The most appropriate way to honor the memory of a filmmaker or actor who is no longer with us is to see or re-watch their films. ‘The Way We Were‘ from 1973 is one of the films that consolidated Robert Redford‘s position as a top actor and a success with the public in the generation that conquered the screens in the late ’60s and early ’70s. It is also one of his first complex roles, through which he tries to overcome the limits of the attractive young man typology, being cast in the film directed by Sydney Pollack, written by Arthur Laurents and based on a book by him and having Francis Ford Coppola as co-writer. The major challenge was the fact that his partner in this film was Barbra Streisand, an actress with a unique personality and an expressive power that risks shadowing any other actor or character with whom she happens to be in the same frame. What resulted was a meeting between two great actors that became a Hollywood legend from the day it premiered and has remained so for more than half a century.
‘The Way We Were‘ oscillates between being a romantic story turned into a drama about sentimental relationships and a political drama set in the American intellectual and cinematic milieu between the late 1930s and the early 1950s. The first meeting between the two heroes takes place during their college years. Katie Moroski is a politically engaged student, a far-left activist in the years before World War II. Hubbell Gardiner is a talented novelist, but also the type of boy without material worries, eager to live his life and taking everything easy. Katie falls in love with Hubbell, but it will be many years before their love will materialize, in the final year of the war. Everything seems to separate them. She is Jewish and politically involved, interesting but not beautiful according to the canons, takes everything seriously, maybe even too seriously, including love. He is handsome as an icon, comes from the WASP aristocracy, has no firm political beliefs, just wants to succeed in his career and live well in the American style. Love seems to overcome any obstacles for a moment, including an obvious mismatch that even the two are very aware of. Everything seems to go OK for a while, until history catches up with them.
Robert Redford makes visible efforts in this film to give consistency and depth to the character. He succeeds about 90%, in my opinion. Ryan O’Neal was originally proposed to play Hubbell Gardiner, he being at that time (after ‘Love Story’) more famous and popular. That casting did not work out, and then Laurents challenged and convinced Redford to take the role. Laurents and Pollack wanted the film to be much more political, but several test screenings with the audience convinced them to eliminate many of the scenes that were still too critical of 1950s Hollywood. The evolution of Katie and Hubbell’s relationship, however, is also linked to what was happening in the studios under the terror of ideological purges, and the result was that the romantic story doesn’t really hold up either. What remains are the masterful performances of the two main actors and the entire cast, including a very young James Woods, who had debuted a year earlier in an Elia Kazan film. After all, ‘The Way We Were‘ is still Barbra Streisand‘s film. It’s fascinating to see her or see her again after half a century, and the magnetism of the love between the two on screen remains intact. Perhaps love wins it all in the end.
In 1965, the year he filmed and released ‘Giulietta degli spiriti‘, Federico Fellini had long since ended his neorealist period and had made two of his best-known (perhaps even his best) films – ‘La dolce vita’ and ‘8 1/2’. His biographers claim that his relationship with his wife and muse (at least from the first part of his career) – Giulietta Masina – was in a complicated phase. The formidable actress had not been cast in either of the two previous great successes. ‘Giulietta degli spiriti‘ would therefore have been a kind of compensation because it gave Giulietta Masina a major role again and perhaps also a kind of act of penance, if not conjugal at least artistic, because unlike the previous films, the perspective and attitude are intended to be explicitly feminist. It was also Fellini‘s first color film. The Italian director would from then on add a dimension to his visual universe. The result is a film that is very Fellini-esque in appearance, but not as coherent and expressive as the best films that preceded it. Had the decline begun, which would be long and marked by a few significant films, but a decline nonetheless?
The heroine of the film is also called Giuletta. She is a rich woman, one of those who have all the money and all the time in the world at her disposal. She is over 40, while her husband, Giorgio, seems to be over 50. He is a very busy man, almost always away from home, with good excuses for absenting nights and days and forgetting his wife’s birthday. For the woman with big eyes and a candid face, Giorgio is the love of her life and perhaps the only man she has ever known. Giuletta seems a little different from her surroundings, conservative in her clothing, reluctant in assuming the eccentric and decadent behaviors of her friends or her new neighbor, a blonde and exuberant woman. However, she believes in spirits, which she invokes in seances or visits all kinds of gurus who sell advice on spiritualistic debauchery. When she has reason to suspect that Giorgio is cheating on her, she seeks advice and refuge in this alternative world.
