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Reviews
La otra conquista (1998)
Madre de Dios
La Otra Conquista is the first film to share the events of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire. Surprisingly, one might think that with the millions of movies already made that someone would have already decided to expose this war to the light of present-day movie goers. It seems like most filmmakers are magnetized to WWII, and somehow this informal war has been overlooked. It makes me wonder why that is. I believe that it is because it is another kind of war, one that is fought after bloodshed and violence, an internal struggle for peace, for freedom of religion. I have to admit that although I knew of this event, before this movie, I had never realized what Carrasco had. His dedication to bringing this vital, yet somehow overlooked and forgotten, piece of history to our attention is utterly inspiring. It has an underlying renegade spirit in the making of the film and the film's story itself. It is a movie that many did not want people to view at all and if so then not in the way Salvador envisioned. Despite setbacks, roadblocks, and time, it was made and changed people all over the world. And isn't that what film should be about? With all of the garbage out there, people have become used to being fed nonsense, overly glamorized versions of events starring the same old actress or actor. The public has developed an insatiable hunger for celebrities and has forgotten or has never been privy to the essence of quality film-making. It is rare that a director will throw his whole life into a project without a huge dollar sign lingering in his mind. The Other Conquest takes us back to the heart of film. With superior acting, enchanting art direction, concise editing, imaginative directing, and superb dialog. The film is wonderfully numinous at times and bitterly cruel at others. I recommend, after watching it at least once, to watch it with the director's commentary on. Once you hear the commentary, you will be able to fully appreciate the depth of thought put into the film as well as Carrasco's vast knowledge of the history of the conquest.
Qian li zou dan qi (2005)
Unforgettable
Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles is a lovely tale about a father who, knowing nothing about his son's adult life-aside form the fact that he is dying-decides to finish what he thinks his son has started with the utmost care and desire to complete. The film speaks about what people will do to regain the love they lost and how the journey is almost more precious than the destination.
Mr. Takata leaves his life in Japan to see his estranged son who is has liver cancer and is dying. when he arrives at the hospital, he is coldly rebuffed bye his son. His daughter in law, Rie, gives him a tape that his son, Ken-ichi, made. With the tape he discovers that his son has a passion for Chinese folk opera and impulsively resolves to travel to china to film ''riding alone for thousands of miles'' for his son. It is interesting that Yimou never shows Ken-ichi, and it is necessary to give the audience the same feeling of longing that Mr. Takata feels, the same feeling of distance and separation. Also, refraining from free-flowing emotions evokes the strict composure of Japanese culture.
Upon traveling to china to finish the video, Ken-ichi's father discovers that he is not the only man who has an imperfect relationship with his son. His journey takes him outside of his shell and into another world. After his wife died, he escaped by disappearing from his son's life and what he knew to be his own. By connecting another father and son he, in a way, heals himself.
Much like life, the film is funny and endearing, although gloomy and depressing at times. I liked watching this movie because I felt relaxed and drawn into the story. The scenes where Mr. Takata is staring out into the ocean especially calm me. The rhythm of those scenes coupled with the sound of the beach gave me a the feeling of being there. I like the that the title is the title of the play that Mr. Takata journeys to capture. The plot of the play reflects his own situation because he also travels alone for thousands of miles to help someone (really himself more than his son). I recommend this film to those who enjoy subtlety in story-telling.
Viskningar och rop (1972)
Cries and Whispers
Viskningar och rop was a difficult film for me to watch. Although the story was beautifully filmed and told, it affected me on a personal level. I have two sisters and have hidden the fact that am bisexual from them for most of my life. Even though I love them, they often have skewed values. Although I doubt they would be as cold to me if I were dying, I do feel that they would not be comfortable with it at all, possibly even shying away in fear. I see deathas a transformation in which one leaves this life for the next. To me, death is a sacred experience and one in which family and loved ones should come together and feel comfortable, if they haven't been able to do or be so at any other time. I also connected with Agnes' character because she seems to truly value life and people-even if she cannot fully participate-as is more usually the case with those who are dying, while her sisters seem preoccupied with upholding boundaries and facades. I am not sure if Agnes is also the middle sister or not, but if so, that would further explain the complications of the relationships between the sisters and my connection to the film.
Aside from the personal connection I have with this film, the issues it deals with are poignant, and the way it is shot brings out that mood. The close-ups demolish what most audiences are used to. Instead of showing the characters with an unattainable flawlessness, the close-ups reveal the indelible mortality and humanity of the characters, showcase their wrinkles, the raw, pink moistness of their tear ducts, the yellow of and cracks in their teeth, the fragility of the veins in their eyes, and the fleshy ridges of their nostrils. The close-ups show what the plot shows: The difficult truth exists beneath the surface of appearances and appears the closer that one gets to an issue or person.
