‘Moving‘ (1993 – original title is ‘Ohikkoshi‘) is one of those films whose viewing is more than a cinematic spectacle – it’s an experience. It’s the first film I’ve seen by the Japanese film director Shinji Sômai, who died prematurely in 2001, leaving behind a filmography of only 13 films, almost the same number as the French film director Jean-Pierre Melville, who also died around the same age. His films are little known outside of Japan. In the 1980s and 1990s when they were made, Japanese films were rarely distributed in the world except for Akiro Kurosawa’s and cartoons. His films, however, influenced the wave of very talented directors who today are sometimes better known and more successful in the world than in Japan. ‘Moving’ is a beautiful, sensible and slightly enigmatic film. I’m not sure that I understood all of its symbols and I would be happy to discuss it sometime with someone from Japan or well versed in Japanese culture and traditions.
The story features a family with only one child that is on the verge of separation. If you want, a kind of ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’ in the Japanese version, only here the child is Renko, an 11-12-year-old girl. The scene that opens the film is the last dinner the family spends together. The tensions between the parents are visible and the little girl is trying to brave it and maybe she has not yet understood all the implications of her parents’ separation. The next day the father packs his things and moves, quite far away, but probably in the same city (Kyoto?). The mother works, in the evenings when she comes home she tries to rebuild the mother-daughter relationship based on a discipline embodied in a set of rules and a life schedule displayed in the house. The little girl misses her father and the family atmosphere. She also has problems at school, where the children notice the situation and make fun of her and another colleague who is in the same situation. Divorce is allowed in Japan, but it is socially frowned upon. As she becomes aware of the situation, sadness turns to rebellion, and the means of expression are typical of adolescence: naive or wonderful attempts to bring parents together, or acts of rebellion that can become destructive. Coming to age occurs in parallel with the desire to recover the lost security and stability.
Although the setting of the story is that of a large city in modern Japan with its houses and schools, there is an element of tradition and even magic that accompanies the story and which at one point becomes dominant. Fire marks several key moments – whether it’s a way to express the outburst of teenage rebellion, or it’s the centerpiece of a traditional celebration that ends with a spectacular burning of dragon-decorated ships on a lake. Towards the end of the film, Renko will go through a horror-tinged initiation and transformation experience that may be real, may be dreamlike, is certainly magical. Not everything is explained – neither the wandering in the bamboo jungle, nor the meeting with an old man who gives her some life advice that guides her to the initiation ceremony. Some of the meanings might be clearer to those connoisseurs of Japanese lore, but even for the uninitiated viewer the ending has exceptional visual and emotional power. Viewers in a hurry to leave the cinema hall and those who press the ‘off’ button at the beginning of the credits will miss a series of sequences that project Renko into the future, sequences accompanied by Gheorghe Zamfir’s flute music. It was a surprise for me, which proves that Shinji Sômai was a director who, in addition to the talents to create an emotional story, to choose perfect actors, to permanently keep the balance between the real and the imaginary, was also open to dialogues with other cultures. I can only regret that he only got to direct a few films, but I have 12 more to discover.
I can’t remember why I missed seeing ‘Bringing Out the Dead‘ (1999). I’ve been a fan of Martin Scorsese since ‘Taxi Driver’ and I thought I hadn’t missed any of his movies since then. And yet, it’s the first time I’ve seen ‘Bringing Out the Dead‘ now. Maybe it was just too busy a time for me, or maybe the film wasn’t released in the country I live in after one of Martin Scorsese‘s few commercial failures. But maybe it’s better that way, as I’ve now had the opportunity to see the film from the perspective of a quarter of a century since its production and release, and see how well it sits in Scorsese’s filmography. This was Scorsese‘s fourth collaboration with Paul Schrader and a return to the streets of New York, Scorsese‘s hometown, the two’s first together since ‘Taxi Driver’. It is a psychological drama with action elements, but a little different than other action films that take place on the streets of New York at night, and a little different from other Scorsese films. I think the producers had trouble positioning and building the marketing for this movie. But time seems to have put him back in the place he deserved.
The main hero of the film is Fred Pierce, an ambulance paramedic in the Manhattan emergency service. The voice-over commentary mentions – in what could be a quote from the book by Joe Connelly, a former worker in such a service, which inspired the script – that only in 10% of cases the interventions save the lives of those in danger. Fred hasn’t saved anyone in months. He is haunted by the ghosts of those he could not save, and in particular by that of a young woman named Rose. He is exhausted physically and especially mentally. Every night he encounters the same kind of cases and sometimes the same people: victims of violent crimes, serial suicides, people under the influence of older or newer drugs. One night, he saves an elderly man who returns from clinical death, resuscitated but with impaired brain functions. Fred meets his daughter and through her a part of the world of drug dealers. It is an opportunity for introspection and perhaps self-rescue. Would our hero find the motivation to continue to work in such a destructive job and a meaning not only for the profession but for life in general?