The character of Giuletta is one of the most interesting ones created by Fellini. Practically, everything we see on screen is the reflection of her visions, dreams, memories, and experiences. Reality, nightmares, and memory meet in a fantastic and colorful world, haunted by spirits and the anxieties of the woman whose real universe is about to fall apart. But is it really a feminist film? The vision of women’s feelings is Fellini‘s – surrealist, a tribute to psychoanalysis, with a subliminal social commentary. Giuletta is obviously unhappy, but is she at least satisfied with her own decisions? Actress Giulietta Masina delivers a performance that is even deeper and more sincere in this film than in any of her other films. We can admire Fellini‘s unbridled visual imagination, the fantasy and nightmare universe he creates around his heroine, identify themes and quotes from his other films and enjoy Nino Rota‘s music, but this film is more than everything else Giulietta Masina‘s film. The sadness in the eyes of the woman who has passed young age and is about to lose her love, that is, her world, will haunt us for a long time.
If you like detective novels and the Scandinavian movies inspired by these novels and you also appreciate British television series, but especially if you like intelligent films with interesting heroes, then you will probably want to watch ‘Annika‘. It is a British mini-series (two seasons of six episodes, at least so far) whose action takes place in Scotland, more precisely in Glasgow and on the land and by the water surrounding this city. The atmosphere and colors of the waters and the sky seem imported from Scandinavian films, and the main heroine who gives the series its name is a police inspector of Norwegian origin newly appointed head of a team in the city’s maritime criminal police. In addition, she is also a literature lover and each episode is related to a famous literary work, from Scandinavian legends, through Ibsen’s theater to Aeschylus’ tragedies.
‘Annika‘ uses the recipe for success of police series in which the private lives of the police officers occupy an equally important place as the enigmas they have to solve. Police inspector Annika Strandhed is Norwegian by origin and raises Morgan, her 15-year-old daughter, alone. Almost inevitably, Morgan will have problems at school and will go through the turmoils of adolescence, the mother will not have enough time to take care of her, and the phones related to her daughter’s problems will ring at the most inopportune moments. In addition, like any single woman in her 40s or 50s, obsessed with her profession, intelligent and quite beautiful, she cannot avoid her own sentimental adventures. The team under her command is multi-ethnic: a policeman with a family of Caribbean origin, a policewoman with a family of Asian origin and a local policeman who had dreamed of her job before Annika landed as their boss. In addition to all this, at least one body will surface in each episode on the shores of the Clyde maritime lake or river. The police team will solve the cases while also dealing with their own personal problems.
All of these may seem quite banal and viewers may have the feeling that they have seen it before in other places. What saves the show is the quality of the writing and acting. The series is created by Nick Walker and is based on a radio series that had been successful a few years before. The plots are interesting, the dialogues flow naturally, the solutions to the puzzles have logic. The main role is played by Nicola Walker, an actress specialized in television, who is, I read, in her eighth role as a policewoman in a British series. You can feel the experience, humor and control of the means of expression. In addition, Nick Walker adds a sympathetic trick, with the goal of erasing the conventional distance between the heroes and the viewers. From time to time, the main actress looks directly at the camera and comments on the situations she finds herself in or consults with the viewers, making them share her thoughts. The procedure is interesting, breaks the narrative routine without disturbing and adds humor. The two seasons of ‘Annika‘ were created and broadcast in 2021 and 2023. I have only seen the first one, for now. I understand that there are no new episodes planned. What a shame!
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a film with such a strong visual impact as Hideo Sekigawa‘s ‘Hiroshima‘. I have no hesitation in saying that, at least in my experience, what this Japanese director, whom I didn’t know at all, made in 1953 comes close in terms of expressiveness of images to the masterpieces of Eisenstein and Fritz Lang or to the films of his contemporaries, the masters of Italian neo-realism. The film was made only eight years after the nuclear explosion in Hiroshima and its production has a specific context that also explains the rhetoric of the message, which was controversial at the time and remains open to debates today, due to the different historical perspectives of the event it describes. ‘Hiroshima‘ was not financed by the major studios but by the Japanese teachers’ union of the time and thousands of extras, many of them survivors of the nuclear explosion, participated voluntarily in its making. It is a film that deserves to be seen both as a historical document and as a document of the way history is reflected in the art of cinema.