This movie delves into something that almost everyone can relate to: the intricacies and horrors of family relationships. It touches upon unhappy marriages, secret relationships, self-mutilation, verbal, psychological and physical abuse, death, and love. It is interesting that the closest person to Agnes is the maid Anna. Theirs is the most "normal" relationship. Ironically, it is also the least acceptable considering that it is a lesbian affair. Bergman seems to criticize the assumed infallibility of more usual relationships. Throughout the madness of the film, the few calm and real moments seem to come when Anna comforts Agnes by touching her, pressing her against her bare chest, and listening to her, even when she comes back to life after the funeral proceedings. The dysfunctional relationships are between man and woman in a lawful marriage. In those relationships there is a gelid hatred which dominates and subordinates the feelings which most would like to attribute to marriage.
This film is not for everyone. I've rented this film and have yet to bring myself to watch it again. I love it, but am hesitant because of its intensity. It illustrates just how disconnected we are from each other and ourselves-especially our past. Although we can see it clearly, we cannot touch it and find it difficult to know where to begin to heal from it. We are left with our painful memories and without much knowledge of how to resolve our disconnection from the people we are closest to.
Le fantôme de la liberté (1974)
Are you sick of symmetry?
Le fantôme de la liberté is truly a unique film. That, of course, is one of Buñuel's many gifts to the development of film grammar. Because of his innovations, he has often been copied. However, a copy is rarely, if ever, as striking as the original. In this film, he plays with more boundaries and tests our perceptions and assumptions about what is and is not proper, including the way stories are told. By linking many different scenes, characters, and short episodes together in different ways, he pokes fun at our traditions, culture, and taboos. He weaves situations together through dream-logic. Sometimes one story will be within another, and other times a character from one story meets one from another, and the camera abandons the previous story for the next. There is, to be sure, a larger story and message presented. For example, the first episode shows an execution in 1808, and the last shows a present-day riot where people are shot. There is a question being asked by comparing these two episodes. How much progress have we made over the centuries? Beyond the important points being made in this film, it is highly entertaining, funny, and aesthetic. Part of what is amusing about it is that I found myself laughing at myself after expecting something specific and finding that I was making assumptions based on my stereotypical thinking. Also, the way he strips characters down, making them all too human, is hilarious. One example of this is the scene in which the monks are gambling, smoking, and drinking. This also points out the hypocrisy of religion. I recommend this film to everyone because in it Buñuel and Carrière break up the routine film formula and simultaneously entertain the audience.
Idi i smotri (1985)
Come, see.
Klimov's Idi i Smotri, or Come and See, is a unparalleled psychotropic anti-war film. It follows a boy through his induction into the partisans of Belorussia during WWII and their resistance to Nazi occupation. What is most effective about the message of this anti-war film is that there is not a single moment which glorifies or glamorizes violence. Instead, Klimov shows the actual effect of the war on one person in one village. Both are microcosms of the effect the war had on many people and places. To see this awful tale unfold, and then to know that this was but one of so many, is utterly haunting. Of course, to draw the viewer into the world of Florya, the young boy we follow, Klimov must tackle and take hostage our disassociation with the film.
To pull us into a suspension of disbelief, Klimov evokes the five senses, thereby, taking the viewer into the past. He manipulates sound to make us feel powerless, taste to disgust us, smell to perturb us, sight to horrify us, and touch to connect us.
From the moment it begins you feel unsettled by a young boy, with the raspy voice of an old man, helping another boy, Florya, to find a gun. The one he locates is still attached to a corpse. His grueling transformation leaves him like the young boy who helps him in the first scene, a boy with the literal and figurative wrinkles of the elderly.
I have seen this film four times and recommend it to every person who is interested in film. Albeit disturbing and morose, I cannot shake its effect. I find it difficult to use a word to describe it. It is a phenomenal picture, but to say it is wonderful is awkward. What it depicts is too atrocious to call it a wonderful film. It is a necessary film, one which should be watched. What I can say to complement it is that the techniques are groundbreaking and the rhetoric is flawless.
Dom za vesanje (1988)
An ardent tragedy.
Dom za vesanje is a coming of age story in a destitute region of Yugoslavia. From the first scene where a disheveled man speaks directly to the audience, breaking the 4th wall (perhaps a tribute to French New Wave), it is evident that this movie is going to break up practical time, space, and reality.