Scorsese relishes filming in the environment he knows best and loves – the streets of New York. The city is not only a background, it is also a character in the film, it is the container of all the happenings and sufferings. The director also introduces us behind the scenes of the emergency service and in the world of hospitals where suffering from all categories is encountered: sick, drug addicts, victims of street and city violence. The role in this film is considered one of the best of Nicolas Cage‘s career (including by himself), excellent for bringing to the screen the dilemmas and sufferings of the man haunted by the images of the dead and by his own failures to save them. Patricia Arquette is his partner and adds her personal hell to the traumas of the film’s heroes. Will the two find support in each other? The music is composed and chosen by Elmer Bernstein, also known as Bernstein-West to differentiate him from (Leonard) Bernstein-East, to whom he was not related. Same as in many of Scorsese‘s films, even in the non-musical ones, the soundtrack is superb, with a fine combination of classic rock and jazz. Acting, atmosphere, the intensity of the feelings and the merciless perspective of the ‘mean streets’ created by Scorsese fully justifies the interest in watching ‘Bringing Out the Dead‘ even at its age of 25.
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi is a film director who does not make life easy for the viewers of his films. After seeing his previous film, ‘Drive My Car’ (2021), which enjoyed international success, including an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and three other Academy nominations, I made it a point not to miss his next films. I confess that ‘Evil Does Not Exist‘ (2023 – the original title is ‘Aku wa sonzai shinai‘) confused me. ‘Drive My Car’ was a complex film about art, mourning, human communication, whose main challenge (in my opinion) was its 3-hour duration. ‘Evil Does Not Exist‘ is apparently a simpler film in terms of theme, dealing with the relationship between man and nature, presenting the simple life of a small rural community faced with aggressive capitalism. The beautiful moments are not lacking here either, but paradoxically, the 106 minutes of this recent film seemed to me less coherent and including more moments lacking emotion than the previous film which was almost twice as long. Add to that a more-than-enigmatic ending, and perhaps you begin to understand the reasons for my confusion.
It is not, however, at least on the surface, a very complicated story. The film has four parts. In the first part we get to know the life of a small community at the feet of the mountains (I think we even see Mount Fuji in the background a few times) which, although it is only 2-3 hours driving from Tokyo, leads a simple life, close to an unpolluted nature. Everything is filmed at a very slow pace, like that of nature and people’s lives. Among the villagers, the camera focuses more on Takumi, the man who cuts wood and supplies his neighbors with clean water from the mountain rivers, and his daughter, Hana, who is about 10 years old. In the second part of the film the rhythm and style change. We watch a meeting between the inhabitants of the village and two representatives (a man and a woman) of a company from Tokyo that intends to build a ‘glamping’ (glamorous camping) tourist attraction in the area as a place of recreation for the company’s employees. However, the construction will affect the quality of life of the residents. There is the danger of water pollution and fire hazards. In the third part the pace accelerates even more. A video conference is held at the firm’s Tokyo headquarters where the General Manager and the project’s consultant discuss ways to meet or skip the residents’ demands without missing the deadline for the start of the project, which is financed by a post-pandemic fund. The man and woman are sent back to try to bribe Takumi by offering him to be a ‘consultant’ on the project. On the way, the two chat – a bit in the style of ‘Drive My Car’ – and seem to have been captivated by the quieter and uncorrupted lifestyle of the village. I prefer not to write too much about the last part. I’ll just say that it veers towards ‘horror’ and is a prelude to an enigmatic ending worth discussing separately after you see the film.
The story seems simple, but it has many layers. Each of the four parts has its own rhythm and the composition is not unlike that of a symphony, with different tempos of each movement. The comparison to musical structure is more than a metaphor. This film started from the music of Eiko Ishibashi, who is also mentioned as the co-author of the script. Ryûsuke Hamaguchi began shooting for a video film to illustrate his music, which in turn was inspired by nature and village life. As the film emerged and developed, the idea of a fictional film was introduced, adding the corporate counterpoint which forms the core of the conflict. Clean water and innocent animals, which are never aggressive unless they are injured, can be seen as metaphors for a way of life threatened by urban and capitalist expansion. The actors are perfect and seem to be playing their roles from life, which is probably what many of them are doing. Ryûsuke Hamaguchi draws his viewers into a narrative that seems simple but hides many symbols and ends unexpectedly and enigmatically. Parts of the film charmed me, nature is filmed with sensitivity and expressiveness, but others left me with many question marks. ‘Evil Does Not Exist‘ is a film that deserves to be seen, but viewers should be warned that they will watch an unconventional film. The ending – unusual as well and contradicting the title – is also an invitation to discussion.
‘Les mariés de l’an deux‘ made in 1971 and directed by Jean-Paul Rappeneau is an example of what in the 60s and 70s was a combination of period films and crowd-pleasers. They say that ‘they don’t make movies like this anymore’, although I’m not sure that statement is very accurate. I think entertaining films with a historical background are still being made , but what is lacking is perhaps respectful care for historical details. Even if the adventures that take place on the screen cross the line between the possible and the impossible, “Les mariés de l’an deux” is absolutely believable in everything regarding the historical background. As the viewing of this film came for me two days after I had seen Ridley Scott’s ‘Napoleon’, the comparison was inevitable – keeping all proportions of course. Rappeneau‘s movie is also known in the English-speaking markets as ‘The Swashbuckler‘.