The film is organized in two temporal planes that also delimit two cinematic styles. The story begins in 1953, describing a society that tries to heal its wounds and understand what happened, by using the micro-universe of a school class. The children were old enough eight years before to remember what they went through. They are divided into two distinct groups, as the entire Japanese society of that time was probably divided. Some of them carry the traumas in their bodies and souls and a few of those are affected by the ‘atomic disease’, that is, the effects of radiation. Others try to forget, leave the past behind, and continue with their lives. The narrative then returns to August 5-6, 1945, on the eve and the day of the nuclear attack. The quiet of the sunny day is interrupted by the hum of an airplane, the alarm doesn’t even sound, a blinding light bursts out, and hell on earth breaks loose. The 15-20 minutes that follow are among the most dramatic ever created in world cinema. I’ve seen countless apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic films, but what Hideo Sekigawa and his team achieved 72 years ago not only anticipates, but equals and surpasses in expressiveness and realism almost everything that followed. The use of black and white film accentuates the feeling of immersion in history and horror. In all this nightmarish chaos, a few characters begin to stand out, whose stories are followed when, towards the end, the film returns to the present day of 1953, following their destinies.
The political commentary is engaged and critical, and it is remarkable that it does not only refer to those who triggered the disaster but also to the deeper causes of the conflict – Japanese militarism and the blind veneration of the imperial institution. The government rhetoric is ridiculous and the appeal to patriotism in moments of catastrophe seems pathetic. A meeting of the governors is more concerned with the propagandistic denial of the disaster than with recognizing reality and organizing aid for the survivors. The ceremonies organized at the site of the bomb with symbolic monuments and pacifist slogans seem devoid of content in the absence of popular engagement. But history was only just beginning to be written, the debate remains open and the danger of atomic apocalypse has not been eradicated. I think Sekigawa‘s ‘Hiroshima‘ could be screened together with Christopher Nolan’s recent and much-awarded ‘Oppenheimer’. They are two very good films that depict the two sides of the event that changed the course of history.
‘Dinți de lapte‘ (‘Milk Teeth‘) is, in its way, a unique film. It is the second auteur film (written and directed) by Mihai Mincan and made as a co-production with international financing and participation. This time, unlike his debut film, the story takes place in Romania, during a critical period of radical change, the year 1989 and the beginning of 1990. It is not new territory for Romanian cinema, many of the films of the Romanian New Wave addressed those months in which the fate of Romania took a radically different turn after half a century that seemed to last an eternity. What is special in Mihai Mincan‘s new film is the perspective from which the change is perceived – through the eyes, soul and dreams of a 10-year-old girl who lives her childhood (as childhood was lived in the final years of the dictatorship) and goes through a traumatic event and its consequences.
In the opening scene of the film, we see a pair of hands cracking nuts, collecting the kernels in a bowl and throwing the shells in a trash can. The second scene begins from a ‘bird’s eye’ perspective to descend into a playground, actually a vacant space between ugly apartment blocks where several children are playing. One of them is Maria. Her sister passes by with a trash can in her hand, we understand that it contains the shells from the previous scene. She exits the frame, the film, perhaps from life. The elder sister disappears, perhaps kidnapped by men in a black car that some witnesses say they saw, but not the viewers. The black cars were used by the authorities and the privileged of the regime. The absence of the missing girl dominates the film. The militia investigates the parents, but the routine of inefficiency and the distrust between the people and the system’s officials can also be felt. Maria does her own investigation and explores, together with two other children, an abandoned industrial hall where a vagrant is sheltering. The girl matures in the atmosphere of resignation and depression that characterizes people’s lives, she feels guilty for the disappearance of her sister (in fact, it was her turn to throw out the garbage). The childhood ceremonies invented by the system (admission in the pioneers’ organization) cannot fill her life devoid of toys and hope. Reality and dreams (more like nightmares) are difficult to delimit. The little girl also witnesses the breakup of her family. The father, who internalizes his pain by trying to focus his affection on his remaining daughter, leaves the mother who had continued her obsessively but in vain searches, desperate and frustrated by the apathy of the authorities. A revolution is happening all around, but we do not see it at all in the lives of the heroes. The spring of ’90, the first in freedom, finds the family divided and equally devoid of hope.
Young actress Emma Ioana Mogos plays the role of the little girl exceptionally well, and part of the credit goes, of course, to the director. She is present even when we don’t see her, because the camera takes over her role, either in reality or in imagination or dreams. George Chiper‘s camera is held in the hand in most scenes, as in amateur films, emphasizing the atmosphere of authenticity, the heroine’s perspective and the general state of nervousness and psychological pressure. The reconstruction of the gray and horizonless atmosphere of the late 1980s is very precise with the ugliness of the urban and industrial landscapes and the ridiculous school uniforms with their humiliating personal numbers visibly sewn. I noticed a few inaccurate details – closing balconies was prohibited in the last decade of the dictatorship, insulated glazing was not yet practiced, also I don’t think DNA tests were practiced by the Romanian militia in the 1980s -, these could have been avoided, but probably some of the filmmakers were not born then. In a way, ‘Dinți de lapte‘ feels like it comes too late. It could have been made 15 or 20 years ago. But it has a quality and consistency in style that gives me a lot of hope and confidence in what Mihai Mincan can do. I look forward to his next films with great interest.