I adore this film for many reasons: the dream sequences, the symbolism, the leitmotifs, the life lessons, the music, and the focus on natural beauty. Kusturica tells a story that brings attention to a group of people commonly cast in a negative light.
The scene in which the St. George's festival takes place is most important, and I believe that is why it is the scene in which Goran Bregović's ardent Ederlezi is fully played. The scene symbolizes the loss of innocence and the destruction passion can bring. It begins with Perhan floating down to the water. This plays with the audience-unsure if he's dreaming. What I feel is being portrayed is the idea that sometimes it feels like we move from one day to the next almost instantaneously. One moment we are dreaming, and the next, we are somewhere else. Kusturica expresses this idea quite poetically through this transition. Because Perhan's and Azra's virginity is lost here, this scene signifies a major shift in the story. At the end of the film, we discover that it did happen for that was when they made love. The entire community is gathered in celebration, playing with fire, we see Azra burning Perhan's name onto the flesh covering her ribs, Haditza crying as she stares out across the water, and then Perhan and Azra floating carelessly and euphorically away as a fire burning on the water crosses our view of their raft. The latter is one of many foreshadows and symbols for what is to come because fire is a symbol of creation, sustenance, and destruction.
The first use of foreshadow occurs at the very beginning of the film when a bride is unhappy about her husband being drunk, unsatisfied that her wedding did not turn out as planned. Discontent with plans going awry is one theme in the film. The biggest upset, central to the main storyline, is Danira's supposed trip to the hospital. Another example is when Perhan plans to buy his uncle a small television so that he can, 'have the world in his hands.' Later, at Perhan's wedding a sullen Merdzan is shown watching the television which plays static or what may be a screen test. It seems that nothing goes as planned-a life lesson for all. The second use of foreshadow occurs at the beginning of the film when a pregnant girl's mother confronts Haditza about her son Merdzan's promiscuity, 'he's sleeping with the whole town.' We are so wrapped up the hilarity of Haditza's response that we do not later recall this and stop to wonder what threat Merdzan's zany and, yet, distraught recklessness may pose to an absent Perhan. Merdzan's character is a foreshadow and a symbol. He represents the effect war, poverty, the loss of a spouse, and gambling can have on a person's rational judgment. The symbolism lies in the effect of war and poverty on all Yugoslav's. The foreshadowing pertains to Perhan's eventual loss of his spouse and his gambling with his sister's, and his own, life, in hopes of fixing his and Danira's life.
Many facets of Yugoslavian life are symbolized within various leitmotifs throughout the picture. There are weddings, fires, veils, and box-like structures. An often overlooked leitmotif, and most telling in that, is the use of box-like structures: cardboard boxes, houses (which can be lifted as easily as cardboard), and the water closet. They are used for security, protection, games, and privacy. Yet, it is all an illusion. To live in that time and place was to be vulnerable.
There is a sense of closure at the end of the film. When Perhan died, I did not feel as upset as when Azra died. Because her death was untimely and without emotional closure, it was uncomfortable and heart-rending. However, Perhan was able to tie up all of his loose ends. He came to terms with the fact that Azra was not lying. When he sees the veil around the lamp it feels like he recalls the vision of his mother and her veil, and so sees Azra as his mother and, therefore, Azra's child as himself. The way they look at each other as she passes away is evidence enough of this and did not require dialogue for clarification. Next, he rescues Danira and his son and sends them back home to Haditza. He, and the audience, further recognizes the child Azra bore as his son when the son makes a prescient statement to Perhan, indicating that he knows that he is not coming back and that he will not see him again. Finally, he uses his 'useless' talent to get revenge on Ahmed. Additionally, Perhan's son, also named Perhan, replaces his father. That and the agelessness of Haditza, Danira, and Perhan during the four years of his search are the strongest examples of a timeless quality within the film.
There is so much more to be said about this film's brilliance, even that which was unintentional. It is, in itself, a foreshadowing of the Yugoslav civil war. One line, barely noticeable, struck me as a hidden criticism of the state of things. When Danira is being wheeled away at the hospital, the doctor says, 'comrade Tito will take care of you.' It is a haunting line. More telling of the problems with the living situations is that the only lucrative profession in the film requires reducing other Gypsies to goods, selling them. The characters must turn on each other to survive. After all, the literal translation for the title is A Time for a Hanging.
Moznosti dialogu (1983)
Think harder.