The entire film is built around its lead star – Jean-Paul Belmondo. The actor plays the role of Nicolas Philibert, an adventurer who is exiled to America because he had killed in a duel an aristocrat who was flirting with his wife. He makes a fortune there, is about to marry the daughter of a very rich man, but first he has to get a French divorce certificate. He returns to France for this purpose and finds himself in the violent mess of the years after the French Revolution. He finds his wife (who had declared herself a widow and was also about to marry a royalist rebel) and the flame of love between the two is lit again. For the nearly 100 minutes of the film’s duration, Belmondo runs, rides, shoots pistols and rifles, duels with swords and fights with fists, falls from heights and swims in the sea, courts and kisses women. He only stops when he’s drugged and put to sleep, and not even then completely. The film begins with a prophecy made to the two future husbands in their childhood by a gypsy woman they met in a forest glade and ends in the Napoleonic period with the fulfillment of the prophecy, but not exactly the way the heroes expected.
In addition to the formidable Belmondo, we have Marie Jobert with her familiar charm in the somewhat thin role of the wife, and a bunch of actors who build the human landscape of France at the time – revolutionaries and royalists, loyal friends and abject traitors, and especially beautiful women. One of the actresses is Laura Antonelli, who would become Belmondo‘s life partner for the next decade. I also noted Sami Frey, an actor I like a lot who had appeared in some of the important films of the new wave, the excellent comedian Julien Guiomar and Pierre Brasseur in one of his last roles. The action scenes are very well directed, the costumes and characters are authentic, and the whole production has rhythm and humor. The cinematography belongs to Claude Renoir, already then a veteran of French cinema, the nephew of the famous director Jean Renoir with whom he had collaborated decades ago. Michel Legrand‘s music accompanies everything and contributes to the gallant carnival atmosphere. ‘Les mariés de l’an deux‘ is good entertainment that stands the test of time.
“The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover” concludes the series of films made by Peter Greenaway in the 80s and is probably the best of them all. None of the previous films written and directed by the painter-turned-filmmaker can be easily forgotten by most viewers who dared to watch them. “The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover” is, however, the one that can make us forget the others. Like most really good movies, this one can be watched and interpreted on many levels, and it can stick in the memory in many ways. It’s a bleak horror comedy about a cook, a thief, his wife and her lover. It is a sophisticated story in the baroque and decadent setting of a restaurant and its labyrinthine kitchen reminiscent of an alchemist’s workshop. It is an art film designed by multimedia artists with vast knowledge of art and music. It’s a political film about 1980s England. It’s a film about food and gluttony, sex and death. It’s close to pornography. It’s a decadent masterpiece by Peter Greenaway.
The film starts with a curtain opening and ends with another curtain closing to suggest to the audience that they are witnessing a performance in which it is not prudent to get involved. Mob boss Albert Spica has just purchased or perhaps violently taken over the luxury restaurant “La Hollandaise” run by French chef Richard. He comes every night with his band of thugs and his beautiful wife Georgina. Albert is a vulgar brat who behaves violently and bullies everyone including the staff and customers of the place and Georgina. The woman gets bored and starts exchanging languid glances with a man eating alone at another table with a stack of books he’s reading from. We will learn that the man’s name is Michael. One evening later, Michael and Georgina meet in the restaurant toilet for a party of passionate sex, followed by other similar encounters in the following evenings, in the kitchen, with Richard’s complicity. When Albert discovers what is going on, his reaction is terrible. So will be the reaction to the reaction.
As in all the films of that period in the creation of Peter Greenaway, the cinematography and the soundtrack play very important roles. The cinematography belongs to Sacha Vierny who composes real paintings with references to the works of the Flemish masters. There’s a lot of sex and food in this movie, constantly bordering on violence and death, and it’s all shot with much voluptuousness. As in other Greenaway films, there is a virtual instrument that marks time. In this case this role is played by the menus of the day at the high-class restaurant. The music is composed by Michael Nyman who incorporated, among other things, arrangements of Henry Purcell’s music and his own composition ‘Memorial’ from 1985, dedicated to the victims of the catastrophe at the stadium of the Liverpool football team. The quartet of leading roles is played by four actors who were already established names when they took the risk of acting in this film. Helen Mirren is the best known today, as her career continued to skyrocket in the decades that followed. Michael Gambon and Alan Howard were also well-known actors in England, including big roles in the most serious versions of Shakespeare’s plays, while Richard Bohringer was a rising actor in French cinema who had already worked with Truffaut and Lelouch. The viewing of “The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover” ends with the feeling that we have witnessed a wonderful, disturbing and complex creation, and that a second or more viewings are necessary to decipher and savor all its poisoned secrets.
