WORD

outlier [out-lahy-er] n. 1. a person or thing that lies outside 2. a person residing outside the place of his or her business, duty, etc 3. Geology. a part of a formation left detached through the removal of surrounding parts by erosion

BIRTHDAY

Jonathan Swift (1667), Mark Twain (1835), Lord Frederick Cavendish (1836), Richard Crenna (1926), Robert Guillaume (1927), Dick Clark (1929), G. Gordon Liddy (1930), Abbie Hoffman (1936), Ridley Scott (1937), Terrence Malick (1943), David Mamet (1947), Mandy Patinkin (1952), Billy Idol (1955), Bo Jackson (1962), Ben Stiller (1965), Clay Aiken (1978), Gael García Bernal (1978)

STANDPOINT

Several years ago, when the reality-television craze began kicking its ugly way into our living rooms, I boldly declared, “This won’t last. It’s a fad. It’ll go away.”

Man, was I wrong.

It has lasted. It’s not a fad. And it refuses to go away. As a matter of fact, it’s continuing to grow. From what I can tell, it’s also making society as a whole dumber. So, of course, that fascinates me.

First off, let me say I don’t think all reality-television is bad. Some of it’s actually worthwhile. Top Chef, The Amazing Race, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Those are some I’ve watched without becoming agitated. And that’s inasmuch as those shows are chronicling individuals doing things I can’t (or won’t) do.

For example, Top Chef. I’ve worked in the restaurtant business for almost two decades, in both the front- and back-of-the-house. I’m no chef, but I know my way around a kitchen. Basically, I can make food people like, but not necessarily rave about. So, when I watch Top Chef, I’m entertained because I’m watching individuals do something I can’t, something I find extraordinary. To me, that’s interesting.

In contrast, when I view programs like Big Brother, The Real World, or The Real Housewives of Atlanta, all I see are a group of unexceptional individuals supposedly living lives we’re expected to perceive as somehow “real.” But it’s not at all. Just a collection of nitwits trying to outsmart one another while simultaneously positioning themselves for more camera time.

From the little I’ve seen of Big Brother, it’s never failed to confuse me. Besides the participants, none of which I feed redeemable, and the events, few of which aren’t orchestrated, being actual, what the fuck is so real about it? The answer is exactly none of it. Everyone in the house has a motive. The producers stage events that, without prodding, would never come about. All the footage gets edited to death so the true sequence is lost. To me, that’s uninteresting.

What truly sucks about all of this is that I’m apparently squarely in the minority. I’m relatively sure most of us find things capable of bothering us daily. Also, I was under the impression watching television was supposed to be fun and less bothersome than our daily routines.

If I’m wrong about all this, I’ll accept it. But, before you start popping off on how I’m completely wrong about reality television, I need you to answer the following question: If these shows are so enjoyable, why is it every single conversation I’ve ever heard about them is basically a discussion on which character is more annoying and why?

QUOTATION

This is what politics is to me: Somebody tells you all the trees on your street have a disease. One side says give them food and water and everything will be fine. One side says chop them down and burn them so they don’t infect another street. That’s politics. And I’m going, Who says they’re diseased? And how does this sickness manifest itself? And is this outside of a natural cycle? And who said this again? And when were they on the street? But we just have people who shout, “Chop it down and burn it” or “Give it food and water,” and there’s your two choices. Sorry, I’m not a believer. → John Malkovich

TUNE

MewithoutYou is a band from Philadelphia. That’s here. In Pennsylvania. I’ve heard them mentioned from time-to-time, and I think I may have seen the band live once but that might be entirely untrue. In any case, I was recently introduced to the video for “The Fox, The Crow and The Cookie,” and, to put it mildly, it’s pretty fuckin’ great. The song is solid but the whole concept and execution of the video is pretty unique and remarkable.  

CALLIMAUFRY

→ OK, so the whole Tiger Woods car accident thing. I have two questions. (1) Where was Woods going at 2:25am, the morning after Thanksgiving. (2) Why did the wife, after hearing the accident, decide to head out to investigate with a golf club? Woods is going to live to golf another day. He’s fine and that’s great. Truly. Still, everyone’s going to want to discover what really went down. The truth is no one besides Woods and his wife are ever going to know what happened. And, so far, it appears they’re not going to tell. Sadly, for everyone who’s dying to know, it’s bound to become one of those events marked for countless decades of endless speculation. When you’re a billionnaire, you can crash your car and not be expected to give some valid explanation.

→ Rush Limbaugh is America’s most influential conservative. Still, who cares?

→ No post tomorrow. If you’ve a problem with that, you’ll need to get in line behind my good friend Joe Taylor, who I’ve started affectionately calling “Boss-Man.” OK, I only did it once, but I plan on doing it again real soon.

I saw this movie when it first came out and thought it interesting but not much more. This may be because when initially released it was weighed down heavily by expectations with its star-studded cast and the fact that it was Terrence Malick’s first movie in twenty years. Perhaps this all warped my ability to watch this movie with an objective eye. Today I’m here to tell you that in my mind, this is one of the very best war movies ever made. It follows none of the regular conventions of the genre and is a very meditative take on war and it’s effect on the human psyche.

This may be lazy, but a good way to discuss what makes this movie so unique is to compare it to another successful WWII movie released around the same time: Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg’s was a visceral onslaught, completely immersing you in the intensity of battle from the moment the ramp of the landing craft goes down on Omaha Beach. It focuses on the more ‘noble’ part of WWII – the European theater. Though compelling, it does follow traditional plot format (intro, character exposition, conflict, climax, resolution, denouement) and wasn’t the most intellectually challenging movie. (Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fine film and is worthy of praise.)

The Thin Red Line, on the other hand, follows no traditional structure. It’s more free-form and doesn’t focus around any obvious conflict-resolution. It’s driven by revelatory flashbacks and inner dialogue, while the ugliness of battles are interspersed with scenes of incredible natural beauty. To me, that’s the central point Malick is trying to make but more on that later. This movie also takes place in the less-discussed and less-celebrated Pacific theater, one where the Japanese were willing to sacrifice their own lives simply to kill more enemy. (Much like our current quagmire in Afghanistan, but I digress.) Even when performing courageous acts, here the soldiers all look scared shitless.

The movie focuses mostly on Private Witt (Jim Caviezel), a rebellious type of soldier who draws the ire of his 1st Sgt (Sean Penn). Witt has seen another world within this one, a world of light and beauty. Penn’s character seemingly hates Witt’s perspective on life in addition to his soldiering. Witt though, loves Charlie Company. “They’re my people,” he explains. The other character who gets the most exploration is Private Bell (Ben Chaplin), a former officer who resigned his command because he couldn’t stand being separated from his wife, only to be sent to a frontline infantry unit as punishment for his action. Meanwhile the Battle of Guadalcanal awaits. And when the loading ramps lower for them, it opens with a bang. Actually, no. It opens with them being opposed by nothing but the tropical breeze (another way it differs from Private Ryan).

Charlie Company is commanded by Captain Staros (Elias Koteas), a quiet leader who cares about his men too much to send them to certain death without protest. (I’ve always felt Koteas to be an underrated commodity in the acting community.) Lt. Colonel Tall (Nick Nolte) has no tolerance for this approach. He’s hungry for glory and recognition, regardless of cost. Others in Charlie Company include characters played by John Cusack, Adrien Brody, John C. Reilly and Woody Harrelson. George Clooney and John Travolta also make cameos. (Like I said, this movie has A LOT of folks in it.)

I don’t want to get into too much of what happens. It’s the Battle of Guadalcanal and we all (hopefully) know how it ends and at what heavy human cost. But the historical results of battle are irrelevant here. The cost on the casualties and the survivors is what’s really explored here. The battle scenes are well done and includes more of the insanity that goes along with it. The scenes of Japanese soldiers praying or simply going insane mid-battle are truly eye opening.

But there’s a bigger picture here and it’s one that doesn’t fall directly out of any obvious themes of most war movies. Here, Malick seems to be making a statement on conflict as an inherent part of nature. War is not good or glorious and it is perhaps, unavoidable. What it’s survivors give up they can never get back. This is a long movie at almost three hours. But it was time spent that was paid back in full and then some. I couldn’t help but become completely enthralled by some of these characters. The demise of one nearly brought me to tears.

I give this movie an A-plus.

imdb | allmovie | wikipedia

I vividly remember the experience of sitting in a large, state-of-the-art theater in 1978, encountering this work, which seemed like the shotgun marriage of a Hollywood epic (in 70 mm!) with an avant-garde poem. Wordless (but never soundless) scenes flared up and were snatched away before the mind could fully grasp their plot import; what we could see did not always seem matched to what we could hear. Yes, there was another “couple on the run”—Richard Gere and Brooke Adams as the lovers Bill and Abby, he fleeing a murder he inadvertently committed working in a Chicago steel mill, she pretending to be his sister during the wheat harvest season in the Texas panhandle near the turn of the twentieth century—but this time, the filmmaker’s gaze upon them was not simply distant or ironic but positively cosmic. And there was so much more going on around these two characters, beyond even the dramatic triangle they formed with the melancholic figure of the dying farmer (Sam Shepard)—now the landscape truly moved from background to foreground, and the work that went on in it, the changes that the seasons wreaked upon it, the daily miracles of shifting natural light or the punctual catastrophes of fire or locust plague that took place . . . all this mattered as much, if not more, than the strictly human element of the film. –Adrian Martin, The Current

At the beginning, it is as though this is going to be a film about European immigrants in the early days of President Wilson’s presidency. Then it switches to the Texas Panhandle, where the buffalo roam and the deer and the antelope still play. Migrant workers, fleeing the big cities, help reap the wheat harvest of a young, wealthy farmer. There are all kinds of special effects, including a plague of locusts and a prairie fire. There is a romance, in which the girlfriend of a young worker, who poses as his sister, marries the farmer. What results is jealousy and murder.