Moznosti Dialogu can be translated as Dimensions of Dialogue or Possibilities of Dialogue. In either translation the idea that there is a depth of interpretation within the exchanging of ideas remains. The three "act" film by the casual and uninterested eye is assumed to be beyond reason and seen as merely a smörgåsbord of materials arranged and rearranged to create a stunning art show. However, to those who understand that in the time it was made in Czechoslovakia that there was no purpose for purposelessness-no time to be frivolous-the film is speaking volumes about culture, the plight of humanity, and politics. The very fact that most people are stumped or drawn to simple interpretations when asked to explain it means that Svankmajer, a modern-day Melies, did exactly what he set out to do. Unable to risk speaking openly against the Socialist regime, he had to work his magic under the guise of Dadaism and Surrealism.
The three parts, according to their titles, deal with different types of communication: discussion, discourse, and conversation. The theme is destruction resulting from interaction.
The first and most cryptic part is entitled Exhaustive Discussion, and it explores the interplay of three revolutions: the agricultural, industrial, and informational. Although the only one that is usually seen as a revolution is the industrial revolution, I believe that they are all revolutions in their own right for the changes that were implemented and their intermingling with one another had a significant global impact.
Materials are arranged in the shape of a human profile. There is one comprised of vegetables and grains, another of tools and machinery, and a third of writing and calculation materials. The first collision is between the face of agriculture and the face of industry which march towards one another, chomping hungrily, amidst triumphant battle-like music, which set the musical tone for the rest of the film. This continues a few more times, as each face's materials progressively break down into mush.
Eventually, these revolutions become an indistinguishable pastiche of food, machinery, and intellectual tools. What results from their regurgitations is a realistic clay face. Finally, instead of creating an opponent, it creates duplicates of itself, procreating alone. The idea is that through the amalgamation of these staples of our evolution we see ourselves as refined humans, although to progress we had to fight, coalesce. But does the end justify the means? Did the exhaustive discussion bring about progress or was something raw lost in the merging and streamlining of each unique form of sustenance? Of course, another more timely interpretation could be anti-socialist propaganda. Through the merging of separated industries, real people will emerge. It is inevitable that a battle will occur when people are divided and seen as mere faces of production. Thus, only through a cataclysm will humanity prevail as such. The fighting will later be replaced with a focus on procreation rather than toil.
The second and least cryptic part is entitled Passionate Discourse, and it explores the interplay of relationships in a literal manner. The type of relationship is what the multiple interpretations can be based upon. It could be a romantic relationship, however I am apprehensive about seeing as such because it seems too easy. Another likely option is that it is a creative collaboration expressed by the metaphor of a romantic relationship. As I wonder how this part could be speaking out like the others against Socialism, I know that the last interpretation I can muster up might be a stretch.
The romantic relationship theory works well enough to satisfy most people's curiosity. A man and a woman make love, a child is born, neither wants the responsibility, and their fighting leads them into a physical confrontation in which they destroy each other. A deeper look reveals that this could show us a creative endeavor gone wrong. Neither would like to claim the finished article, and in their disgust over creating it, forget all their original feelings in order to vent their frustrations. Or could it be that this is a metaphor for powers coming together with apparently similar interests, reveling in oneiric ideologies, what they see as their brilliance, and then when they realize they have created something that is apart from them, different, neither want to deal with it. They try to ignore it, and when they cannot, when it cries out for help they pass the buck to the other collaborator. Eventually, when they see they cannot rid themselves of the nuisance of the unexpected aftermath of their irresponsible political intimacy, they rage against each other until nothing-no one-is left.
The third seems the most likely because I must continue to consider the political problems roiling within the Czech Socialist Republic. In addition, the title adds a tone less indicative of love. Passionate Discourse signifies a formal yet emotional exchanging and debating of intellectual ideas. That sounds like politics to me.
The final piece, a middle-ground of oracularity, shows two male heads made of clay. It is called Factual Conversation.
The two busts begin by supplying each other with what the other needs. This continues smoothly with various combinations until they switch places. Then everything goes wrong and they do not supply each other with what is needed. They switch places a second time and unfortunately, each supply each other with the same thing. They then begin withering. By the end, they have both collapsed in exhaustion.
What is being said is that when people are assigned to take on tasks that others were fine doing to begin with, they will not be as successful, if at all. In trading places, harmony and, thus, productivity is lost. This relates to Socialist ideology because the state controls what a person does and does not do for work, negating the individual's talent or penchant for a particular task.
If you think harder and listen more intently, you will hear what is being whispered.