thomas4cinema

Inspector turned repo man Simon Brenner encounters a strange brew of family feud and absurd carneval plot.
The interesting thing about the books and films based on the Brenner character is not necessarily the plot and the whodunnit. It is the very Austrian weirdness of the hero cop (the most worn-down character this side of Bogey, minus the cool, plus some morbid thing that is the Austrian cool, if you know what I mean), based on a whole legacy of Thomas Bernhard, Elfriede Jelinek, Ernst Jandl and Hermes Fettbergs. Austria is different, and so are her crime fighters. And her criminals, for that matter, because the keeper of the inn in which the better part of the movie plays is a pragmatic maniac, able to do everything that is necessary with great stoicism, from pushing his son off the icy road to … well, see for yourself, nasty things with butcher utensils.
The laconic depression of the first “Brenner” movie “Komm, Suesser Tod” remains unsurpassed (“ziehen, net blasen” – “suck, don’t blow”), but on second viewing, “Knochenmann” is on par with “Silentium”, and no doubt will Josef Hader, prime Austrian cabaret / comedian get a chance to play the character a couple more times – after all, the novel Brenner had its resurrection almost at the same time with this movie coming out, when Wolf Haas published the latest installment. More to come, and that’s appreciated.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1181927/

Jean-Dominique Bauby or Jean-Do suffers a stroke, wakes up in hospital with a very limited set of physcial capabilities, but a mind as alert and active as ever. He is arrogant, self-centric, pissed off with the world around himself and in general not a nice guy. With the help of his therapists, he learns some basic survival and communication skills again, and with his ability to express himself, he experiences a satisfaction that may be more substantial what he experienced in his previous life. He starts writing a book by dictating his thoughts to the hospital staff, his family and friends.
Despite its richness, there is very little to say about the film, apart from: it is of dreamlike beauty, with stunning sapia filters and floating camerawork in some of the flashback sequences, with unpretentious medical sobriety in they eye of a shattered body, with lovably tough characters to help the ill former fashion superstar to overcome his self-pity and death wishes. Especially the latter is a wonderful scene, when he is asking the young girl who has been working her butt off to help him get going again to help him kill himself. The incredible insult this constitutes, the ignorance to her self-defiance and sacrfices hits back at him the second he expresses the wish, and Jean-Do cannot but understand for maybe the first time ever that other people have feelings and that he keeps hurting them.
Excellent acting on all parts, especially Mathieu Amalric as Jean-Do, without whose great performance you just cannot do such a film, but equally good, maybe harder self-contained parts by the girls and women around him, the wife, girlfriend and therapists. And the bloke who brings a fur hat and puts it on Jean-Do’s head each time before reading to him is just the right level of comic relief. Masterful music, too. Ah – masterful everything! I heard Julian Schnabel is a complicated self-indulgent… artist. So what, he made this film and he put Johnny Depp into a drag queen dress. He is forgiven!

The film follows the fate of a small village of Germany’s early 20th century. Triggered by a number of accidents and small assaults, the narrator takes us through the characters one by one to provide us with an image of regular life at the time, while setting up a thrilling whodunnit. It is Haneke’s masterful storytelling (with Jean-Claude Carriere supporting the scriptwriting) that this odd combination of period piece, crime story, psychological thriller and cruel relationship drama stays on track. It is hard to say how to judge all these characters that according to modern standards would all be called thugs, villains, sadists, masochists, and what not. The priest is a ghastly patriarch, his hypocrisy exposed in how he treats his and his son’s bird. The doctor is a disgustingly cruel abuser of his the women who help him sustain his life. The administrator almost beats his son to pieces. The farmer leaves his son alone in his desperation. And so on. It is a bleak world in which there are only very few warm-hearted and honest moments, most of them involving the young love between the village teacher and a young maid. The only way out of the misery is to flee, and some do, such as the Baronesse with her children, or the midwive with her handicapped and abused son.
The bleakness culminates in answering not a single of the questions raised during the film –stressing how rarely life offers closure and satisfaction. You may judge life for this, but it does not help yo either.
Brilliant black-and-white photography stresses the bleakness, but actually also allows for stunningly beautiful and eerie images, such as a devastated field of cabbage or a snow-white and crystal-clear winter landscape, the snowfields virgin in a way that hardly can be seen today.
Brilliant movie by one of the world’s greatest filmmakers of the time.

Brian Clough succeeds in turning bottom-of-second division team Derby County into the English champion. His self-esteem makes him successful, but lets him permanently clash with the club owners. One such turns leads into his sacking, and he ends up coaching the arch-rival, Leeds United, whose manager has been promoted away to take over the England squad. The time at Leeds starts as a disaster…
Who does not immediately think of Jose Murinho when seeing the smirking in Michael Sheen’s eyes and grin? He is not the best manager in England, but certainly among the “Top 1”… that sounds like a role model for modern posh coaches. But he is depicted as a torn character, there are doubts, and there is the realisation what he is unable to do. His assistant coach plays an important role in unfolding this vulnerable side of his, and the two stand in the centre of the movie like the good and the evil angel on the shoulders of professional football. Clough seems himself as such a superhuman being that the sheer realisation that some other people can perfectly ignore him (like former Leeds coach Don Revie, who does not even remember why he is supposed to have insulted Clough years ago) shatters his foundations.
Michael Sheen plays brilliantly (again), Timothy Spall as Clough assistant Peter Taylor and Colm Meany as Don Revie (I always have to think of him telling off his family for questioning Elvis’ greatness, sorry…) make this a really enjoyable cultural period piece, with pro-football locker room full of smoke and an ashtray next to every locker, with two-class football mannerism that is probably even worse today, and with the age of innocence ending slowly through the realisation that money does score goals.
I did not know any of the characters to begin with, but that never mattered. At the end, you know them.