But Days of Heaven never really makes up its mind what it wants to be. It ends up something between a Texas pastoral and Cavalleria Rusticana. Back of what basically is a conventional plot is all kinds of fancy, self-conscious cineaste techniques. The film proceeds in short takes: people seldom say more than two or three connected sentences. It might be described as the mosaic school of filmmaking as the camera and the action hop around, concentrating on a bit here, a bit there.

A young girl named Linda Manz—and a talented young lady she is—has a prominent part of the action. The voice-over that constantly runs through the film is hers; she comments on the action, something in the manner of a Greek chorus. The photography, beautiful as some of it is, is as self-conscious as the rest of the film. People are carefully arranged, frames are carefully composed; there are more silhouettes than in an old nickelodeon.

Anyway, the old cars, and the biplane and triplane in an airplane sequence are fun. –Harold C. Schonberg, The New York Times

>>buy the criterion DVD<<

or

get it from megaupload

Terrence Malick | 1973

It was a cinematic golden age, so much so that 1973 alone gave us Mean Streets, Day for Night, The Long Goodbye, Serpico, Papillon, The Exorcist, The Sting, Amarcord, The Spirit of the Beehive and Scenes from a Marriage. A repeat of such cinematic strength would make the Academy’s decision to revert to 10 best picture nominations significantly harder to oppose. Even among such company ‘Badlands’ holds its own, surprising considering this was Terrence Malick’s debut directorial feature.  This film introduced us to a few traits of Malick’s fantastic style (both visual and written) the first being his use of voice over. Too this day the technique is seldom used more effectively or beautifully than Sissy Spaceck’s V.O. in Badlands (in my opinion only Malick himself regularly uses V.O. as effectively). The second trait is his use of imagery (particularily nature) to supplement the performance driven shots in the film. He has continued to develop this technique using it with ever more frequency in his movies since Badlands. The third trait which Malick displays is his ability to tell an almost completely detached narrative, all judgement of the characters and their actions are left completely to the viewer. Again, this technique is seldom used with such effective results and it certainly reveals what a talent Malick is as both a writer and a director.

‘The Thin Red Line’ was actually the first Terrence Malick film I ever saw’. I vividly remember the experience of seeing that film in theatre, being awed by the visual and emotional aspects of it. When writing this blog I considered putting that film in place of this one but I chose Badlands because of when I saw it. You see, when I first encountered Malick I wasn’t prepared to appreciate his films as intended, he is the kind of director who’s movies should be viewed thoughtfully. As my interest in cinema grew I re-approached Malick with a different attitude and it was at that time when I rented Badlands.

I highly recommend this movie to anyone and if you are at all interested in cinema this is a must-see. The fact this is a directorial debut is absolutely staggering, one can only hope to achieve a film of this enormity at some point in their career.

«Sono pronta a cogliere ogni opportunità e ogni cambiamento che mi faccia sentire una donna, una pornostar e un’artista…Lotta Continua, Sasha Grey». Si firma proprio così, la giovane pornostar sul suo visitatissimo myspace. Quale lotta? Forse – come ha dichiarato in conferenza al Tribeca film festival dove in anteprima mondiale è stato presentato The girlfriend Experience – quella per uscire dal mondo dell’hard di cui al momento è una star indiscussa anche solo 21enne. Non è la prima volta che una pornostar finisce a Hollywood ma non sempre viene diretta da un regista premio Oscar.

L’attrice americana è stata voluta da Steven Soderbergh, che passa dall’icona rivoluzionaria del Che (bocciata dal pubblico) a quella dell’adult movie, trasportandola nel ruolo di una escort di nome Christine, una ragazza di 22 anni, bella, magra,esile, bruna (anzi brunette come recitano i tag dei portali porno). Mentre il suo boyfriend fa il personal trainer e guadagna 125 dollari l’ora, Christine ne guadagna 2000 e si adagia sul divano vestita con bustini fetish.

Funzionerà questa doppia vita disciplinata dall’ambiziosa Christine? Ma soprattutto, per Sasha Grey si tratta davvero di una liberazione? Lasciando perdere il luogo comune dell’America terra di mille opportunità, l’esordio hollywoodiano finora è stato l’occasione per dichiarare che è stufa del mondo porno come può esserlo una macchina umana di quella industria dove «il sesso davanti alle telecamere è pura performance, dove ci sono solo io e il mio pubblico» e che vuole vedere «qualcosa di eccitante rispetto a tutto quello che ho fatto finora». Niente di strano, considerate le velleità intellettuali di Sasha Grey che invita a guardare di più Pasolini, che si dispiace di non aver incontrato John Cassavetes, che ama la Nouvelle Vague, Antonioni ed Herzog,  Monte Hellman e Bernardo Bertolucci, Terrence Malick e Louis Malle, David Lynch, Gus van Sant, John Stagliano, e Catherine Breillat, che impazzisce per John Coltrane, Mingus, Joy Division, Bauhaus, Hendrix, «Old Elton John», Bowie, Dylan, Radiohead e l’elettronica di Aphex Twin.

Ma non è una fuga perché a soli 21 anni, Sasha Grey da Sacramento, sui set hardcore da appena tre anni, ancora non è entrata nel cliché dell’attrice porno vissuta e dai mille sacrifici. Ancora lontana da venire una sua biografia sul modello di Jenna Jameson, la regina del porno americano che tre anni fa pubblicò una una storia edificante  ma con bollino in copertina «senza censure», chiedendo alla forma libro di comporre e legittimare a ritroso una via crucis necessaria a ottenere il successo in un’industria di altissimo livello, nel nome però della esclusiva liberazione sessuale delle fantasie maschili. Più che una biografia, un libro di cartone che voleva risultare candido come una certificazione di trasparenza nei buoni propositi, a dispetto del ruolo e dell’immediatezza planetaria del web dove Jenna è accessibile solo a pagamento e punta dritto ai desideri del pubblico.

Eppure anche la Grey ha un’immaginario da allontanare, perchè non è una pornostar qualsiasi: «I giorni delle pornostar complessate e vittime sono finiti, io appartengo a una nuova razza» ha dichiarato al giornale indipendente degli studenti dell’università di Santa Barbara in California. Ma quale razza? La razza di un mercato hardcore sempre più violento, non dietro le quinte ipercompetitive di una carriera come quella di Jenna Jameson, ma direttamente sulle scene dove l’esile Sasha- che fisicamente è lontana dalla Jameson con le sue curve imgombranti e l’aspetto vistoso, prepotente, da calendario- è invece sottomessa e umiliata.

La Grey è l’icona di un immaginario porno che spinge sempre più sull’acceleratore di un sesso estremo, targato Bdsm (bondage, dominazione, sadismo e masochismo) e accelerato nelle dinamiche fisiche, che spezza qualsiasi semplice armonia di coppia restituendo l’immagine di un motore che si ingolfa ogni due metri.

Il passo che l’ha fatta arrivare a Soderbergh non è un pentimento, ma l’evoluzione naturale di una immagine che Sasha ha curato insieme ai set hard: il suo myspace che non può ovviamente riprodurre immagini porno per non violare la policy relativa a ogni account, ci restituisce l’immagine di Sasha come una starlette alternativa, ritratta da Terry Richardson e Rony Alwin, che finisce sul Rolling Stone perchè quel mondo le appartiene, e non semplicemente perchè la ospita. Il cammino della Grey, la ragazza che invece di apparire nuda come altre pornostar nel corso dell’Howard Stern Show, preferisce mostrarsi avvolta in una bandiera palestinese è diverso dalla Jameson, regina scalzata che attende due gemelli da un lottatore, ma non per questo un cammino meno violento.

Jeez, war films in 1998 took over the Oscars.

With an all-star cast — featuring Sean Penn, George Clooney, Nick Nolte and Adrien Brody — director Terrence Malick’s lyrical and beautiful retelling of James Jones’s novel about the 1942 battle for Guadalcanal was nominated for seven Oscars. With narration by Pvt. Witt (Jim Cavaziel), the men of C-Company become a tight-knit group as they each individually face the horrors of war to hold onto a key-positioned airfield.

The Thin Red Line, is basically a remake of the original 1964 flick, and to be truly honest after watching this film, I don’t think I will have to dig back into the archives and watch that.

Most War films over-exploit the gore and the violence of the war, but never really capture the feelings of the war within it’s soldiers. This film, captured all the feeling imaginable. We really do get to feel what these characters feel through a lot of emotional and overall beautiful images that are being narrated over by soldiers that are present in the film.

Immediately, I was caught up in this film, even in its first frame that features an alligator. It not once lost my interest until the very end where I did start to believe the moral story of good and evil started to wane on, and become a little boring and I didn’t that there wasn’t any material to work from.