Romantic fantasies are not exactly my favorite genre of film, but when they succeed, they have a good chance of being very enjoyable. I had quite a few expectations from ‘A Big Bold Beautiful Journey‘. I liked the title a lot first of all. I was attracted by the cinematic idea that I glimpsed when watching the trailer. I didn’t know the director Kogonada, but IMDB told me that he is a connoisseur of cinema and that he has made video essays about many of the directors for whom I have immense admiration. Finally, the lead roles are played by Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie. The disappointment, however, was more or less in line with expectations.
‘A Big Bold Beautiful Journey‘ starts as a romantic story. David and Sarah meet at the wedding of a mutual friend, a few hundred kilometers from the city where they live in different neighborhoods. They probably have good jobs and relatively comfortable lives, but the script intentionally doesn’t provide any information about anything other than their romantic aspirations or counter-aspirations. They’re around their 40s (he might be a little older, she might be a little younger) and they’re both single and pretty convinced, for different reasons, that they’ll never get married. From the second scene we can already guess what’s going to happen in their relationship, but how it happens is what matters. A torrential downpour breaks out and the two are forced to rent cars from a car rental company like no other, which may even have other business goals than just renting cars. The GPS device that the strange rental agents convince them to include in the rental works like a kind of ChatGPT from Stanley Kubrick’s time (the one with HAL 9000) and they will soon be guided to open doors to … I’ll stop here to avoid spoilers. I’ll just mention that from here we enter together with the heroes into a fantastic universe, where time is relative and nostalgia for the past overwhelms reality.
The source of inspiration for screenwriter Seth Reiss seems to have been the films written by Charlie Kaufman. However, the wealth of ideas, the multitude of cultural references and the poetic vein of the films written by Kaufman are missing. After we understand the motivations of the two’s reluctance to comit in the relationship, and this happens before half the screening time, the story slows down and there is no more significant development, all being reduced to the banal questions ‘when will they kiss?’ and ‘will they get back together before the end?’. There are many beautiful things along the way, for example Benjamin Loeb‘s cinematography (sometimes perhaps intentionally excessively sweet) and the presence of the two excellent actors Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie, even if the chemistry between them doesn’t work perfectly on screen. Starting from an interesting idea, ‘A Big Bold Beautiful Journey‘ manages to be only beautiful, but is also boring and leaves the impression of lasting too long.
Festivalul Internațional George Enescu a ajuns în acest an la a XXVII-a ediție. Am fost la București pentru aproape întreaga durată a evenimentului care transformă orașul în capitală culturală a Europei o dată la fiecare doi ani, fără a avea nevoie de vreo proclamare oficială. Din nou s-au întâlnit aici, în splendida sală a Ateneului Român (în opinia mea, cea mai frumoasă sală de muzică din lume), în imensa și discutabila Sală a Palatului, în alte săli de concerte, dar și în spatii mai puțin convenționale – muzee, săli de conferințe, teatre și piețe publice –, mulți dintre cei mai buni muzicieni din lume și publicul lor cald și entuziast, dar nu de puține ori și critic, ba uneori chiar enervat. Copilăria eu mi-am petrecut-o cam la o sută de metri de cele două săli principale de concerte ale Capitalei. Eram prea mic pentru a-mi aminti prima ediție, aveam doar cinci ani în 1958, așa încât faptul că parcă am asistat la întâlnirea dintre Yehudi Menuhin și David Oistrach pentru interpretarea Concertului pentru două viori în re minor de Bach (reluat la această ediție) probabil că se datorează unor înregistrări filmate amplificate de imaginație. Edițiile următoare însă încep să mi le amintesc suficient de bine pentru a putea astăzi, după experiența unei vieți de meloman, să compar festivalurile de acum 60 de ani cu cele de astăzi. Cum arată, deci, din perspectiva unui meloman pasionat, Festivalul Enescu în epoca rețelelor sociale, a telefoanelor inteligente, a spectacolelor multimedia și a inteligenței artificiale (IA)?
