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Saul fia (2015)
A haunting depiction of what we so easily transform into
"Saul fia" is a unique, extremely powerful and potentially traumatizing cinematic masterpiece. A debut of Hungarian director László Nemes and co-writer Clara Royer, the film is a horribly realistic vision of Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944.
The unfathomable horrors of the concentration camp are shown from a singular perspective: the Hungarian protagonist Saul is a member of the Sonderkommando, a group of typically Jewish prisoners who were afforded extra rations and liberties for assisting in the mass extermination of their fellows. They were executed after their service which averaged around three months.
The film opens as a new shipment of prisoners arrives and is guided by Saul and his peers to the gas chambers. As members of the Sondercommando, their job is to get the prisoners into the chambers with no panic arising, collecting their goods for processing and cleaning up the chambers from signs of genocide by the next batch. They are in a hurry. The Allies are closing in, the amount of destruction is scaled up, just in case. The opening is sickening to watch and especially to listen to.
As Saul cleans the floors of the gas chamber he discovers one young boy has survived the gassing. He is taken to an autopsy after getting suffocated by the doctors. Saul realizes that the boy must be his son, and decides to do anything in order to give him a proper Jewish burial instead of the ovens. We follow Saul on a desperate quest to retrieve the boy's body and escape just long enough for a burial. He also roams the camp for a rabbi to perform Kaddish for burial.
Saul is played by New York -based poet Géza Röhrig. He hasn't acted in anything else for almost three decades and is completely brilliant in what must have been an incredibly painful role. He plays a hollow man, but his hollowness is a force of nature in and of itself. His dead eyes still haunt me.
The entire film is shot with virtually one take. Cinematographer Matyas Erdely's camera follows Saul intensely as he walks through the unfathomable inferno of Auschwitz for two days. Shallow focus shows Saul clearly while his surroundings remain blurry. The aspect ratio creates a claustrophobic box around him. We see all the horror but can't make it out in detail. We hear everything.
I'm not entirely sure about the suggestive approach; it's certainly better than showing everything in focus but in a reduced manner. A clear, realistic depiction of all that we know went on might simply be too much for any audience to bear. Also, one of the most chilling points achieved by the shallow focus is in conveying the complete sense of detachment Saul feels about the things he sees and must participate in. He exists beyond morality, even beyond survival until he reconstitutes through his son. But for his quest, he's already dead. This also shows us viewers how easily we all get detached. People become bodies become waste out of focus. Just like when psychological dehumanization takes effect.
At times the movie feels even tedious while it conveys absolutely incomprehensible cruelty in action. That tedium is intentional. Two hours is enough for one to turn apathetic in the face of genocide. A lesson frighteningly current. And not only in the film's homeland where antisemitism and general xenophobia seem to have emerged as the new normal but also all around Europe as well as the rest of the world. We are weak, fearful and passive, and because of that we can turn into vessels for acts of absolute evil.
"Saul fia" is one of those movies that I find powerful- even masterful- in the extreme but so traumatizing on so many levels that I can't directly recommend it to anyone. It exposes humanity at its weakest, darkest and most dangerously passive, just as it exposes every viewer.
Incendies (2010)
Family tragedy intertwines with geopolitical conflict in masterful ways
Before his arthouse-Hollywood fame Denis Villeneuve adapted Wadji Mouawad's play into "Incendies," a powerful film combining family epoch, mystery, political commentary and psychological drama.
It all begins in French Canada with what is kind of a goofy scene: in the reading of their mother's will twins Jeanne and Simon are tasked with a journey into the Middle East to find out about the secret life their mother Nawal led there before moving to Canada. That's where the goofiness ends. "Incendies" does have the infinitely complex plot structure of the most exciting and challenging thriller, but within that compelling structure lies an intricate web of meaning.
The story alternates between different time levels, illuminating the twins' search as well as the hidden life of their mother. Villeneuve forces overwhelmingly devastating scenes on the viewer, taking his audience to the core of war in general and the conflict in Middle East in particular. This is definitely not a feel good flick; a lot of what I saw made me shake physically the first time around. Still, in the middle of all that hopelessness, all that human suffering and senselessness there are glimmers of hope. Few and far between as they might be they are still bright enough to prevail.