Terrence Malick returns to film-making after his 20 year absence, and it doesn’t feel like he missed those years at all. He without a doubt capture the right emotion at the right time with every little scene. The cinematography that he worked on really made us feel the intensity of fighting an enemy that was hidden. Malick should’ve won Best Director for this film because although he doesn’t steer this film into perfection, he does steer into the right and very inspired direction.

Visually, this film is just one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen. There are some scenes that are so beautiful, so touching, and so inspirational that I couldn’t just help but shed a tear. Some scenes as I stated before are over-lapped by little narration from the soldiers, but you almost forget about the speaking and can’t stop but gaze at how beautiful the look and feel this movie really does have.

The all-star cast really does a good job in this film and really do step away from their public images and create characters that we like and can relate to. Out of the whole cast Nick Nolte is who I really think does the best. He is angry, ruthless, and also very misguided and you can see that coming out of his performance. I wish that there was more time for these big stars to interact with one another but overall I was pleased with the way some of these characters were used. I also liked how the Japanese weren’t portrayed as these savage killers who have no souls. Instead, they were shown with having as much fear and terror as much as the U.S., and that’s what really separates this film from others.

The only complaint that I really do think killed this film to be as much as a success as Saving Private Ryan, was that there are way too many scenes of just down time. In SPR, the down time was actually interesting and you actually got a sense of what those characters lives we’re like before war. However, in this the down time is submitted to beautiful visuals but overall not very interesting dialouge that I thnk made this film not win one Oscar.

Consensus: The Thin Red Line is visually astonishing, incredibly-well directed, and features amazingly true messages about how the war turns people into animals. However, the film offers to much time for boredom and doesn’t quite connect as well as Saving Private Ryan.

9/10=Full Pricee!!!

Today we are travelling to South America and Japan. One journey I will take only once, the other I can’t wait to take again.
The Colombian road movie Los Viajes del Viento has two strengths that make up for many of its conventional traits: It never descends into a too typical South American sentimentality and it has the luxury of taking place in a geography that is seldom seen on films. The story is about an old, taciturn accordion master who recently lost his wife, and the young boy who may be his son. The old master wants to travel across the entire country in order to give back his accordion to his master. As legend will have it, he once won the instrument in a duel with the devil. The boy sees apprenticeship with the old man as his only possibility to make something of himself and thus follows his unwilling companion stubbornly through some spectacular landscape and hairy situations.

While beautiful to look at, the film didn’t really stand out in any particular way. You could substitute the old accordionist with, say, a kung fu master, or a literature professor, or any old sage with a special gift to impart on the young, and the basic story would pretty much be the same. And in the history of films, God knows this has been done again and again. The accordion only really comes to the fore in an early duel with a younger braggart in a music contest. Like the rapper’s duels in Curtis Hanson’s 8 Mile, the accordion contest consists in psyching out one’s opponent by rhyme and insult while sticking to the chosen accordion tune. It may sound far fetched, but this part of the film really worked.

The travelogue, or road movie, is often an excellent way of highlighting a country’s geography and supporting the local tourist industry. Often, the tourist industry will help finance the film if the country is represented as a series of tourist vistas. This being Colombia, I’m not convinced that the ploy will be entirely successful, but we, the audience, win anyway. Especially since most of us will not get the chance – or take the chance – of visiting the country, I can’t think of a better way to be able to experience Colombia’s breathtaking natural vistas than in the comfort of the cinema chair, where the most immediate danger is an aneurysm triggered by some popcorn-munching moron by our side.

Ultimately, the film is worth seeing for its depiction of nature and the very varied geography – or geology. The stone formations towards the end were a sight to behold, as was the endless salt flats, the village built almost on the lake itself, and the Indian village atop a mountain. I have not seen exactly these sights before and felt fortunate to witness them in this way. The film also strikes up some laconic humoristic moments and I did chuckle a time or two. As for the main plot, I didn’t feel that it resolved itself entirely satisfactorily, but, as is my habit in these posts about films that most have not yet seen, I shan’t be spoiling the end here. The titular symbol of the travelling wind has a double bottom, referring both to the literal wind that has shaped the country and the various wind instruments. There is a scene where the wind blows through a piece of wood with a whistling sound, perhaps telling us that the tradition of these men has its roots in nature itself, in a time before Man, and that all we contribute are complications of that theme.

Hirokazu Kore-eda has made some seven films, not including his TV-work and some short films. Unfortunately not all of these are readily available in the west. His first film, Maborosi, an Ozu-style examination of a young widow trying to find a new lease on life after the loss of her husband , had a limited international run. But it was his second feature, the often wonderful After Life, which made him into a household name, if that house was an art house. (Yes, I know, bad pun…) In 2001 he made Distance, perhaps inspired by the gas attacks of a suicide cult in Japan; the Aum cult’s nerve gas attack on the city’s subway system. Then came Nobody Knows, which got a wider release and was nominated in Cannes and won a number of Asian awards. The story of a group of children left to their own devices after their mother takes off, was a masterpiece of naturalistic acting. Kore-eda directed over almost two years, and the children visibly live in the film. There are scenes in Nobody Knows that should break most hearts that are not already irredeemably broken. In 2006, two years after Nobody Knows, he made Hana, about a samurai who doesn’t really want to be a samurai. He is no good at fighting and wishes he could spend his days helping the poor people of the village in which he takes up residence. His very latest film is Air Doll, about a blow up sex doll that turns human Pinocchio-style. I have not seen this yet, but those that have, comment that it is remarkable in that the film never is exploitative, nor even is interested in the sexual aspects of this offbeat story. The film is more about what it means to be human and the innocence of the non-human in comparison. The first thing the doll learns after becoming human with a beating heart, is to lie.

This lengthy introduction is spurred by my absolute satisfaction with Kore-eda’s penultimate film, made in 2008, and shown this day in the BIFF-festival. Still Walking is perhaps the first perfect film I’ve seen this year. I really can’t find any faults with it. The only film coming near it in quality is the Swedish Burrowing, which I spoke of in a former post. The two films have in common that they are influenced by other directors. In Kore-eda’s case, the spectre of Japanese master, Yasujirō Ozu, is present, but not overwhelming, while in Burrowing, Terrence Malick is perhaps an even more present godfather.

The majority of Still Walking takes place within 24 hours, but including the epilogue, the time covered is three years. The real scope of the film, however, reaches much longer, as both the past and the future is so implicit in these 24 hours, that the film nears an almost general understanding of the human situation, particularly our place in the everlasting links between generations, from the very first to the last. I was most impressed by the way in which the director achieved this generality from a very specific time in a specific family.

A man who has just lost his job brings for the first time his wife, who is a widow, and her son to the annual family reunion. He clearly is not on good terms with his mother and father; “you should call your mother more often“, the father tells him. “I can’t stand listening to all her complaints“, the son answers. The father is a retired doctor who feels useless and socially in a no-man’s land, as he hasn’t anyone to continue his practice, and therefore must still play the role of village doctor himself, even though he is not up to it.

Seemingly, much of the reason for the family’s strained relationship, is that the eldest son lost his life in a drowning accident many years before, while saving a young boy from the waves. This son was the father’s favourite, and is in hindsight made to have represented the hopes for the family’s future. Every time the conversation begins to run more or less easily, the mother mentions some details about the dead son, and the family is thrown back into non-communication.

The reason for the reunion, is indeed that it marks the anniversary for the son’s death. Also present here is a sister with her husband and two children, who the father finds noisy. We can only assume that had the dead son had any children, they would be just as noisy. This is a film where I don’t want to tell much about the plot, as much of the enjoyment comes from gradually piecing together the dynamics of the family and just what has gone wrong in their lives. It is never -apart from the death of the son, which paradoxically has brought them together – the big, life-changing events that make these people be who they are, what they have become. Kore-eda is a master in communicating much bigger truths by very small movements and glances. Sometimes he lets a phrase linger a bit longer than necessary in order for us to grasp not only the context of the phrase, the feeling behind it, but its consequences, insignificant as they may seem before we have the entire picture.

It’s a cliché, but movies is really a universal language. I almost can’t think of better ways for us to see the common humanity between us all, than by immersing ourselves in works by masterful directors like Kore-eda. I felt more recognition in this film than in any Hollywood work I can recall. Nothing sudden or life-changing happens in the film, yet I felt a wiser person after having seen it, perhaps even wanting to be a better person. In this film, the characters don’t have “arcs”, as they evidently teach in Hollywood script classes. The characters that we observe become persons more than characters, and persons, for the most part, don’t suddenly learn something or change just because they have attended a family dinner, even though a number of American Thanksgiving films want us to believe this. They go on with their lives, as best they can, or maybe not even that.

What makes the film magic to me is also a consequence of the characters not only being oblivious to their shortcomings that we as spectators can detect in them, but that they actually go on living as if there never was anything particularly important about the day we have spent with them. They just go on, or as the film says in its title, they are still walking. (This phrase also comes up in a song the grandmother insists on playing on an old record player, and which she says she has a special relationship to. The song so subtly illuminates something of the past of the characters that we don’t quite grasp it before a shot of the grandfather doctor’s later reaction. The world of memories and forgotten times that comes into light here is staggering).

The only hint of sentimentality in the film, is when the unemployed son’s voiceover comments on what has happened in the three years since the family dinner. The words are spoken very matter of factly, but that very restraint is heartbreaking in its seeming neutrality to the lives that are commented. I would love to present the importance of the grandmother’s speech about butterflies and how that speech is reproduced later on, but this is such an integral part of the experience that I must leave it for the individual viewer to assess.