(sursa imaginii – autorul)
Directorul artistic al Festivalului, dirijorul Cristian Măcelaru, și-a declarat încă din momentul preluării formidabilei responsabilități a conducerii și organizării evenimentului intenția de a deschide programele în direcții multiple, păstrând în același timp nucleul valoric format din colaborarea cu unele dintre cele mai prestigioase instituții muzicale, orchestre, soliști și dirijori de prim rang pe scena muzicală contemporană. Deschiderea este vizibilă și în diversificarea formatelor, și în structura programelor, și în metodele de popularizare și acces ale evenimentelor. Festivalul a durat 29 de zile și fiecare dintre acestea a oferit programe multiple, în genuri și stiluri diverse. Biletele au fost puse în vânzare cu peste șase luni în avans, a existat și un sistem de abonamente (cam rigid și scump în opinia mea), și cei care au dorit să se asigure de locuri la concertele cele mai solicitate au trebuit să fie prezenți în fața calculatoarelor pe 15 februarie, ora 12 fix, și nici atunci succesul nu le era asigurat. Festivalul a colaborat în acest scop cu agenții de bilete din România, iar cei care aveau deja conturi create erau în evident avantaj. Nu toate programele erau definitive în momentul punerii în vânzare a biletelor (de exemplu, pentru concertele Orchestrei Naționale a Franței dirijate chiar de Măcelaru nu se cunoșteau soliștii și programele) și au mai intervenit și schimbări în program, cum a fost cea cauzata de starea sănătății Marthei Argerich, care nu au fost administrate prea elegant de organizatori. Celor care cumpăraseră bilete la datele anunțate inițial (30 și 31 august) nu li s-a trimis niciun mesaj despre schimbare, beneficiarii fiind cei care cumpăraseră bilete pe 15-16 septembrie la cu totul alte concerte. De partea plusurilor, menționez că multe dintre concerte au fost transmise și în direct de pe pagina de Web a Festivalului și au rămas accesibile pe streaming timp de 24 de ore după încheierea înregistrărilor.
(sursa imaginii – autorul)
Dacă lărgirea bazei de iubitori ai muzicii era un scop declarat al Festivalului, au fost imposibil de evitat discuțiile devenite deja ‘clasice’ despre normele de conduită și despre ținuta vestimentară a spectatorilor în sălile de concerte. Am observat un progres remarcabil în comparație cu edițiile din anii precedenți în ceea ce privește înțelegerea structurii lucrărilor din programe și inoportunitatea aplauzelor între părți. În schimb, s-au înmulțit supărător telefoanele care fotografiază, filmează, înregistrează în timpul concertelor. Stând în lojă la unul dintre concertele de la Ateneu am putut vedea aproape în fiecare rând câte un telefon care încălca brutal și fățiș regulile pe care vocile politicoase înregistrate le reaminteau la începutul concertelor. Există soluții? Desigur. Și tehnice și legale. Nimic nu ar ajuta mai mult decât o amendă de o mie (în moneda dumneavoastră preferată) pentru oricine deschide un telefon înainte de aplauzele finale ale concertului (sau ale spectacolului de teatru, problema este comună). Cealaltă problemă aprig dezbătută este însă, în opinia mea, o falsă problemă. Este vorba despre ținuta la concerte. Este un păcat, în ochii unor persoane și personalități pentru care am mare respect, să nu te încadrezi ca spectator în norma ținutei de sărbătoare. Subiectului i-a fost dedicată o emisiune la TVR Cultural, moderată de Marius Constantinescu, iar maestrul Dan Grigore i-a dedicat un episod din minunata serie de podcasturi muzicale ale dânsului. Opinia mea este diferita. Eleganta și chiar și decenta sunt relative, țin de moda, vârstă, generație. Respectul față de muzică se manifestă în multe moduri, dar nu neapărat în stilul de îmbrăcăminte, care depinde, printre altele, și de gust, de posibilitățile financiare, de programul zilei fiecăruia dintre spectatori. În fine, sala de concert este un spațiu de întâlnire între artiști și iubitorii artei numite muzică, însă nu neapărat un spațiu sacru. Metaforele nu trebuie luate ad literam.