At 130 minute "Incendies" doesn't contain one single unnecessary second. It's tight, emotionally resonant, intellectually challenging and urgently relevant on countless levels. It's not much of an exaggeration to state that this film is about everything in the sense that it covers the levels of individual experience, cultural processes, political workings and humanity in general. And it does it all exceptionally well. Having recently rewatched it after 7 years, I'm again completely dumbfounded.
Rachel Getting Married (2008)
A hit-and-miss exercise in subtlety that hasn't aged as well as one might have hoped
Anne Hathaway has come a long way from her "Princes Diaries" days. Here she gives a gutsy performance as Kym, a recovering drug addict about to face her past as she returns home to her sister's wedding.
All the actors do much for a film that is otherwise a bit directionless. The movie is at its best during a few really strong shows of character interaction backed by plausible dialog. As a whole I'd say "Rachel Getting Married" is a pleasant but slightly underwhelming experience.
Professione: reporter (1975)
Sufficiently mysterious, but is it even too subtle in storytelling?
Antonioni's quietly minimalist approach to storytelling has never really resonated all that well with me. In "The Passenger" his style is very much intact, giving us several good settings, two mysteriously interesting characters and some very nice moments of high quality dialog. But all this in a way I found a bit frustrating.
Maybe I'm too used to today's direct, explanatory style of storytelling and can't read between all the subtleties, as the overall impression I was left with was one of a diluted movie. Still, this is a very smart thriller that has a very real sense of the unknown in it.
The Savages (2007)
These actors could never fail, but this solid film falls a bit short of being something exceptional
With Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman leading, a movie is guaranteed to have some real exceptional acting in it. Such is the case with "The Savages," a quiet drama about two siblings who have to face their father's rapidly deteriorating health.
The movie handles various themes, the foremost being human fragility at different parts of one's life. Fragility is also present in both the main characters' struggle to be writers and create a legacy.
"The Savages" has a well maintained story that has an easily accessible thematic fabric to it, even if it can be called gloomy, even hopeless at times. The film did feel a tad too safe and familiar though, not really taking the kinds of risks that could have made it something truly special.
Juste la fin du monde (2016)
A mediocre play adapted with the vision of a genius
I read Jean-Luc Lagarce's play "Juste la fin du monde" a while back and it didn't really make an impression on me. So I was quite intrigued and just a tiny bit worried when I learned that Xavier Dolan, possibly my favorite contemporary film director, was adapting this to me impenetrable text into a movie.
I had confidence in Dolan's genius and was rewarded beyond expectations. The film is as magnificent as anything Dolan has created before. He has said in interviews that at first reading Lagarce's language- also off-putting for me- didn't impress him but that he discovered its power on second random reading. I'm grateful he did and that he has now shared this discovery with his audience with the aid of some truly superb acting performances.
The very first scene establishes everything with narration by protagonist Louis (Gaspard Ulliel), a successful author who is flying to see his family for the first time in over a decade. Louis is dying. Dolan hides Ulliel's face with shadowy lightning and a cap as well as utilizes close-ups so extreme you can't get a proper feel of a face. The close focus continues in the following scenes of Louis's family, only to very gradually move away as the film progresses.
Greeting Louis are his extravagant mother Martine (Nathalie Baye), his coolly detached younger sister Suzanne (Léa Seydoux), his dominant yet socially awkward older brother Antoine (Vincent Cassel) as well as Antoine's shy, even more socially awkward wife Catherine (Marion Cotillard).
Dolan tends to depict extreme personal conflict in his work, uniting his fiercely dramatic, richly colored and always unique visuals with raw scripts that seem to channel Ingmar Bergman's best work. This also occurs in "Juste la fin du monde".
If you looked at the movie without sound you could mistake it for a regular- if exceptionally well shot and acted- drama about a family uniting with the result of old wounds and conflicts emerging and taking over the scenes. This is indeed what basically happens here, but the dialog, to me so difficult to digest from the pages of a book, makes it all about what is left unsaid. Because even as extreme emotion takes over the characters and bursts out they still can't communicate with each other. Lines that one would expect to convey full, sincere, angry honesty are expressed through awkward, even incomprehensible dialog that only hints at the apparently troubled history of these people.