Not only is Kore-eda a master of presenting the social interaction and directing the actors into an almost completely naturalistic style, also his setting of the story deserves some mention. The film is shot in Yokosuka, Kanagawa, a seaside town with streets climbing upwards the mountainside from the sea. Seeing the wonderful locations, I couldn’t help but think of the kind of streets so typical of Studio Ghibli films, particularly Whisper of the Heart. There just is something very magnetic to me about this kind of setting, some serene quality that helps convince me that this site is ideal for the family home, a piece of childhood we all will always carry with us. The lack of the typical features of the big city helps the film to achieve a feeling not only of timelessness, but of placelessness. While very much a Japanese setting, the feeling is more general, of the kind of place that we find beautiful in hindsight, but that we had to move away from. The reasons probably felt important to us at the time, but any place we have lived in our formative years is bound to hold the ghosts of our younger selves in some way or another, still offering us possibilities of who we could have been had we by chance chosen differently.

Again, all this essaying runs the risk of making the film sound as if it could be boring. It is not. In fact, there are many scenes with a wonderful understated humour, not least in the comments by and about the grandmother and grandfather. As in any real grouping of human beings, be it a family or a group of friends, there is humour to be found in familiarity. Kore-eda, being concerned with reality, has the gift of finding the humour that springs from a common humanity, from recognition, even in the idiosyncratic. The actress You (yes, that is her stage name), who played the irresponsible mother in Nobody Knows, here gets the chance to use her quirky personality in a role that never seems as it is an imposed vehicle for her brand of acting. Her presence and comedic (her voice makes me think of a Japanese Meg Tilly) timing is so strong that when she leaves the film, we suddenly feel that we have been deprived of a comforting presence in what is, after all, a scary situation; reality. Or as close to reality as we want to come.

Offering us only a short glimpse into these characters’ lives, Kore-eda still makes us feel as if we’ve known them for a long time. His telling of this story is so effective that, even as we think that nothing very important happens, we get to learn everything that we need in order to fully grasp the situation as well as its ramifications. All the characters are given flesh and blood and lives that are not neatly solved by a contrived Hollywood script. Still, the miracle is that we don’t miss the solution, even though we’ve been indoctrinated to expect it. When all is said and done, we can leave and know that all is not said and it is not done. In fact, the way the characters are not able to come to terms with their shortcomings, or their disability to solve their conflicts, is the very thing that gives the piece such a powerful end. After this film, I really had to take some minutes to let the credits roll before I could or wanted to move. Those were good minutes.

Such a good start of this day! The Swedish Film Burrowing (Man Tänker Sitt) is the first true masterpiece of the festival. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen a better (new) film this year. Experiences like this make everything worth it; the amount of mediocrity and pretentiousness (hello again, Un Lac!) one usually has to wade through in order to happen upon small jewels like this. The film is directed by first time directors Henrik Hellstrøm and Fredrik Wentzel. If they stick with their partnership, I can’t but think that we have much to look forward to in the coming years.

This is a small film, both in length and, I presume, in budget. This means nothing more than that every scene is the perfect length, everything the film wants to tell, it tells admirably and with confidence. Hellstrøm and Wentzel has made a true film, in that the sentiments it wants to communicate are not easily reduced to words, but created by images and sound. The result is at times heartbreaking. More than being just a simple back to nature fable, the film lets us see people interacting with other people and how they have each discovered an emptiness in the world that perhaps has no remedy, but that in nature can somehow be reduced. A society needs rules, but when these rules take over each aspect of human interaction, they have a deadening effect on the soul, and personal identity becomes suspect.

I feel that it is difficult to address these issues through formal language, as the very uttering of the sentiment is based on a need to be understood by as many as possible, an agreed upon system. This is where Burrowing so admirably does the job better than I can in this review, as the film is not easily reduced to a clearly delineated argument. Some of the best novels of the world has talked about these issues, the estrangement of man in society is one of the oldest tales and constitutes an important part of what we call tragedy.

The film starts with a quotation of Henry David Thoreau, famous for his Walden, about a man retreating from civilized society into the wilderness, into nature, for two years and two months. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”, he says in that book, which could have been used in the film as well. Instead they use another Walden quotation, from the economy chapter: “The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior“. The film then cuts to a young boy walking along a lake. We hear his voice narrating. This innocent, yet wise in its way, voiceover will intermittently accompany us to the very end of the film. And what an end it is! Damn, if my eyes didn’t fill up… I could write about the poetry of the scene and how well the words illuminates all the preceding scenes we have witnessed, but that would be to deprive you of the pleasure of finding the beauty of the film for yourselves.

As I mention an innocent-sounding voiceover and a longing and fascination for nature, I guess most will come in mind the films of Terrence Malick, and they wouldn’t be wrong. If Malick had been raised in Swedish suburbia, this is the film he would have made. Or something close to it. There is a scene of the boy walking through high grass, or weeds, while his voice tells of his understanding of the grown ups’ world, partly naively, partly containing a wisdom that disappears with the death of innocence, of the Eden of childhood. Soon enough the boy will be put in a suit and forced to nod politely to meaningless conversations about meaningless non-topics. It is at this point he reaches a decision. That decision has to do with the other small tragedies we witness.

One of these is the estrangement in a young man “without direction”, always carrying his baby in his arms. The scene where he changes diapers in a parking lot and is accosted by a well-meaning woman who threatens to report him to the social services seems very real and true. She doesn’t know anything about him, but has a vague feeling that society will punish her if she does not report such an obvious break with society’s norms. The young man is seemingly unable to take “control of his life” and thus has no place in the world of humans.

Then there is the Russian émigré who meant to stay a few months in Sweden, but has now lived there thirty years. He spends his days trying to spear fish in the small brook that runs between the houses. Who are you?, a suspicious neighbour asks him. He laughs, as if he has been told a joke.

There are others, all with a restlessness they seem unable to put into words, even in their own heads. Everyone stretched so thin in the need to show their neighbours “good behaviour”, that something is about to break, to break out into violence or self destruction. I think this is a feeling that is not limited to Scandinavia and their political model of social democracy, although I assume that plays a part in it.

I’ll end my recommendation by talking briefly about the music used in the film. I have never before heard of the composer, Erik Enocksson, but the way his music was used in the film made him an integral part of the experience. He has composed some almost Bach-like polyphonic and beautiful songs. They are very explicitly linked to the theme of the film. I think all the songs are in Latin, and although I’m not exactly fluent, I was able to discern some snippets.
Somnio, somnio, I heard repeated some times, meaning “to dream“, or “imagine follishly“, I think. Other lines were “Hic non serenitas regit”, which I think means something like “There is no peace/serenity here”. Hic qui virem regit, I think can mean “Here where Man – or perhaps Green – reigns“. Non Qui Periculi Imminent must be translated as something like “There is no danger here”. And other lines about wolves and bears, possibly star signs. The final line I was able to work out was Non Spiriti Mali, “there are no bad spirits here“, or something to that effect. I mention these lines as they can tell a bit about the simple, yet complicated feelings that the film addresses.

All this might lead you to think the film is boring. It is not, certainly not if you think that you can contribute a bit yourself to the little plot there is. The film is really put together like a series of situations that are linked by the characters’ mutual discontent, albeit for different reasons. Apart from the wonderful images, there are situations bound to draw a smile or a tear out of recognition. The film will have a Norwegian premiere in November, and hopefully other countries will also be able to see it outside festivals. It deserves a much bigger audience than I fear that it will have. Please see this!

The next film of the day was the Australian claymation film Mary and Max, by Adam Elliot. This is a bittersweet tale of two outsiders, who find comfort and the possibility for a meaningful life in each other’s correspondence. One is a young unattractive Australian girl, the other an older fat New York Jew with Asperger syndrome. The result is a kind of 84 Charing Cross Road for extreme outsiders. The film is by no means as depressing as it sounds, although it deals with depression and many of life’s tragedies and setbacks. In fact, it is very funny. I think the entire cinema was laughing every two minutes. I really liked this, and the animation – or claymation, to be correct – is fantastic. And it’s for adults, so the filmmakers deserve credit for making a film in this format that doesn’t depend on millions of children or unethical merchandising to keep the production afloat. Recommended!

After Mary and Max, I had to go to work, so I was unable to see more films before the last film of the day. This was the Danish Fryktelig Lykkelig, Terribly Happy, directed by Henrik Ruben Genz, most known for his TV-work. Terribly Happy wants to be a Coen brothers film, but is no such thing. A policeman is transferred to the countryside where the local village is peopled by all kinds of weirdoes and the Danish version of Texan good ole boys. The protagonist is a bit of a moron right from the start, and thus his fall from grace doesn’t contain any grace to begin with. This makes for a very bad story, clichéd and contrived. For some reason this was among the most popular films in Denmark last year, even among critics. Don’t, I say, make the same mistake as the Danish. They tell me there is something rotten in that state. Had this film been on TV, I don’t think I’d bothered to watch it through. I guess it is passable entertainment, or rather, hardly even that.

However, even the mediocrity of the Danish couldn’t take away the satisfaction of the Swedish neighbours’ Burrowing. Remember this title, should it present itself to a cinema near you. Or even at some distance.

Due to circumstances beyond my control (work), I didn’t get the chance to see that many films this day. I did, though, have an unpleasant encounter with a member of the film jury, which – if not anything else – convinced me that the winner of the festival’s jury prize will be left entirely to chance and incompetence. I wish the festival leaders had considered their jury choices a bit more carefully. More on this later.