A few films ago I shared some thoughts about that category of directors who have reached the age, maturity, celebrity and financial independence where they have nothing left to prove or conquer, and who can afford to make almost any film project they want. Ridley Scott also belongs to this category, along with Wim Wenders and Martin Scorsese, whose films I have seen recently. Like them, he doesn’t seem to have any thoughts of retiring or slowing down. ‘Napoleon‘ (2023) is a grand undertaking, and a sequel to ‘Gladiator’ is already in production. I confess that I came to the viewing with quite a few apprehensions inspired by the negative echoes of various kinds related to this film that reached me and that I hoped that they would be disproved. Unfortunately, for the most part, the fears turned out to be justified. ‘Napoleon‘ is a lavish production, in which a lot of money and talent have been invested, but which proves, for the most part, to lack coherence and emotion.
Napoleon may be too big a personality for one movie. Stanley Kubrick might have made the great Napoleon film, but death put an end to his plans, and his script is now being developed by Steven Spielberg into a multi-hour television series. Ridley Scott‘s ‘Napoleon‘ also has, by the way, in the streaming version, about four hours of duration. I viewed the version distributed in cinemas, cut to a little longer than two and a half hours, a duration which today is considered the ‘norm’. The story follows Napoleon from the Terror period after the French Revolution to his exile and death on the island of Saint Helena. We follow his political rise, greatness and fall, and follow him in some of the battles that established him as one of the greatest military leaders in history. However, all these are collateral narratives for the main thread which is the love story between Napoleon and Joséphine de Beauharnais, who became Joséphine Bonaparte, his first wife and his only great love, according to the script but also the accounts and documents of the era.
In my opinion, historical liberties are allowed in fiction films, including biopics. History is learned from books or museums, not from movies. Screenwriters can take whatever liberties they want and feel that serve the artistic truth of the film. For example, the opening scene of ‘Napoleon‘ shows Captain Bonaparte witnessing the execution of Queen Marie-Antoinette. It is not an authentically historical scene, but the idea of the Napoleonic demarcation from the tumultuous period of the French Revolution is well served. So I don’t mind the many other liberties that the script of this film allowed itself, abundantly signaled in the comments of connoisseurs in the details of French history. However, the general impression is one of superficiality and recourse to anecdotes, especially regarding the description of the other sovereigns of Europe from that period. The emperors of Austria and Russia are rather caricatures. Too many other characters appear for a scene and disappear, and even those with whom the script was more generous are sketchy. The writers apparently relied on viewers’ general cultural knowledge to fill in what the film doesn’t say about historical figures like Talleyrand or the Duke of Wellington. The scenes on the battlefields are the most successful in the film, in my opinion, from the bloody description of the victory at Toulon to the disaster (for Napoleon) at Waterloo – detailed, spectacular, clear, with an almost naturalistic realism, which reproduces the historical landscape as well as the pain and cruelty of the battles. The main line of the film – the love story between Napoleon and Joséphine is the one that disappointed me. Right here, for the first time in a while, it seemed to me that Joaquin Phoenix did not create an extraordinary role. The rough manners and impulsive nature attributed to Napoleon seemed to me exaggerated. After all, the character was not a sergeant but an army general and descended from a family of small Italian nobles. Vanessa Kirby is, on the other hand, a revelation. The actress manages to convince that she dominates the relationship from a sentimental point of view. The problem is again with the script. For example, I do not understand why, if she was presented in counterpoint to Napoleon, the role of patron of the arts played by Empress Joséphine was not mentioned. It was she who transformed many of the palaces of French power into artistic centers and future museums open to the public. At the end of the day, in short, the love between Napoleon and Joséphine which should have been the emotional axis of the film left me cold. History says that the name of the empress was the last word uttered by Napoleon on his deathbed. The fact is mentioned, in writing, after the last scene of the film. Uncinematic and too late to resuscitate the viewers’ emotion.
Helma Sanders-Brahms is one of the most important filmmakers of the New German Cinema of the 70-80s. Her name is lesser known than that of some of her generation colleagues such as Reiner Werner Fassbinder, Win Wenders, Werner Herzog or Margarethe von Trotta, but it would have been enough to have made only ‘Deutschland Bleiche Mutter‘ (1980 – distributed on the English language market as ‘Germany Pale Mother’) to recognize her value and contribution. It is one of the most lucid and critical of the films that looks back with anger at Germany’s Nazi past and the immediate post-war period. The personal involvement makes it even more authentic and human.