Câteva dintre concertele cele mai solicitate ale acestei ediții a Festivalului s-au bucurat de o amplificare multimedia care a devenit imediat subiect de controverse și reacții diverse, nu de puține ori extreme, și în presă, și pe rețelele sociale. Pentru concertele din 13 și 14 septembrie de la Sala Palatului, a fost solicitată colaborarea regizoarei de teatru și de multimedia Carmen Lidia Vidu. Pentru fiecare dintre aceste spectacole, reputata regizoare a recurs la o combinație de imagini filmate și create, folosind tehnici diverse, inclusiv recurgând la IA. Componentele multimedia au însoțit ‘Șeherezada’ lui Rimski-Korsakov, interpretată sâmbăta 13 septembrie de Orchestra Filarmonicii Regale din Londra (cea mai bună orchestră din actuala ediție în opinia mea), dirijată de Vasily Petrenko, și opera în concert ‘Lady Macbeth din Mțensk’ de Șostakovici, cu Orchestra Națională și Corul Academic Radio. Ceea ce spectatorii prezenți la evenimente și cei care au văzut înregistrările au experimentat a fost foarte diferit de un concert obișnuit. Carmen Lidia Vidu a dat formă și a transpus în imagini viziuni care pot fi foarte diferite de cele pe care gândurile noastre le creează la audierea muzicii. Opera lui Șostakovici țintește deja un spectacol încărcat de semnificații legate de putere și erotism, în timp ce ‘Șeherezada’ conține nuclee narative și permite imaginației să creeze personaje și legende. Reacțiile pe care le-am citit au fost diverse și diferite. În bula mea internetică, aproximativ trei sferturi dintre aprecieri au fost negative. Mulți dintre iubitorii muzicii pure au negat necesitatea sau oportunitatea unei transcrieri vizuale, alții au mărturisit că pur și simplu au închis ochii și s-au lăsat transportați de muzică în lumea propriilor fantezii și imagini. Alții, o minoritate, au fost însă vrăjiți, au apreciat spectacolul, au trăit o nouă dimensiune a creațiilor familiare lor din înregistrări sau pe scenele sălilor de concerte sau de operă. Voi adăuga doar o observație: cred că componenta multimedia a acestor spectacole trebuia mai bine pusă în evidență încă din faza de promovare și de vânzare a biletelor. Poate că se pierdeau câțiva spectatori din categoria amatorilor de muzică clasică pură, dar alții ar fi fost atrași. Aș mai menționa că nu este prima încercare de a crea astfel de spectacole la București. Cu un an în urmă, la aniversarea nașterii lui Enescu, Poema Română a fost prezentată într-o experiență imersivă la MINA – Muzeul Noii Arte Imersive. Dirijorul Cristian Măcelaru aprecia acel eveniment ca fiind ‘o nouă modalitate de a explora şi de a trăi această lucrare extraordinară, combinând sunetul, vizualul şi inovația tehnologică pentru a aduce publicului o experiență artistică interdisciplinară fără precedent’.
Carmen Lidia Vidu este și autoarea unei alte forme de exprimare vizuală care s-a proiectat pe 20 septembrie pe ceea ce este considerată cea mai mare suprafață destinată unei astfel de creații în lume – clădirea Parlamentului. Este vorba despre o lucrare de video-mapping inspirată din muzica lui George Enescu, rod al colaborării Festivalului cu iMapp (eveniment care adună creatori ai artelor luminilor din toată lumea) și cu celebrarea Zilelor Bucurestiului la a 566-a aniversare a primei atestări documentare a Capitalei. Un alt spectacol imersiv, accesibil virtual pe toată durata Festivalului, a fost „LUV s LUV” care îmbină limbajul coregrafic tradițional cu realitatea virtuală, aducând spectatorii într-o experiență multimedia interactivă. Publicul nu mai este doar martor la spectacol, ci participă imersiv la poveste, datorită tehnologiei de realitate virtuală (VR). Pe scenă și în universul digital apăreau patru personaje interpretate de dans – actorii companiei Gigi Căciuleanu, Romania Dance Company.
Cei care au răsfoit broșurile Festivalului (apărute zilnic, pe întreaga durată a evenimentului) au remarcat că printre marii muzicieni apare și numele lui Prateek Verma, cercetător în Inteligență Artificială la Universitatea Stanford în Departamentul de Inginerie Electrică, unde lucrează în domeniile modelelor mari de limbaj, Învățarea Mașinilor și a modelelor generative pentru muzică și sinteză de sunet. Este unul dintre semnele unui proces. Inteligența Artificială, tehnologiile multimedia, metodele electronice de creație, programare, organizare și comercializare își cuceresc treptat locul în acest eveniment. Nu este un proces simplu, controversele sunt firești. Muzica rămâne în centru, compozitorii, orchestrele, soliștii și dirijorii nu pot fi înlocuiți, dar miracolul este trăit și abordat din unghiuri noi. Să fim deschiși schimbărilor, să le urmărim cu atenție și să le apreciem după emoția pe care acestea le adaugă (sau dimpotrivă) experiențelor noastre de spectatori.