I first became aware of Belgian director Jaco van Dormael with his 1993-film Toto the Hero, which generally got rave reviews and which I liked. I seem to recall that I felt it put an unnecessary sentimentalism to the world of the child protagonist, but I think that was part of its theme. Not having seen the film since its cinema run 16 years ago, I don’t want to compare it with his latest work, which was my first film of the day.

Mr. Nobody is by far his most ambitious project to date. It cost close to $50 million and features at least B-list Hollywood actors. It is filmed at several locations; Belgium, the famous Studio Babelsberg in Germany, in Canada and at several other places. Most of the money, though, must have gone to the impressive special effects which are very, very good. Very complicated fx shots integrate seamlessly with the “real” world and a number of editing tricks and film styles are on display.

The film is not only ambitious from a financial or technical perspective. The story seeks to sum up the entirety of the universe’s existence, and not only this universe. It is at times a period film, a science fiction story and a contemporary love story. It is about storytelling, parallel universes, time travel, religion, immortality and death. Most importantly it is about love.

Jared Leto plays the grown up version of the protagonist Nemo Nobody and he does it well. I think this is his first leading role in a film of this magnitude. Then again, there are not that many films of this scope. In a way I felt the film was never quite only itself, but borrowed from a number of films and from the history of film. Perhaps it had to, but I felt at times that the director had seen the works of other directors he admired and tried to emulate them and, by combining their tropes, hoped to find something personal enough to call his own.
There is a bit of Darren Aronofsky’s the Fountain here, but on an even bigger thematic scale. Kubrick’s 2001 is quoted in some images. In a scene depicting humanity’s pre-existence, the moments before we are conceived, Van Dormael used the Melanesian music from Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line while at the same time putting this music to images of white and black children playing innocently together in a heavenly innocent state. So, in other words, welcome to the beginning of The Thin red Line! The basic concept of splitting destinies – of turning into several future versions of oneself – based on a choice made while standing by a train, is found in the less ambitious Gwyneth Paltrow vehicle Sliding Doors. The drowning in a car scene reminded me of Lars Von Trier’s Europa (By the count of ten you will be dead, as Max Von Sydow laconically narrates in that film). In a way Mr. Nobody is two and a half hours awaiting said count. I could go on, but you get the point.

It is not easy to sum up what this film is about. When the protagonist is forced to make a faithful choice at the age of nine (I think), he is separated into two persons, depending on which choice he makes. Within these two possible characters comes a further three choices – which makes it six characters(?) – based on his choice of girlfriend as an adolescent. One version of himself turns out to be a lecturer in astrophysics, who sometimes enters the action to lecture the viewer about the history and philosophy of the universe. He says there are seven dimensions in the universe; six of these are spatial, while the seventh is temporal. He then poses the question of whether the temporal – time – inhabited more than one dimension. (I take this from memory, so forgive me for any inaccuracies!) To complicate matters further, another one of these personalities takes up writing, creating a fictional world that in the film is presented as just as real as the non-fiction worlds. This fiction takes the action to space (to Mars) and the future. However, another future is also depicted in the film, a future where the protagonist is the last mortal human alive (and thus, the last who remembers love and lust; you don‘t need children if you live forever…) There is a point to this, but I won’t discuss it here, so as not to spoil the film.

While the plot of the film seems incredibly advanced and ambitious, to its credit, we are never lost and most times understand perfectly where we are in the story and what is depicted. Actually, I had no problems with the science fiction elements of the tale. They are well thought and very well executioned. It is in the way the film revolves around the concept of love that I feel it loses itself a bit; it becomes a bit too much.

One kind of love that is decisive for Mr. Nemo Nobody is the child’s love for his parents. Another kind of love is the puppy love between nine year olds, then the lustful love between adolescents and finally the emotional, during and at times hard and stressful love between spouses. Put together, this becomes a whole lotta love, as the song says. Now, if the love theme had been presented a bit more smartly, I wouldn’t have any problems with it. (While it is presented in a complicated tale, this doesn’t make the kind of love on display any more “intelligent” or new to the viewer). Especially irritating is the extremely cliché ridden music the director has chosen for the soundtrack. There are just so many times you can hear Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream… Almost every scene has music that has been used so often before in films that it brings you as a viewer out of the film’s universe and at least I began pondering boredom and references rather than the action taking place before me.

Another unfortunate effect of the music has to do with its placement. When the protagonist as a young boy sees a girl his age, nine, swimming, a lusty soul-number is played, thus turning her into a kind of sex object. This is disturbing and can’t have been the director’s intention. While he wants to tell us that the protagonist falls in love at this moment, there must surely be better ways to sonically enhance this element!

Then there is the fact that all of Nemo’s love stories revolve around three girls that he meets as a young child. I find it a bit far fetched that these same girls shall also be his only interests in adolescence and in marriage. The film is, then, not only about premeditation, but about an emotional stiltedness, as if Nemo doesn’t really evolve during the film and this is the reason for his future being so clearly delineated into his separate possible selves. The name Nemo, by the way, does not refer to the captain of the Nautilus. You’re better served by reading it backwards.

In closing, I’ll venture to say that the word ambitious will surely be used in pretty much every review of this film. (It wasn’t finished in time for Cannes, so it hasn’t been shown that many places yet). While it is certainly intricate, it ultimately doesn’t convince me. While I’m perfectly willing to take any leaps of logic that the film requires of me, I’m not sure that it ultimately adds up. I have a strong feeling that there are internal discrepancies within the fantastic logic. This should have been worked out a bit better, but I think I will need to see the film a second time to really pinpoint these errors. (And the ones I could point out would ruin the ending, so I’ll refrain).The problem is that, as much as I admired the film for what it’s trying to do, it was just a bit too long and ultimately not all that it could have been, so a second viewing will probably not take place in the immediate future. But if you are in the mood for a lengthy love story told in a brilliant technical style and with a basic sience fiction concept underlining it all, by all means take a chance on the film! I think it deserves an audience and it is without doubt a much better film than The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which was half the rave at this year’s Oscars, and which it also shares some sensibility with. Being the better film of the two, I’m also sure that it won’t find half the audience of Fincher’s unfortunate detour into drivel and mediocrity.

While Mr. Nobody may be flawed, it is at least interesting enough for me to have given it more attention and space than most films. This is more, much more than I can say for the next film I had the misfortune to attend this day. I guess I should have seen the warning signs; it being French the clearest.

Un Lac – A Lake – is a minimalist work about an epileptic boy, his sister and family in an unknown wintry location. This is the second film as writer/director for Philippe Grandrieux, his fourth as director. On this film, he also serves as cinematographer, so he is an auteur in the real sense. The problem is that he is just not a very interesting one. Most of the actors are, for some reason Russian, and it is filmed in France and Switzerland. And the landscape does seem wonderfully oppressing and beautiful at the same time. That is, if any of the images had been in focus. (The images of the brother and sister found to the left are pretty much the only two clear images of the film)

Grandrieux uses a handheld camera style that is extreme in its use of closeups and movements following the characters so closely that we are supposed to see the world as they themselves do. The mother of the family is blind, though it took me some time to decipher this. Many of the scenes are filmed in near darkness and the ones that are not are foggy and out of focus. The brother has a close relationship with his sister, possibly incestuous, but I was never able to tell for sure. His epileptic fits grows in frequency. He is at times very happy for no apparent reason, at times he is moody. One day he is by the cold lake that seems to be the only contact with a wider world. A young man arrives. He says his name is Jurgen. Soon this man starts a relationship with the sister and finally they sail off on the same lake. This is the film. Or what I managed to see of the film.

Do not misunderstand me. I have no problems with challenging films, be it in narrative or in film style. This film, however, is ridiculous, very boring and unbearably pretentious. The dialogue is almost non-existent. Perhaps this is a good thing, for when they speak, they speak platitudes. “You are my sister”, the brother says. Then he adds: “I am your brother”. Yes, well, you had me at sister…

Of course one can read something symbolic out of the minimalist setting and action. The more minimalist a work is, the easier to regard it as symbolical of something. But here even the symbolic meaning is trite and clichéd. Perhaps the director wants to deal with archetypes, with a biblical simplicity. If so, he fails miserably. Is he interested in hidden pockets of humanity, of humanity’s place in an unforgiving and uncaring nature? Well, he doesn’t come even close. Perhaps he wants to talk about female sexuality and awakening. If so, he says nothing new and certainly nothing of interest. – If you want an arty film about this, watch Picnic at Hanging Rock again! You will be grateful for it. Do not waste your time with Un Lac. With the basic setting of these characters in this kind of nature, you have to be pretty incompetent not to make it even slightly interesting or even beautiful even in a harrowing sense. Unfortunately, competence has no place here.
It strikes me that writing even disparagingly about the film, I make it sound better than it is. Give me a camera, this location and these characters and I would have made a better film. Look away, there is nothing to see here! By the way, this was a film I had high hopes for and that I really wanted to like. More the fool me.

The New World

Director: Terrence Malick.

Guión: Terrence Malick.

Intérpretes: Q’Oerianka Kilcher, Colin Farrell, Christian Bale, Christopher Plummer, Wes Study, Jonathan Pryce, Ben Chaplin.

Música: James Horner.

Fotografía: Emmanuel Lubentzki.