‘Deutschland Bleiche Mutter‘ is more than an auteur film. Helma Sanders-Brahms not only wrote the scrupt and directed the film, but also developed in it events and characters from the history of her own family, including the story of love, war and hatred of her own parents. The story begins in the year before the outbreak of the Second World War. Hans and Helene are two young Germans who, somehow, had not been drawn into the fanaticism that had contaminated most of the people around them. They meet and live a beautiful and banal love story. Immediately after the marriage, perhaps because he is not a member of the Nazi party, Hans is called to arms and sent to the front. He is sent first to Poland, then to France and at the end of the war to Greece. Hans and Helene will meet twice more before the end of the war, and on one of these occasions their baby girl is conceived. Hans is far away at the front, a witness and perhaps an accomplice to the horrors taking place there. Helene, like millions of German women, must fight to survive with her little girl. Their house is destroyed by bombings, they take refuge first in Berlin and then in the countryside, they wander through the devastation of an increasingly destroyed Germany, she is raped and ends up robbing corpses. Luck helps both Helene and Hans to survive, but life after the war is not easy either. The traumas changed both of them for good – physically but especially psychologically. Love died out, suspicions, mistrust, frustrations for the interrupted destinies took its place. A new Germany is reborn around, in which the former Nazis are forgiven and they are also the ones who advance socially and economically.
‘Deutschland Bleiche Mutter‘ is not a film about the Holocaust or the horrors of war. The perspective is that of the Germans who did not commit crimes but did not resist either. Hans and Helene are not heroes but rather passive witnesses to what is going on around them. In such times, however, their attempt to be indifferent and live their lives has no chance of success. Helene assists without intervening in the violent persecution of her Jewish neighbors, Hans is a witness and perhaps also an executor of war crimes. Their survival is physical, but the humanity in them is largely destroyed. Helene suffers facial paralysis, half of her cheek is deformed and hides it with a black veil. We can interpret this detail of the heroine’s biography as a metaphor for the divided Germany after the war, with part of the country remaining behind the Iron Curtain. The performance of the two actors in the lead roles – Eva Mattes and Ernst Jacobi – is exceptional. Director Helma Sanders-Brahms combines filmed scenes with sequences from film archives and audio recordings to accurately reproduce the atmosphere of Germany before, during and especially after the war. There is no lack of very hard, almost cruel scenes – but so was the fate of the heroes in the film. Bertold Brecht’s poem, read at the beginning and from which the film’s title is taken, puts the whole story in context. Powerful and impressive, ‘Deutschland Bleiche Mutter‘ is a blunt and somber cinematic retrospective of a tragic period in German history.
În articolul de astăzi al rubricii CHANGE.WORLD vom discuta despre Timp. Progresele recente și construcțiile intelectuale îndrăznețe propuse în ultimii ani de fizicieni și cosmologi par a face mai apropiată și mai reală posibilitatea călătoriilor în timp. Vom discuta despre acestea și despre paradoxurile științifice și filosofice pe care le creează transformarea unor asemenea ipoteze în realitate. Imaginația oamenilor de știință și a creatorilor de SF par să se afle într-o permanentă concurență inclusiv în acest domeniu, și voi povesti și despre un film văzut recent și care oferă – cu umor englezesc – un ‘FAQ (frequently asked questions) despre călătoria în timp’. Gândiți-vă: dacă într-adevăr călătoria în timp este posibilă, atunci este foarte plauzibil că deja am fost sau suntem acum vizitați din viitor. Adevăr sau fantezie?
Voi începe însă cu un omagiu. Pe 17 ianuarie 2024 a încetat din viață David Mills, profesor și cercetător la Universitatea din Delaware, unul dintre pionierii Internetului și cel care a pus bazele măsurării timpului și sincronizării calculatoarelor și aparatelor legate la Internet. În anii ’70, în timp ce contribuia la construcția rețelei ARPANET (precursorul Internetului), Mills a identificat pentru prima dată nevoia de sincronizare a timpului în rețelele de calculatoare. Mills a propus o soluție solidă și viabilă până astăzi, care reușește să rezolve problema sincronizării timpului pe aparate legate la segmente de rețea cu viteze de propagare variabile. Soluția sa a aliniat computerele din toată lumea la aceeași referință de timp, cu o deviere inițială de cel mult câteva zeci de milisecunde. Standardul creat de el se numește Network Time Protocol (NTP) și este în funcțiune din 1985, unul dintre cele mai vechi standarde operaționale ale Internetului. NTP – perfecționat de-a lungul anilor – operează acum pe miliarde de dispozitive din întreaga lume, coordonând timpul pe fiecare continent, și a devenit o piatră de temelie a infrastructurii digitale moderne. A fost o personalitate remarcabilă atât prin profunzimea gândirii tehnice, cât și prin calitatea umană. Fie-i amintirea binecuvântată!
