long time before. After many years of waiting and searching, he had declared her officially missing. He had begun a new relationship with Sylvia, a shy astrophysicist, also past her prime youth. He had kept in touch with Henri, Carlotta’s father, a Holocaust survivor and famous director. In the middle of creating a new film based on the figure of his brother Ivan – a diplomat and maybe a spy -, Ismaël sees his whole life called into question by the appearance of his missing wife, with his identity, biographical and sentimental landmarks overturned or annihilated.
The narrative style chosen by the screenwriters (including the director) is non-linear and creates the impression of intentional disorder. Looking closely, it seemed to me that it reflects the feelings of the main character, even if he does not appear in all scenes. At the beginning we look at a life that seems to have stabilized, with flashbacks that recall the trauma of the disappearance of the young wife 21 years ago, but also the episodes of meeting and beginning the relationship with Sylvia, that happened two years before. As the story progresses, and especially after Carlotta appears, events multiply and accelerate in the pace of the hero’s experiences: memories, nightmares, creative crisis, images from the future film. The finale surprises with a total change of tone. Mathieu Amalric is probably one of the most suitable film actors to bring to the screen the image of a man in deep crisis, overwhelmed by the events of life. Marion Cotillard and Charlotte Gainsbourg are two of my favorite actresses and the joy of seeing them together (and even confronting each other) in the same film was immense. Two more secondary roles caught my attention, giving László Szabó and Hippolyte Girardot consistent creations despite their short screen time. To me, ‘Les fantomes d’ Ismaël‘ seems to be an unfairly little watched, discussed and appreciated film.
‘I girasoli‘ (‘Sunflower‘ in the English release), Vittorio De Sica‘s 1970 film, is a film that is impossible to judge outside of its historical context. Actually I should say its historical contexts. The film is a war melodrama, the story of an interrupted love and of the search beyond all hope for an Italian soldier who disappeared in the Soviet Union during the Second World War. The fate of Italian prisoners of war at that time was a lesser known and rather less convenient episode for all parties involved, so tackling it in 1970 can be considered an act of courage. However, the way the story is told is very problematic and certain details are completely implausible. It is very likely that many compromises were made by the screenwriters and by the producer Carlo Ponti who, after making ‘Doctor Zhivago’ in 1965, wanted very much to make a film in co-production with the USSR studios. He achieved his goal, but the result is debatable. The love story related in the film is powerful and emotional, but the falseness of the reflection of the historical context shadows it. ‘I girasoli‘ remains in the categories of cinematic curiosities and of the films made in the last decade of De Sica‘s life and career that – for the most part – failed to repeat the success and freshness of the post-war neo-realist masterpieces.
The first part of ‘I girasoli‘ is the one that I liked most. At least a decade after the end of World War II, Giovanna has not come to terms with the disappearance of her husband, Antonio, who has gone off to fight on the Eastern Front. The two had had a short and passionate love story, one of those that happen especially in times of war, and they had married rather spontaneously to earn the extra 12 days of leave given to freshly married soldiers before departing to the battlefields. Antonio’s tracks were lost in the terrible battle of Stalingrad, and since his body was never discovered, the woman fiercely believes that he is still alive. From here begins the part that seems more than implausible, not to say false, of the story. Giovanna will go on a journey to great Russia to find Antonio. I will not tell too much in order to avoid spoilers. I will only say that nothing is being said about prison camps or the Gulag, nor about the atrocities of the war or about the punishments that in Soviet Russia were applied to those who ‘made pacts ‘sympathized’ with the enemies. A second love story is being added to the first, much less interesting or believable (despite the presence on the screen of the beautiful Soviet actress Lyudmila Saveleva, whose talent I admired in other films).
Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni starred in 17 films together. ‘I girasoli‘ is one of them, and seeing the two in the roles of lovers on screen is one of the great pleasures that this film offers to its viewers. The rather complicated connection between the two works perfectly and their magnetism (combined with humor) as actors and as lovers is formidable. The film also has special visual qualities, with some memorable scenes such as the one with the sunflower field that gives the film its title (although the metaphor is a bit forced), but also or especially the scenes shot in the train stations. Arguably, all the key scenes – breakups and reunions – in this film take place in train stations. Also included are documentary sequences using Soviet propaganda films against the backdrop of a red flag – a likely homage to Sergei Eisenstein. Unfortunately, the feeling of falsity – both in the historical account and in the scenes that take place in the USSR after the war – dominates the second part of ‘I girasoli‘. Vittorio De Sica seems to have forgotten the very lesson he had passed on to generations of filmmakers influenced by Italian neorealism. For a film dealing with political or historical themes to succeed, artistic truth must be anchored in historical and social truth.