EEUU. 2005. 137 minutos.

El hombre y la naturaleza

Merodean las voces de diverso pelaje que denostan el cine de Malick por acusaciones que van del “esteticismo gratuito” a “narraciones soporíferas” (esto último, patrimonio casi exclusivo de los que van al cine a que les mareen la vista con FX vertiginosos a los que ni siquiera les piden sentido). Otra y considerable facción crítica valora en justa medida su poco prolífica pero intensa filmografía, ya desde su brillante opera prima Badlands, pasando por la menos fértil Days of Heaven y por la excesiva y arrebatadora The thin red line, hasta esta última y flamante The New World. Tras el visionado del filme que nos ocupa, apetece revisar The thin red line y comprobar lo que aquel filme tenía de antesala del presente. Podríamos decir que en The thin red line se radicalizaban los postulados narrativos y visuales esgrimidos por Malick, buscando frutos sinérgicos de la experimentación. Esas estrategias formales y categóricas parecen cristalizar con maestría en The New World, donde el realizador tejano escoge una temática donde le resulta bien viable dejar patente sus opciones escogidas en lo concerniente al lenguaje cinematográfico. Como en su precedente, las imágenes se caracterizan por una mayúscula belleza plástica –y no se trata tanto de los indómitos parajes retratados sino del modo en que Malick los filma-, y esas imágenes, que pretenden detener el tiempo y provocan en el espectador un sentimiento de fascinación/abstracción que nos recuerda los perfeccionistas métodos de Kubrick, se pone al servicio de un discurso, reflejado en las diversas voces over -que con esa cadencia tan leve se van escuchando- que se erigen en una compilación de percepciones de tipo filosófico –reflexiones sobre el género humano y sobre el leit-motiv del (des)equilibrio del hombre con la naturaleza-.

La narración y el tono

El preciosismo fotográfico (inmenso trabajo lumínico), la utilización de la música y la carencia de diálogos conforman una secuencia expositiva que, contra la apariencia superficial, nada tiene de lánguida: en realidad suceden muchas cosas en todo momento, tamizadas por el tono deliberadamente contemplativo que Malick propone al espectador: de la narración de una colonización –con visos realistas- se pasa al relato de una historia romántica bigger than life, que después –cuando la narración transita al punto de vista de Pocahontas- se vuelca en la radiografía del contraste cultural (diferencias entre personas y naciones, entre modos de ver, vivir y comprender), secuenciado en la nueva relación sentimental de la indígena con el personaje que encarna Christian Bale y en el viaje a Inglaterra.

De la belleza al espectáculo

Lo que a mi juicio convierte esta The New World en una indiscutible obra maestra del cine es lo evidente que resulta que Malick ha alcanzado el absoluto dominio de la técnica cinematográfica y la utiliza para sus propósitos: sin contener un solo efecto especial, The New World es una de las películas más espectaculares que se pueden visionar actualmente en los cines; de una forma que no puede calificarse por menos que soberbia, Malick declina toda convencionalidad, y mediante las texturas visuales y el montaje invoca la senda lírica hacia su discurso. A modo de ejemplo, fijémonos en el modo sublime en que un montaje de diversas secuencias cortas nos narra la muerte de Pocahontas de una forma que, a esas alturas de la narración, parece anecdótico: tal es el grado de fascinación y abstracción al que ha sucumbido el espectador. Malick entiende y nos hace entender que sus cantos a la belleza natural y a los paraísos perdidos que describe en sus filmes sólo pueden despacharse “desde dentro”, esto es tratando de dotar a su cámara, a las imágenes, del sereno equilibrio y sabiduría de la madre Naturaleza.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0402399/

http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/newworld

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1152954-new_world/

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-01/uonc-ucl011906.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_World_(film)

http://www.apple.com/trailers/newline/the_new_world/

Todas las imágenes pertenecen a sus autores

Terrence Malick‘in yeni filmi The Tree of Life 82. Akademi Ödülleri için önemli bir aday adayı derken filmin gösteriminin 2010′a kaydırıldığı açıklandı.Bu da filmi, Mart ayında düzenlenecek Oscar töreninde göremeyeceğiz demek oluyor.

Bu arada aday tahminlerimi hep güncel tutmak amacıyla Predictions adında bir sayfa ekledim.Bu sayfadan güncel olarak yeni tahminleri takip etmeniz mümkün.

Absolutely beautiful. This film’s typically hailed for Almendros and Wexler’s stunning cinematography, but such praise can be misleading, defining the picture as a sequence of pretty postcards.

With Alberta, Canada filling in for the Texas Panhandle, the natural surroundings have been fused with the story’s themes and characters, creating an organic mix that breaks away from the demands of conventional narrative. This is almost a wholly visual experience, where everything floats by with an air of mystery, tantalizing in an opaque richness that’s difficult to articulate even when its strongly felt.

At times, the relationship between characters and landscapes invites comparisons to Michelangelo Antonioni, but whereas Antonioni’s backgrounds seem like direct expressions of a person’s emotions and psychology, the effect here is much more lyrical and abstract. Not since Murnau has a filmmaker crafted a picture like this (and appropriately enough, the film pays homage to Sunrise on at least two occasions).

The story focuses on three characters engaged in a love triangle, and very little’s laid out in dialogue; most of the words come through voice-overs from a peripheral figure, and even then they’re not there to guide the audience. Like Malick’s previous film, Badlands, a teenage girl supplies the narration, but unlike Holly, Linda’s words have no flowery aspirations. Her tone is remote, and her cerebral, if simplistic, observations create a striking counterpoint to the passionate emotions threatening to consume the film’s central characters.

Early on, Linda recounts apocalyptic stories she’s picked up from someone in her past; when their idyllic life begins to crumble, those fire-and-brimstone images creep into her observations. The film may glow with lush romanticism, but what makes it so extraordinarily alluring is also destructive. Infatuation and marriage is fed then ruined by the same deceit and cold calculation. And just as the landscape’s natural beauty is breathtakingly gorgeous, so is its violent devastation. What seemed so elegiac at first feels more like a ravishing obscenity that looked deceptively sacred.

A perfectly-realized work from an elusive filmmaker, this is a landmark achievement that redefines modern cinema even as it reaches back to an aesthetic nearly left behind in the silent era.

Prosseguindo a série Cadê Você?, hoje falaremos sobre Sean Penn, último Oscar de melhor ator por sua “encarnação” de Harvey Milk, o primeiro político engajado na luta pelos direitos gays.

Costumo associar este trabalho de Sean Penn ao de Marion Cotillard em Piaf, isto é, absolutadamente acima da média. Não tinha como não levar o prêmio máximo. Mickey Rourke aproximou-se da perfeição em O Lutador, mas Sean Penn em Milk estava simplesmente irretocável.

Sean Penn que já era sucesso como ator, diretor e também na vida real (porque quem já foi casado com Madonna merece mais que destaque profissional) conquistou a maturidade máxima em sua atuação em Milk.

E agora? tem como manter todo esse status ou a tendência é decair? É isso que a gente vai conferir no seu próximo filme, chamado Tree of Life, já em fase de finalização.

A direção e o roteiro de Tree of Life é de Terrence Malick [Além da Linha Vermelha]. A estória é ambientada na década de 1950, centrada sobre três irmãos, tendo o primogênito como o principal deles, que vê a perda da inocência e do mundo ideal com o início da vida adulta. Penn é o irmão mais velho, já adulto.

A única imagem de Tree Of Live, até o momento

Vale lembrar que o filme conta ainda com Brad Pitt e apesar de estar datado para janeiro de 2010 (antes do Oscar) não há, até agora, nenhum indício de expectativas de indicações para Tree Of Life, embora a história (com H) do Oscar mostra que alguns filmes surpreendem na reta final e desbancam àqueles que são dados a vitória como certa. Será? Vamos ficar atento!

Amanhã, Kate Winslet.

Illinois born filmmaker Terrence Malick is not prolific, but he’s certainly a strong influence on me. I found this montage of his work on You Tube and thought it worth sharing. If you haven’t seen his films, bless yourself with his filmography. It’ll look good on you. 

(embedding is disabled on this one so you have to follow the link to you tube. It’s worth it.)

World War Two film The Thin Red Line exploded onto the scene with a resounding bang, standing out as a stark contrast to another 1998 war drama, Saving Private Ryan. As opposed to it being a confronting portrayal of the horrors of war, with extra schmaltz thrown in (as Ryan was), The Thin Red Line was deeply philosophical, its focus being the devastation of nature. The picture seemed to come from nowhere, details of its production were kept tight lipped. The most anyone could say prior to its release was that it was based upon a James Jones novel, it had an amazing ensemble cast and was the third feature in almost twenty years for filmmaker Terrence Malick, whose previous films Badlands and Days of Heaven are considered masterpieces of New Hollywood.

Rumours began to circulate about Malick’s twenty year hiatus from filmmaking. Who was this guy? Where had he been? And what had he been doing in that time? One rumour suggested that he had been running a second hand book shop in small town America, another was that he became a farmer, or that he was a cobbler operating in Paris. The most likely rumour was that he was teaching English in an American University under the alias of Joey Joe Joe Shabadoo Jr. The New World (Malick’s fourth feature) followed in 2005, and it was considered by some to be a companion piece to The Thin Red Line. Both were period dramas, involved nature being plundered by outsiders, both had a running internal monologue comprised of the thoughts of the characters in the films, and were representative of a filmmaker who was completely in control of his craft.