Teoria relativității generalizate a lui Einstein este de un secol încoace structura de rezistență a edificiului fizicii moderne. Din 1905, experimente complexe și modele matematice sofisticate s-au străduit să o confirme sau să o conteste. Progresele spectaculoase ale mecanicii cuantice, domeniu al fizicii pentru care Albert Einstein manifesta o doză sănătoasă de scepticism, par și ele să se armonizeze cu viziunea lui Einstein. Cartea cosmologului belgian Thomas Hertog On the Origin of Time. Steven Hawking’s Final Theory, apărută în aprilie 2023, oferă o revizuire dramatică a teoriei lui Hawking despre originile Universului, propunând un model conform căruia legile fizicii nu sunt nici fixe și nici eterne, ci se nasc și evoluează pe măsură ce universul pe care îl guvernează prinde contur. Universul nostru poate fi unul dintre mulțimile de universuri paralele, cu legi ale fizicii similare sau diferite. Cel puțin aici însă, teoria relativității generalizate funcționează. Călătoria în timp, în special cea spre viitor, este perfect încadrată în acest univers. Einstein însuși a abordat această problemă în articolele, cursurile și discuțiile documentate de studenții și colaboratorii săi. În modelul propus în 1905, timpul și spațiul sunt unite ca o țesătură cu patru dimensiuni cunoscută sub numele de spațiu-timp. Contraintuitiv? Și mai ciudat este conceptul că atât spațiul, cât și timpul se deformează pe măsură ce masa sau viteza cresc. Pentru cel care călătorește repede, timpul se mișcă mai încet. Crescând masa într-un anumit punct (de exemplu, prin comprimare), se va obține un efect similar. Fenomenul a fost deja dovedit experimental, deși la scară mică. În 1975, Carol Allie de la Universitatea din Maryland a sincronizat două ceasuri atomice și l-a așezat pe unul pe un avion care a zburat timp de câteva ore, iar pe celălalt l-a lăsat pe Pământ. Când ceasul aeropurtat s-a întors pe Pământ, ea i-a comparat ora cu cea a ceasului care nu se mișcase și a constatat că timpul se mișcase cu o fracțiune de secundă mai încet pentru ceasul de la bordul avionului.
Dar călătoria în trecut? Conform celor mai acceptate ipoteze, călătoria înapoi în timp nu este posibilă. Și totuși, unele mașini ipotetice, cum ar fi cilindrii Tipler, ar putea permite fenomenul. Frank Jennings Tipler (născut pe 1 februarie 1947) este un fizician, matematician și cosmolog american, care deține o catedră dublă în Departamentele de Matematică și Fizică de la Universitatea Tulane din statul american Louisiana. Tipler a scris cărți și lucrări despre punctul Omega, bazate pe ideile religioase ale teologului Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, despre care el susține că este un mecanism pentru învierea morților. Criticii săi susțin că teoriile lui sunt în mare parte pseudoștiință. Ce sunt cilindrii Tipler? Este vorba despre cilindri care se rotesc cu viteze apropiate de cea a luminii, și care la suprafața lor produc un efect oarecum similar cu refracția, care ar putea arunca razele de lumină în trecut pe axa timpului. Există probleme majore cu această teorie, pe care Hawking o consideră ne-realizabilă practic într-un univers în care există doar energie finită și pozitivă. Într-un spațiu cu mai mult de patru dimensiuni, posibil cel puțin din punct de vedere matematic, sau în versiunea multiversurilor a cărei posibilitate a fost deschisă de fizica cuantică, lucrurile stau însă altfel. Dacă portalurile dintre multiversuri sunt posibile, atunci este posibilă și trecerea într-un univers paralel care să fie o versiune trecută a celui în care trăim. Călătoria în trecut este sursa celor mai interesante paradoxuri temporale – probleme care combină logica și fizica, punând sub semnul întrebării cauzalitatea, care este unul dintre principiile de baza ale sistemului nostru de gândire. Unul dintre exemplele cele mai populare este ‘paradoxul bunicului’: călătorind în trecut și intervenind în procrearea strămoșilor (cum ar fi prin provocarea morții unui strămoș direct înainte de conceperea urmașilor), un călător în timp modifică astfel evenimentul propriei sale nașteri. Dacă însă călătorul în timp nu s-ar fi născut, atunci nu ar fi posibil ca el să întreprindă această acțiune. O variantă a ‘paradoxului bunicului’ este cel al ‘paradoxului uciderii dictatorului’. Să zicem că un erou bine intenționat din viitor își folosește puterile pentru a călători în trecut și a-i asasina pe Hitler sau pe Stalin, încercând să prevină orori precum Holocaustul și Gulagul. Consecințele unui astfel de act pot fi diferite, dar nu în sensul dorit de erou. Într-un scenariu pesimist, genocidurile se întâmplă totuși, căci dictatorii au fost doar vârful unei structuri care, chiar decapitată, are puterea să se regenereze. Multe romane și filme SF dezvoltă principiul conform căruia ‘istoria nu poate fi schimbată’. În scenariul optimist, istoria este cruțată de aceste episoade întunecate, dar atunci acțiunea eroului se dovedește a nu mai fi necesară.
