I’ve had it with those streamlined, Oscar-horny biopic bore-fests! To cleanse my system from the standard fare of family-friendly enlightenment, I occasionally need to switch to the less Hollywood narration style infested parts of world cinema. Two separate inspirations helped:
Empire’s “100 Best Films of World Cinema” is a treasure trove for anybody who loves film. A brief check brought about at least 10 films among the top 50 that I have never seen or that I planned to see again for ages. Even some I have never heard of and that sound thrilling (“Come and See”). Let’s dive in!
And then there is the Filmspotting marathons, and currently the Satyajit Ray marathon, that started with Pather Panchali, a film that had been sitting on my virtual book/film shelf since 2010, when it was first recommended to me. And now, one night, after an overdose of “Unbroken” / “Selma” / “American Sniper” / “Imitation Game” etc. mediocrity … this was exactly what I needed. A film about nothing much happening to a bunch of poor and a bunch of less poor people somewhere in Bengal’s (is that how you write it?) countryside. A family scene in all its lovely depiction of the beauty and cruelty of childhood whatever the circumstances. A cruel highlight on the way the oldest generation of a family has to struggle for their role in the modern family, always exposed to the danger of being pushed around or even expelled from the protective family circle. A film about the pressure imposed on individuals and families by tradition and their representatives (“you should have talked to the village elders first”), about self-delusion (“I will go to the city and find the money we need”). Maybe primarily about the casual cruelty of the world, or fate, creating new life and taking away other lives at random and without much caring about the pain and the consequences. Because the wheel of life keeps turning.
The film is shot in calm black and white that looks beautiful despite the slightly crappy transfer on my DVD, the actors are all splendid whatever the part they had to fill. Interestingly, nobody ever qualified (at least to me) as the film’s main character. The family mother needs to shoulder most responsibility, needs to be good guy and bad guy, needs to defend her possibly stealing children against the accusing neighbours, needs to be humble towards those neighbours because she needs their current and future loans. She is suffering most from the downsides of being the unofficial head of the family, with her husband the useless poet and religious functionary being pretty much a bit of decoration in the household, if he is around at all. To me, the film circled around the film’s girl daughter, a lively and unorthodox free spirit bouncing around with energy and wit. At some point late in the film it becomes clear that this may have been a cruel trap set by the script for the audience, and it is not a pleasant moment when you realise you’ve been had. This finale is devastating in many respects, it seems the director wants to shoot a new bullet at you every other minute, as a punishment for having been complacent for the last 90 minutes, for indulging in the illusion of romantic countryside life of simple but satisfied people.
I loved the sentence in Roger Ebert’s “Great Movies” review: “Standing above fashion, [the trilogy] creates a world so convincing that it becomes, for a time, another life we might have lived.” That is true. I felt very much at home there, could relate to just about any of the characters, felt attached to each and every one of them like in an ultra-modern first person immersion game where you can pick the character you want to inhibit.
I do not know whether the following two films that follow the fate of the family’s small son are available, but I will certainly try to lay my hands on them to see whether this level of masterful film making was sustained by Ray.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pather-panchali-song-of-the-little-road/
Review of the whole trilogy:
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-apu-trilogy-1959
The Brits are terribly proud of the story of the Enigma, and claim it is single-handedly responsible for defeating the Germans: at some point, the Allied troops managed to capture a German encryption machine, and after some fumbling about they managed to decode the German wartime correspondence, with relevant consequences for the war outcome. The Imitation Game is about that fumbling. Alan Turing is hired to be part of a team that breaks German codes, and he tries to do so by developing what later becomes known as a predecessor to a modern computer. He does so in Oscar-bait style, with personality disorder and against the resistance of THE BUREAUCRACY, in this case the better part of the British government seeking to shut his operation down when no quick results are being achieved. There needs to be a love interest too, and that’s a pretty and clever lady who needs to work from a different shed in their headquarter camp, because brainy ladies are equally unpopular among the military and secret service and generally the British public school community as gays (supposedly Turing) and Russian spies (supposedly Turing, albeit more for script reasons than anything else, nothing really supports the whole “policeman tries to bring him down story).
, and dishearteningly boring film. I was thinking about why that was, and the only possible answer I could come up with was: as so often, real life just does not deliver the same quality movie scripts than a decent author’s workshop in Beverly Hills or Sundance (even though a lot of talent was involved in fixing this script – even the Coen brothers were at some point hired).
Tom Hardy and James Gandolfini? Sold! Really, there is no need to even tell me a plot synopsis if Hardy is involved, I will check this film out one way or the other. And with Gandolfini… he has cuddled and mumbled himself so well into my comfort zone through not just his Soprano performance, but also the few other things I have seen (In the Loop, Where The Wild Things Are and that most recent performance in “Enough Said”)… I feel very comfortable with the idea of him starring in a film I am about to see anyway. And playing the owner of a dingy bar involved in some Chechnian mafia business? A perfect fit!
The good news is that Tim Burton does not wrap everything in cotton candy in this film about a family of painters with an issue. There is no singing Johnny Depp and no goth-painted what-was-her-name-former-wife-of-his? It is a mostly straightforwardly filmed illustration about the grotesque life of the Keane family. Apparently it is (based on) a true story, one I did not know about. That’s a good thing when going to the movies, of course, the story had all the chances of taking me by surprise, exciting and amusing me.
A struggling artist, working on his ultimate effort, to direct a stage play, a play that will prove him right or wrong, will redeem or destroy him. But the intensity and circumstances of the play makes it increasingly impossible for him (and for the movie audience) to distinguish between play and reality, between play in play and reality, between mindset within mindset, etc.
Whiplash is not subtle, it is probably not important, it may not even be credible or consistent – but it is a hell of a lot of fun, it is a ride! It made me remember that old concept about art: I may not care about the love life of Eskimos, but I am still happy to hear a good story about said love life. Same thing about Jazz: I happily appreciate that it is very difficult to learn and that at least those who perform are very happy about it. Beyond that I try myself in tolerance and physical distance. I would not seek out anything Jazz-related when feeling the urge to be entertained, but it certainly has its characters and its stories to tell. Yet oddly enough, one of my favourite films is about Charlie Parker, and I remember that I was thinking how terrible that music is and why the guy was wasting his talent on it instead of playing some proper music (just kidding… not quite like that… but a bit like that).
It has been discussed and people have been shouting at each other – the summary would be that American Sniper is unable to convey what its message is.
To be honest, I frequently have a hard time understanding America’s problems with facing its own history, and particular issues such as slavery or racism related to this history. Is it really so difficult to discuss the dark sides of one’s own country’s past? I know Japan and China have trouble doing this, but why the US? Is it a matter of being ashamed for what the parents or grandparents did? That is what I do not understand – guilt is not inherited, but responsibility is. If my grandfather committed crimes in war or was a KKK racist, there is no reason why I should be shamed into shutting up about it. The only reason why I personally should be ashamed is if I failed to speak out against war crimes or racism in my own family, or on a larger and systematic scale in my nation, my people, my country or whatever collective concept you apply. I should know better, and I should speak out!
thomas4cinema 