If the twenty year hiatus wasn’t enough, the perfection of the two films caused us to ask more questions about the man who made them. Who was he, this strange man who had disappeared from Hollywood, but had emerged years later with an ultimate control over filmmaking? And if this wasn’t enough, rumours began to circulate about the secrecy surrounding his projects. Malick’s contracts stipulate that no current photos of him are aloud to be taken, and that he is to give no interviews. Even the documentaries about his films don’t feature any interviews with the man himself, or any footage of him directing, it’s just interviews with his cast and crew. Colin Farrel, who worked with Malick in The New World, has done nothing to quell these rumours of his elusive reputation, in fact in an interview given to a magazine, he seemed to encourage them. “I don’t even remember making The New World. I just remember showing to meet Terrence for an interview, and when I walked into his office there was this shining flash of light…..and I passed out. And I woke up 7 months later and there was this completed film that had me in its cast. Weird.” * When Malick agreed to give a rare public appearance for a Q and A at the Rome film festival, fans were excited thinking it might be the only opportunity to glimpse the man, even capture footage of him. Yet as the following clip demonstrates (taken by an audience member on his phone) this couldn’t happen. We can hear Malick’s voice, but we can’t actually see him. How frustrating is that!

All this weird stuff combined, coupled with the sheer perfection of his films, caused many to speculate whether Terrence Malick was God himself. That maybe God had wandered down from Heaven and began a career as a filmmaker. If you go on IMDb, and look at Malick’s message board, every second post begins with “So Malick, is he like……God?” No he’s not God, nor is he a culmination of other filmmakers who have all pooled their talents and worked under the same alias (as I also heard on the rumour mill). He’s just a normal dude who started off as a normal filmmaker, but quickly tired of the Hollywood system and turned his back on it, deciding instead to operate under his own steam. After looking long and hard, I found two current pictures of the man. The one on the right looks like it was taken without him expecting it, the one on the left was taken at a film festival, on someone’s phone.

Also, the following clip is from Malick’s debut Badlands, in which he makes a cameo as a door to door salesman, which suggests that at one point he wasn‘t as preoccupied with secrecy as he is now.

Peter Biskund, in the book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, portrays Malick as a shy, introverted, normal guy, with weaknesses and eccentricities. “A burly young man, barrel-chested and bearded, Malick looked a little like Peter Boyle with hair**. He was shy and introverted, said very little. Malick came from Texas. His father was an executive with Phillips Petroleum, and he had two younger brothers, Chris and Larry. Larry went to Spain to study guitar with Segovia, a taskmaster of legendary proportions. In the summer of 1968, Terry learned that his brother had broken both his own hands, apparently distraught over his studies. Terry’s father asked him to go over to Spain to help Larry. Terry refused. The father went himself, and returned with Larry’s body. He had apparently committed suicide. Terry, as the eldest son, had inherited the birthright. He was the one who went to Harvard and became a Rhodes scholar, and now when his younger brother needed him most, he hadn’t been there. He always bore a heavy burden of guilt.” Further on, Biskund goes into detail about Malick’s unusual directing style on the Days of Heaven shoot ( including the “meticulous and indecisive” editing of the picture which took place over two years, and eventually made the plot “incomprehensible”, saved of course by the voice over), and the studio inteference Malick experienced during production on both Badlands and Days of Heaven.

Malick’s hiatus from filmmaking is more easily understood when we read the stories surrounding the making of his films, the production delays, the studio’s barging in on the editing, the budget cuts, the uncooperative crew. He disappeared from Hollywood for twenty years, fed up with all the red tape and the bullshit, but like all good directors found himself drawn back to it because of the stories still waiting to be told.

*I made this up, in case you couldn’t tell.

*The dad from Everyone Loves Raymond.

There are films to be excited about, and there are films to be EXCITED about.

Then there are films that one’s entire life waits years—even decades—for. Or maybe that’s just me. In any case… such a film is coming soon, and it’s directed by Terrence Malick (the most mysterious and brilliant living filmmaker). It’s called Tree of Life.

Here is what we know thus far about the latest film from the reclusive, Salinger-esque Mr. Malick (and predictably, it’s all gleefully mysterious and writ large):

• The film is described as “a cosmic epic, a hymn to life” with the main theme being “the loss of innocence.”
• It stars Brad Pitt and Sean Penn as father and son.
• It was filmed outside of Austin, Texas in the town of Smithville.
• The film is being released by Apparition, a new distribution company that is also behind Jane Campion’s new film Bright Star.
• The release date has been stated at various times to be December 25, 2009, but just in the last few days IMDB has switched to listing it as “2010.”
• The official plot synopsis from the film’s distributor:

We trace the evolution of an eleven-year-old boy in the Midwest, Jack, one of three brothers. At first all seems marvelous to the child. He sees as his mother does, with the eyes of his soul. She represents the way of love and mercy, where the father tries to teach his son the world’s way, of putting oneself first. Each parent contends for his allegiance, and Jack must reconcile their claims. The picture darkens as he has his first glimpses of sickness, suffering and death. The world, once a thing of glory, becomes a labyrinth.

Framing this story is that of adult Jack, a lost soul in a modern world, seeking to discover amid the changing scenes of time that which does not change: the eternal scheme of which we are a part. When he sees all that has gone into our world’s preparation, each thing appears a miracle — precious, incomparable. Jack, with his new understanding, is able to forgive his father and take his first steps on the path of life.

The story ends in hope, acknowledging the beauty and joy in all things, in the everyday and above all in the family — our first school — the only place that most of us learn the truth about the world and ourselves, or discover life’s single most important lesson, of unselfish love.

• Jack Fisk—who has worked with Malick on all of his films—is back as production designer.
• Costume designer Jacqueline West is back after having worked with Malick on The New World.
• Emmanuel Lubezki is back as cinematographer (he worked wonders on The New World).
• Alexandre Desplat (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) composed the music.
• Sarah Green—producer on The New World—is back as producer.
• In a 2008 interview about his 40 year working relationship with Malick, Jack Fisk said the following:

It’s such an important film to Terry and I think this is the film he’s most wanted to make. His approach to filmmaking just keeps evolving. We made this film with hardly any lighting. People were working without scripts. He would dole them out and take them back. It was Terry at his most excited. He seemed stronger and more inventive than any time in the last forty years… I saw some dailies and when I see this footage it looked like you’d found some film left over from the 50s. It was just magical.

…It’s not structured like a regular film. I think it could change some parts of cinema. I’m just so excited about it. I told Terry, “your going to make it hard for me to work on another film after this. Because they look like films, and this… is different.”

• There is an IMAX film called Voyage of Time that is reportedly going to be a companion piece to The Tree of Life and will be narrated by Brad Pitt.
• The IMAX film reportedly covers “the birth and death of the universe.” Of course!
• There will be dinosaurs. Mike Fink, who is doing effects work on the film, reported this to Empire magazine: “We’re animating dinosaurs, but it’s not Jurassic Park. The attempt is to treat it as if somehow a camera wound up in the middle of these periods when dinosaurs roamed the earth and creatures first started to emerge from the sea onto the land. The first mammals appearing. We’re doing a number of creatures all seriously scientifically based… I think when it’s finished it’ll be something that’s referred to for years.”
• Douglas Trumbull, the visual f/x pioneer who collaborated with Stanley Kubrick on 2001 and Steven Spielberg on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, was reportedly brought in to help with visual effects.
• In one version of the screenplay, the story opened with “a sleeping god, underwater, dreaming of the origins of the universe, starting with the big bang and moving forward, as fluorescent fish swam into the deity’s nostrils and out again.” Malick supposedly wanted to create something that has never been seen before, and dispatched cameramen all over the world. They shot micro jellyfish on the Great Barrier Reef volcanic explosions on Mount Edna, and ice shelves breaking off in Antarctica. Special effects consultant Richard Taylor describes sections of the script as “pages of poetry, with no dialogue, glorious visual descriptions.”
• Some rumors suggest that Tree of Life is a reworking of Malick’s abandoned project Q, which he wrote back in the 1970s. Q has been described as originally having been a “multi-character drama set in the Middle East during World War I, with a prologue set in prehistoric times.”

Whew! Well if that doesn’t make The Tree of Life the most anticipated “might change cinema” movie of the year, I don’t know what does!

The countdown is on. I cannot wait.

The Thin Red Line

Director: Terrence Malick.

Guión: Terrence Malick, basado en la novela de James Jones.

Intérpretes: Adrien Brody, Jim Caveziel, Ben Chaplin, Sean Penn, Elias Koteas, Nick Nolte, George Clooney, John Cusack.

Música: Hans Zimmer.

Fotografía: John Toll.

EEUU. 1998. 147 minutos.

Abstracción

Lo primero que debe decirse de esta The Thin Red Line es que se trata de una película de una mayúscula belleza plástica – no se trata tanto de los indómitos parajes retratados sino del modo en que Malick los filma-, es una cinta de guerra, concretamente que describe uno de los más notorios episodios de la batalla del Pacífico de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, el que se libró en Guadalcanal, si bien esa filiación genérica al cine bélico admite todo tipo de cuestionamientos. A pesar de las apariencias, The Thin Red Line no obedece a los propósitos de obras literarias como The Naked and the Dead o cinematográficas como They were expendable o Platoon (por citar dos obras referenciales cuya realización pertenece a dos periodos históricos distintos y que tienen en común la importancia de la coralidad como vehículo para propósitos de retrato sociológico, generacional, político o ideológico). Malick sí que hace del discurso el auténtico eje de la narración, pero abraza la abstracción: la completa película se va configurando como una densa y extensa compilación de percepciones de tipo filosófico –reflexiones sobre el género humano y sobre la dualidad del bien y el mal, pero también el leit-motiv del (des)equilibrio del ser humano con la naturaleza-, disertación que, en definitiva, sólo utiliza la condición hiperbólica de los acontecimientos narrados a los efectos de su despliegue reflexivo.