‘Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel’ este un film care se joacă exact cu ideea paradoxurilor temporale produse de călătoriile în timp. Filmul a fost produs în 2009 de BBC în colaborare cu studiourile americane HBO – o combinație între soliditatea tradițională britanică și industria de divertisment prin streaming care abia decola în acea perioadă. Filmul este scris de Jamie Mathieson, autor al scenariilor unor filme și seriale (majoritatea SF) de succes, iar regia îi aparține lui Gareth Carriwick, regizor de talent care, din păcate, avea să moară de leucemie un an mai târziu, acesta fiind ultimul său film. Acțiunea se petrece într-un pub englezesc. Eroii, lucrători într-un parc de distracții și fani pasionați de science-fiction, ieșiți la o bere (sau mai multe) după ce unul dintre ei fusese concediat, se trezesc implicați într-o enigmă de călătorie în timp. Povestea este declanșată de întâlnirea cu Cassie, o fată venită dintr-un viitor în care călătoria în timp este posibilă și care are ca profesie repararea scurgerilor de timp. Cassie îi previne de pericolul pe care îl prezintă pentru ei ‘editorii’, alți călători în timp care au obiceiul să-i ucidă pe scriitorii sau artiștii de talent, după ce aceștia au creat capodoperele vieților lor, pentru a preveni lucrările următoare, mai puțin reușite. Or unul dintre eroi, care visează să devină scriitor SF, chiar va deveni faimos în viitor, deci este o victimă potențială. Lucrurile nu se petrec exact după plan. Cassie, tehniciana care repară scurgerile de timp, este în perioada de probă și nu a avut timp să citească chiar tot manualul, iar portalul care face legătura dintre lumi se află în … toaleta bărbaților din pub. Câteva salturi în timp mai târziu, eroii vor avea ocazia să se fi confruntat cu paradoxurile temporale menționate mai sus și cu altele mai periculoase.
Tema este prelucrată cu umor tipic englezesc, una dintre metodele care compensează lipsa unui buget semnificativ, care să permită decoruri fastuoase sau efecte speciale spectaculoase. Cea mai mare parte din acțiune se petrece în două camere: pub-ul și toaleta acestuia. Echipa de actori englezi are o prestație simpatică, specifică multora dintre comediile TV englezești. Singura figură mai familiară din distribuție este actrița americană Anna Faris, cunoscută din câteva filme horror. De ce americană? Deoarece ‘în viitor toată lumea va vorbi engleza cu accent american’! Filmul, presărat cu aluzii și glume legate de istoria literaturii și filmelor SF, trebuie căutat astăzi pe platformele de streaming sau în retrospectivele festivalurilor dedicate acestui gen. Cei care vor reuși să-l găsească și să-l vadă nu vor regreta.
(Articolul a apărut iniţial în revista culturală ‘Literatura de Azi’ – http://literaturadeazi.ro/)
Todd Haynes‘ ‘Far from Heaven‘ (2002) is a bold and highly successful stylistic and thematic exercise. From the beginning of the film, from the opening credits, you have the impression as a viewer that you are watching an American film from the 50s that is either very well preserved or excellently restored. There were several sources of inspiration, but the main one is the social melodrama ‘All the Heaven Allows’ directed in 1955 by Douglas Sink. That film, which starred Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson, tackled one of the moral taboos of the era – relationships between mature women and much younger men. However, Todd Haynes, who is also the author of the screenplay, uses the style of narration and filming of that period to address two other taboos of the society of the 1950s, which American cinema had not yet dared to attack by that time: interracial love affairs and homosexual relationships. Not only does Haynes bring both themes into the same story, he does more – he brings them into the same marriage. He does not, however, do so from the perspective of the 45 years that have passed since the events described in the film, nor does he introduce any lessons learned from the civil rights revolution of the ’60s or the revolution of acceptance of homosexuality that would take place about a decade later. He films as if he were a 1950s director who dared approach the themes. The authenticity effect is overwhelming.
The story begins in the fall of 1957 and takes place in the city of Hartford, Connecticut. The couple Frank and Cathy Whitaker seem like model American success story in that decade of economic prosperity after World War II. Frank works as head of advertising at a prosperous firm and earns well enough to have a nice house with maids and for Cathy to be able to stay at home and devote her time to raising her two children and socializing with other women of the same bed well-off social. Behind the appearances, however, a secret is hidden. Frank is gay and he has a tough time hiding his preferences, starts risking visits to gay bars and even has an affair at work. The marriage goes into crisis when Cathy discovers the situation and Franl decides to resort to a ‘treatment’ to ‘fix’ what was still considered an illness at the time. The ‘treatment’ doesn’t quite work, Frank is confused and becomes violent. The desperate Cathy finds support and platonic solace in her friendship with Raymond, a widowed African-American gardener and father of a little girl. Inter-racial relations, even at social level, are a taboo at least as unaccepted by the mentality of those times as gay relations and a much more visible one. Both communities in the city – that of the whites and that of the blacks – reject them. Segregation is not only legal (laws that would change in the next decade), but also or especially in the mentality. Although Cathy and Raymond had committed no infidelity, the very fact that they were meeting and socializing in public condemns them to ostracism. Under this pressure of prejudice, neither the marriage nor the bond forged against the conventions have much chance of survival.