Louis, as mellow and conciliatory as he acts, seems to be a dangerous catalyst for his family, an antigen they all defend their nest against. This is endlessly fascinating and sold so well by the actors, each and every one of them marvelous. The title becomes darkly ironic, as Louis soon seems to find his impending death a minor problem in his severely dysfunctional family. He connects with Catherine, another outsider and someone who he hasn't met before this one day during which the whole film occurs. "How much time?" Catherine asks Louis, a question that together with the offhand mention of Louis's first boyfriend having passed away from "cancer" establishes the fatal backdrop of the AIDS epidemic.
At first glance "Juste la fin du monde" might seem like a melodramatic shouting match that emerges unfocused and aimless, but I ultimately find it urgently compelling and even insightful through its sustained aversion to a genuine unmasking of characters.
Lagarce wrote the original play in 1990, reportedly to examine his own mortality. He was dying himself at that time and finally succumbed to AIDS in 1994. There is a touching dimension to the script's nightmarish reunion as we sense Louis's need to come full circle, to rediscover his childhood and adolescence, even to assure himself that his already estranged family can survive after he's gone. Death is ever present, and instead of trivializing the personal conflicts it elevates them, because they are if nothing else moments of vitality for people not truly living.
Vals Im Bashir (2008)
Inner turmoil, animated and true
"Waltz with Bashir" is a documentary that uses very unique devices for the genre. And I don't mean only the fact that it's an animation. Fictional movies depicting real life events are often held back by their documentary style, but this one is a documentary elevated by its strongly fictional style of storytelling that leans on its psychologically fascinating structure, artistic visual qualities and effective, often very beautiful soundtrack.
The biggest accomplishment here is the fact that "Waltz with Bashir" isn't only about the historical viewpoints of the Lebanon war and the personal journey presented. It transcends that initial premise and becomes a universal, effective story about conflict, about human nature and our violence.
Gone with the Wind (1939)
A classic of respectable scope, well ahead of its time
So, I've been calling myself a movie buff for ages, but it took me to get to the tender age of 23 to see one of the greatest classics in the history of cinema. I must say I was pretty impressed. The film has some outdated touches of the theatrical and romantic, but much less so than I expected. It's also interesting how the main character of Scarlett O'Hara- nicely portrayed by Leigh- is so very unsympathetic, almost an anti-hero. Still, Scarlet is a strong and interesting character who gains depth throughout the film. She goes from being a detestable manifestation of a privileged, unproductive lifestyle to an independent, even cruel persona full of determination and courage.
This one was at its best when depicting the cruelty of the American civil war, when the focus of the story was less on relationships and more on the agelessly political.
Fanny och Alexander (1982)
The master of the intimate uses broader strokes with mixed results
A very broad story for Bergman, "Fanny & Alexander" contains a load of interesting themes and ideas, ranging from religion to sexuality to aging and the difficulty of growing up. It's visual style glows in warm tones of red, and the cavalcade of characters is diverse, with some nicely applied magical realism to spice things up even further.
I did feel that the film kept the viewer at too great a distance to its characters, which are left a bit thin and vague for my taste. Could this be due to the alleged autobiographical components? Furthermore, I felt that the storytelling wasn't as tight or sharply directed as in Bergman's best masterpieces.
Dune (2000)
Slightly stiff but compelling
Frank Herbert's "Dune" series is one of the most respected science fiction epochs of all time. The saga begged to be adapted into a drama and in 1984 master director gave us a 2 hour feature of the first book. The project was plagued by creative restrictions, leaving both Lynch and audiences disappointed with the final product.
In 2000 Sci-Fi Channel adapted the same opening book into a five hour miniseries. The project was helmed by director John Harrison backed by a big-for-TV budget. The result is a visually extravagant and experimental drama with a grandiose scope. I watched it all in one sitting and was completely engaged throughout the experience.
Harrison has reached a unique and beautiful tone with a magnificent visual look and dramatic music and the actors do for the most part solid work. Alec Newman doesn't quite have the charisma of a messianic character, but the script doesn't give him as much to work with as one might have hoped.
The characters overall are left a bit distant, the situations coldly surreal. I found myself preoccupied by the look and the tone and not horribly engaged with the story and the drama itself. The plot moves forward painfully slowly at times, but there are so many wonderful details to enjoy that it's almost worth it. And as is the case with the source material, the religious and political themes are universally relevant and well presented, even though we experience them on a rather large scale, removed from the experience of the characters.