Tour de force visual

Algunos sectores de la crítica acusan a este tercer Malick de una languidez expositiva y de una innecesaria dilatación de la narración, pero entiendo que una película de esas características no aceptaría otra propuesta que la que el realizador articula, o, dicho de otra manera, que se puede discutir qué hace Malick o por qué lo hace, pero no la idoneidad de los medios cinematográficos escogidos por el cineasta. En el apartado formal, una de las características que evidentemente comparte con el género es el hecho de tratarse de una “película de hombres”, y en ese sentido el filme no puede defraudar a nadie, tanto por el talento interpretativo del impresionante elenco actoral, como por la lucidez con la que se presentan y definen los personajes en la terrible interrelación coyuntural a la que se ven abocados, aún más que por los diálogos por los tour de force visuales que promueve esa cámara intuitiva y más bien dolorosa que les contempla, que combina de forma sabia los elementos cinematográficos escogidos, sean imágenes ralentizadas, planos de detalle, pequeños  y continuos insertos de flash-backs, o la voz over de los personajes.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120863/

http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/8/thinredline.html

http://www.foxmovies.com/thinredline/

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1084146-thin_red_line/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thin_Red_Line_(1962_novel)

Todas las imágenes pertenecen a sus autores

Most reviews that you will read on this film will be how great, poetic, masterfully shot this film is. First let me say I did enjoy this film and I have chosen to watch it several times since it came out. I do however think that most of the over the top glorified reviews come from fans and people that believe that Terrence Malick is the be all end all of movie directors. Personally I think he is a bit over rated. This came out the same year Saving Private Ryan did, and I don’t think it comes close to being the film that Private Ryan is. Malick supporters will say I just don’t get it, or I’m not intellectual enough to understand him. I understand him, and get it, he is just a bit heavy handed with his directing and many times to artsy for his own good.

Really the one thing that annoyed me about Thin Red Line was the voice over. Soldiers in war don’t run around thinking in Shakespearean pros or poetic verses as if from a Robert Frost poem. My general opinion on voice overs in films are that if you need one, you are not doing a very good job. I think some of the thoughts and points could have been conveyed through acting and the film score. Most reviews say this film makes you think, to me with the voice over, Malick is trying to do your thinking for you by spelling out what he is trying to say.

This film does has an impressive cast. Sean Penn (Best Actor Milk and Mystic River), Adrian Brody (Best Actor The Pianist), George Clooney (Oceans 11, Burn After Reading), John Cusack (Runaway Jury, Must Love Dogs), Jim Caviezel (Passion of the Christ, Frequency), and probably the only performance worth bragging about come from Nick Nolte (Cape Fear).

In my opinion this is a good war film, but at times a bit too artsy for it’s own good. I am sure some will love it and think of it as a deeper war film than anything out there, just didn’t come across that way to me. This film is still worth watching, I just wouldn’t put it at the top of the “to watch” pile.

Our irregular roundup of other news worth blogging about.

Buffalo Tom said it best: “Summer’s gone, can’t wipe it off my hands.” Labor Day is just around the corner, bringing this summer of cinematic discontent to a close – and look how it’s ending with a whimper, at that. The fall season begins with the holiday weekend, meaning that by and large the days start getting shorter, the temperatures get cooler, and the movies get better. Autumn is our favorite time of year for film, offering as it does a middle ground between the loud, no-thought-required spectacles of summer cinema and the increasingly inert prestige pics that dominate the winter months.

For this year especially, the fall movie season is a welcome sight, offering not only a variety of films but a pretty interesting cluster of stuff we’re excited about checking out. September offers new work by Steven Soderbergh and Mike Judge, while October releases include the latest from Michael Moore, the Coen Brothers, Spike Jonze, and the long-awaited film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

In the meantime, here’s the latest of our semi-monthly compendiums of topics that never got a full post.

Still no Citizen Kane Blu-Ray

1. A recent article by MacClean’s Canadian online edition brought some disturbing news that was nevertheless not exactly surprising: the amount of classic cinema making its way to DVD is diminishing, with future Blu-Ray releases even more precarious. Even the once-faultless selection of films issued by the Criterion Collection is waning.

What’s wrong with the DVD and especially the Blu-Ray markets right now is a lot like what went wrong with the American automobile industry: keep making tons of the same stuff almost nobody wants, and eventually no one’s going to want any of what’s around. Classic movies are a niche market, and they’re expensive to remaster and package. But they’re important to preserve, important enough to supersede the studio’s profit margin. For that matter, the studios have a responsibility both to themselves and to our culture to preserve their best works, and if this means letting releases of modern drivel wait a while or receive diminished production runs, that’s the cost of  the pedigrees the studios perennially trade upon. Alternately, Warner Brothers’ recent rollout of their burn-on-demand library of archive titles is a huge step in the right direction.

2. Because we grew up in the 1980’s, the golden age of product placement in film, we’re pretty much inured to its proliferation across the modern television landscape. While we don’t watch 30 Rock or Damages, two shows who’ve drawn the heaviest flack for product placement deliberate or otherwise, this summer both Rescue Me and Leverage have taken the marketing gimmick to a whole new egregious extreme. Rescue Me is the worse of the two, including transparent plugs for Samuel Adams, Vitamin Water and the Volkswagen Routan into its storylines. They only narrowly beat out Leverage ’s persistent and loving close-ups of the Hyundai Genesis, however.

3. Speaking of the 80s, producers at Lakeshore Entertainment this week announced they’re working to bring the cult 1988 classic Heathers to television as a regular series. Not to second-guess, but if you’ve ever wondered what Christian Slater’s snarky sadist J.D. would be like as a sullen hipster, you may soon find out. Apparently the new show won’t involve the movie’s muder-the-popular-bitches plotline, which would kind of make it just like any other rich-teen soap opera already around.

Our Guy: Baldwin

4. In our May edition of Miscellaneous Debris we lobbied for Battlestar Galactica alum Michael Trucco to win the coveted lead in Warner Bros’ upcoming live-action The Green Lantern. The part of lead GL Hal Jordan went to Ryan Reynolds, and we think that’s great. If the script includes his character, we want to suggest Adam Baldwin for the role of Guy Gardner, Jordan’s maniacally bull-headed alternate in the interstellar Green Lantern Corps. Baldwin’s turn as the similar Jayne Cobb on Firefly and Serenity was underrated and unfairly overlooked by mainstream audiences, and he’s long deserved a part in a big project where he can show his swaggering cool. (Incidentally, he bears no relation to the clan of Baldwin brothers.)

O'Loughlin

5. We’ve come to believe that if Skeet Ulrich’s fans ever joined forces with the boosters of Moonlight’s Alex O’Loughlin, their combined fervency would split the entertainment industry in half. Both actors’ fans are motivated, loyal, and protective of their star in ways that are both impressive and a little intimidating. And both groups get something to cheer about this fall: the Ulrich co-starring Armored opens in December, while the long-delayed O’Loughlin-featuring Whiteout debuts in just two weeks.

6. You’ve probably seen the promos somewhere already, but the “STD for your TV” anti-sitcom It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia starts its fifth season on FX September 17. Season 4 was uneven (to say the least), but when this show is on its game it’s possibly the funniest thing on pay or broadcast TV. The setup is sitcom simple: four deadbeats share ownership of a bar. Everything after that gets perverse real quick:  the bar is a pit, the friends regularly conspire to screw one another over, and bad things inevitably ensue. Nothing is safe, not even cats:

7. Ever follow something you wished were a lot better, but you watch it anyway? ABC’s interplanetary soap opera Defying Gravity has the potential to become a vastly better show than the hybrid it is right now, a flagging and listless affair that could variously be better titled “Lost” In Space or Gray’s Astronomy. The largely talented but somewhat overloaded cast, including Office Space’s Ron Livingston and Dead Like Me’s Laura Harris, struggles with stories that go all over the place but never really gel into anything compelling. That the show is on at all is more evidence of ABC’s weird and self-sabotaging fickleness: they’re willing to develop offbeat shows (this, Life On Mars, The Unusuals) but quick to cancel them if they don’t immediately catch on with the public and critics, as Lost did. Meanwhile the network obviously has an abundance of faith in its new David Goyer-created sci-fi series Fast Forward, the previews of which have “hit” written all over them.

8. To close on another science fiction note, here’s a rarely-seen deleted vignette from the 1982 classic Blade Runner, featuring weary detective Rick Deckard’s (Harrison Ford) hospital visit with Holden (Morgan Paull), the cop injured by replicant Leon’s (Brion James) rocket pistol attack at the film’s beginning. Deckard’s boss (M. Emmett Walsh) and his flunky (Edward James Olmos) watch them on close-circuit television. NSFW warnings are in effect:  

We’ll return next Wednesday. Have a good weekend.

- Michael Kabel

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::