Articolul a fost publicat inițial în revista de cultură ‘Literatura de Azi’
‘One Battle After Another‘ is the first serious candidate for the next Academy Awards. I couldn’t have expected anything else from Paul Thomas Anderson, a film maker who has already demonstrated his talent for bringing complex stories to the screen that are relevant to the epochs in which his movies take place. Many will say that ‘One Battle After Another‘ is relevant to the immediate current events, to the chaos and polarization of the world we live in. And yet, in fact, the film is inspired by a novel by Thomas Pynchon (whose works Anderson also adapted into the screen with ‘Inherent Vice’) published in 2009, whose story takes place in the 1970s. The script metaphorically exposes the clash between two worlds and the lack of direct mention of contemporary political events gives the film an air of timelessness, probably intentional. This does not mean that most viewers of ‘One Battle After Another‘ will not also think politically about this film. The result will be exciting to some and annoying to others. There will be many viewers who will be enthusiastic about some scenes and bored or angry about others. This was my case as well.
The film depicts a polarized world, in which law enforcement equipped with all possible military technologies confronts a violent protest movement that organizes not only demonstrations but also guerrilla actions, freeing illegal immigrants from prisons near the southern border, robbing banks and bombing buildings in urban centers considered ‘symbols of capitalism’. The conflict is personalized by the confrontation between the violent Colonel Steven J. Lockshaw and the beautiful protester Perfidia, who, together with her lover Bob, are among the leaders of the anarchist-terrorist network that uses its own technologies to fight the system. When Perfidia gives birth to a baby girl (not before continuing to train in machine gun shooting even in the ninth month of pregnancy) the two parents must separate and melt in hiding. Perfidia, suspected of having betrayed her comrades in battle, disappears. 16 years later, an aging Bob, worn out not only by perpetual flight but also by drug use, will have to return to the arena to save his daughter – a rebel in her own way and the one of her generation – who is being pursued by Colonel Lockshaw for his own very personal reasons.
As an action movie, ‘One Battle After Another‘ works perfectly and engages the audience as they witness the constant confrontation between the anarchist rebels and the government forces that are on their trail. A secondary plot line associates the racist and obsessed colonel with a group of oligarchs who manipulate the world according to the model of the purest conspiracy theories. Paul Thomas Anderson seems to have intended to position this film at the intersection of political satire à la Kubrick and films with eccentric and violent heroes à la Tarantino, without losing the mainstream action movie fans. The caricature built by Sean Penn seemed to me too extreme to be effective, but that will probably not prevent him from being nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award and maybe even winning it. Leonardo DiCaprio is much more interesting in the role of the worn-out rebel and his relationship with his daughter (played by newcomer Chase Infiniti) is one of the most human and believable facets of the film. Other formidable actors appear including Benicio Del Toro, Regina Hall or Alana Haim about whom I can only say that I would have liked more consistent roles for each of them. The soundtrack created by Jonny Greenwood is exceptional, with long passages that emphasize the action scenes with silent cinema-style accompaniments. ‘One Battle After Another‘ tries to be too much at once and fails in some places. It’s like a firework that explodes with noise and color but quickly goes out and the smoke remains. It will probably be successful with the audiences and at the Academy Awards, but it will faint out, I think, in time, remaining mainly as a document of the way Hollywood tried to say something about the world, from a certain point of view, through a film that also did well at the box office.
Melodrama has not always had a negative or ironic connotation. In fact, in the 19th century this theatrical genre was closer to what the etymology of the word indicates, that is, a drama (usually set in a family environment) with music. Alain Resnais, the French director whose name is associated with the New Wave, although his films are very different from those of other famous directors of the movement, knew the art of theater well and explored the links between theater and film in the last decades of his life and career. ‘Mélo‘, his 1986 film is a melo-drama in the classic sense of the term and even more than that, since the heroes of the film are musicians and music plays an important role in the story. It is a very faithful adaptation of a 1929 play by Henri Bernstein, an almost forgotten playwright today, an interesting and picturesque character. Resnais‘s bet seems to have been to give life, with a combination of cinematographic and theatrical means, to a text that was not a literary masterpiece to start with, to which he nevertheless remained faithful. The dialogues from the play are preserved, only shortened and edited by Resnais. It is, actually one of the few films in which he intervened as a screenwriter, but without being credited for it. It can be said that Alain Resnais almost completely won the bet.