Todd Haynes carefully studied and brought back to work some of the tools in the arsenal of filmmakers from the decade in which the story takes place. To faithfully recreate the film colors of the era, Haynes, along with his faithful collaborator, cinematographer Edward Lachman, used the film and lighting from the studios of the period. The action begins in autumn and the foliage colors are combined with the red and green of the ladies’ dresses for an idyllic symphony of colors. As we progress through the story, the more garish colors and the darker corners of the city appear. The chill of winter is interrupted only by the heroes’ New Year’s vacation filmed under the warm Florida sun. In the ending, which takes place in the spring, flower buds appear on the trees, but the future is uncertain. For the film’s soundtrack, Haynes chose to collaborate with Elmer Bernstein, a composer with half a century of experience who had already been active writing film music during the period the story takes place. It would be his last collaboration on a feature film. The role of Cathy Whitaker is played by Julianne Moore. This is, I think, one of the best roles of her career, a complex role of a woman whose world collapses under the pressure of the events and prejudices around her, a woman who tries to cope with dignity with the situation and save her family while keeping her own integrity and who pays a huge price for this. Unfortunately, the roles of the two men in Cathy’s life are less well-defined, although each represents a complex and equally interesting case. Dennis Quaid and Dennis Haysbert both act well, but I was left with the impression that their two characters are not sufficiently explored. The final is far from a happy ending. For each of the three heroes, the fight is just beginning.
Some of the most interesting films I’ve seen lately come from directors who have nothing left to prove. Wim Wenders is one of them. He will be 79 this year and has made films like ‘Wings of Desire’ and ‘Paris, Texas’. He can probably get financing for whatever movies he wants, or maybe he even has enough resources to finance himself whatever dream or fantasy he wants to bring to the screen. Thoughts of retiring seem distant or non-existent to him. In the last 10 years he has added 18 titles to his filmography: short and feature films, fiction and documentaries, music videos of the music he loves and films about the visual artists he admires. Not only does Wenders seem like he has no intention of stopping, he’s always on the lookout, rejects clichés and the beaten path, and always has something interesting to say and something new to experience. ‘Perfect Days‘ is a tribute to Japan by an artist who deeply loves and respects this country, its people and its culture. It is a wonderful film about loneliness and about simple and sometimes invisible people, with a deeply human message: the world is made up of as many worlds as there are people, and everyone has their place under the sun and their life worth living. The film has already received several awards, but I think the most significant of them is the decision to be chosen to represent Japan at the Academy Awards this year. It is, I believe, a confirmation that the Japanese themselves had a great opinion about the quality and sensibility of the film according to their own criteria. It doesn’t even matter much whether the film wins the Oscar or not.
The original scriot is written by Wenders along with Takuma Takasaki. Hirayama, the main hero of the film, is an aging man who works in the cleaning service of public toilets in Tokyo. Anyone who has visited Japan knows how impressively clean Japanese toilets are. Their maintenance should therefore also be an honorable job. We follow Hirayama’s daily routine: he wakes up in his modest studio apartment in the big metropolis, rolls up his mattress that most Japanese people traditionally sleep on, brushes his teeth and trims his moustache, goes out into the street and looks up at the sky to see what the weather is like, buys an iced coffee from a vending machine, gets into his car old enough to be equipped with a tape player, and goes to work. The day’s work routine is interrupted by a break in which he rests in a park, eats a sandwich, looks at the people and especially at the trees that he photographs. He uses a film camera, seems to be a fan of decades-old devices, and listens to music on a cassette player, like the one I used to when I was a teenager many decades ago. His musical tastes are also retro – pop hits of the 60s and 70s. When he finishes work he goes to the public bath and then to a street restaurant. Always the same public bath, always the same restaurant. In the evenings, he reads novels by Faulkner or Patricia Highsmith in second-hand paperback editions bought for 100 yen. Life flows with small joys caused by details sought in nature or fleeting connections with those around, usually no more than glances or greetings. Events happen. A young co-worker asks for his help in winning over a girl, who in the end seems more interested in Hirayama’s music. His niece runs away from home and takes refuge with him for a few days, an opportunity to reunite after many years with his sister, a woman rich enough to afford a chauffeured limousine. In the bar where he drinks a glass of something stronger each weekend, the owner sings a Japanese version of ‘House of the Rising Sun’. Hirayama speaks little, but radiates empathy and a smile that will win all viewers towards the end.
One could say that ‘Perfect Days‘ is a film without a story, but how exciting it is for the viewers to watch what is happening on the screen! Every detail is studied and placed in its place, as happens in Japanese interiors or parks. The characters in ‘Perfect Days‘ are lonely people but their loneliness has a thousand shades, all rendered with discretion and thoroughness. Tokyo, the city that seems overwhelming to most tourists, is beautifully filmed and brought back to human dimensions. The music is great, but I’m being subjective here, as it’s the music of my generation. Wenders describes here that territory of intersection between Japanese and Anglo-American culture, which I observed in many Japanese colleagues when I visited Japan. About the acting creation of Koji Yakusho, I can only say that the fact that he is not nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor seems scandalous to me. Good thing at least he was recognized and awarded at Cannes! ‘Perfect Days‘ is for me, so far, the best film of the year. I think it’s also one of those movies that holds up well and really grows in time.