‘Mélo‘ is modeled as a filmed play. The credits look like a hall program and the sets are ostentatiously theatrical. We even have the raising and lowering of curtains that mark the three parts of the film (or three acts of the play, if you like). Pierre and Marcel are violinists and friends. In the first act, Marcel is invited to dinner by Pierre and his young wife, Romaine. While Marcel describes his love affairs, Romaine seems to fall under his spell. The next day she will visit him under the pretext of a musical audition that will mark the beginning of a relationship between the two. The story becomes complicated when Pierre falls ill, and his illness is possibly not unrelated to Romaine’s potion treatments. Just when the plot had taken a turn reminiscent of Hitchcock’s films, something unexpected happens. The integrity of the love triangle is in danger, and Romaine’s passion for one or the other of the two men ends up competing with their friendship.
Alain Resnais‘ films have often been appreciated for their cinematic qualities and technical inventiveness, but criticized for their apparent lack of emotion. Cinematographically, ‘Mélo‘ is interesting precisely for its theatricality, amplified by the image and the music. André Dussollier, the actor undertaking the role of Marcel, has a monologue of about six minutes in which he reveals all the hidden corners of his character, but I think that even if we had the best places at a theater performance, we would not be able to perceive all the acting nuances as in the close-up frame created by the director and his cinematographer. The confined spaces of the emphatically theatrical sets are expanded by games of mirrors. Two violin sonatas (one by Bach and the other by Brahms) will play important roles in the plot, but in this melo-drama, music is talked about more than music is performed or listened to. In addition to Dussollier, Pierre Arditi and Sabine Azéma appear in the other two roles of the love triangle, and Fanny Ardant in a supporting role. They all make up a small team of faithful actors who accompanied Resnais in his films of that period. They all know each other very well and interact wonderfully. It is from here, from within, that emotion erupts, and this minimalist and stylish film manages not only to rehabilitate theater in film but also to convey a message about friendship being stronger than passion.
‘Almost Famous‘ is a phenomenon movie. The screenwriter and director is Cameron Crowe, who between 1996 and 2001 wrote and directed several splendid feature movies (for this one he won an Academy Award for best original screenplay) and then practically … disappeared. We are in 2025, the film was made in 2000 and most of the story takes place in 1973. The distance of two generations allows us to appreciate the perspective. ‘Almost Famous‘ is one of the best feature films about the rock music world of the ’70s. At the same time it is a formidable ‘road movie’ and a film full of sensitivity about rebellion and coming of age in adolescence. The combination works very well. Even though it did not enjoy an initial success with the public, ‘Almost Famous‘ seems to have grown over time and today we can see it not only as a docu-drama about rock and rockers but also as a case study for the way the history of rock has been treated in films.
The main character is a kind of alter-ego of the director-screenwriter, whose passion for music led him to becoming a correspondent for specialized magazines in his teens. William Miller is a precocious kid. His mother is a widowed teacher, who wants all the best in the world for him and his sister, who is a few years older, but stifles them with her ambitions (she sends the boy to school two years early) and with conceptions that some would call rigid and others normal (daily phone calls when they are far away, total rejection of rock culture, music and especially drugs). The LPs collection that his sister, Anita, leaves him as a secret legacy when she leaves home on the day she turns 18 awakens his passion for music. His talent as a journalist earns him an assignment from the renowned magazine ‘Rolling Stone’ – to accompany on tour and write a report on a rock band called ‘Stillwater’. But the magazine doesn’t know about the age of their correspondent – 15 years old. The journey together with the band members and their female admirers will mean an initiation into music, love and life. Not only for William, but also for those around him – the beautiful girl who hides behind the pseudonym Penny Lane, the rock musicians who become his friends, even his mother who is apparently locked in the mentality of the previous generation.
‘Almost Famous‘ – although made in 2000 – is so well written, acted and produced that I had a feeling of immersion in the world of young Americans in 1973, even now, watching the film in 2025. The young people in this film were my generation, except that I lived thousands of miles away and behind an Iron Curtain. And yet, absolutely all the records in Anita’s collection were familiar to me. The role of William is played by Patrick Fugit, and that of rocker (and love rival) Russell Hammond is played by Billy Crudup. Both were in 2000 young actors, who have since developed decent careers, but ‘Almost Famous‘ remained a peak in their paths. Kate Hudson is fascinating in the role of the girl with whom the film’s heroes, but probably also many in the audiences fall in love. Frances McDormand is William’s mother, a role a little different from that of the other characters in the film and different from other roles in a career that has many other peaks. Finally, I couldn’t help but shed a tear for Philip Seymour Hoffman who plays another journalist and music critic, William’s mentor. It’s been more than ten incredible years since Hoffman is no more, and such a role, which was unknown to me, seemed to bring him back among us. If only for him, this film was worth seeing. But there were many other good reasons.
