TOKYO SONATA
Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Known primarily for his
enigmatic, existential horror films,
most notably Cure and Pulse, Kiyoshi Kurosawa revealed
his
versatility in this socially relevant, emotionally pointed melodrama.
With the
same glacial pacing as its predecessors, Tokyo Sonata offered a carefully
observed portrait of a Tokyo family at the height of
global capitalism. Always a
master of tone, Kurosawa effectively conveyed a sense of despair
leavened by
subtle comical and surreal touches, as the fall of the patriarch sent
the
splintered central family in surprising new directions. His attention
to
minute, personal details was matched by his unflinching examination of
how this
brave, new global world has affected long-standing Japanese social
roles and
traditions. The emasculation of the father, rendered amusingly through
his
secret escapades as a janitor, unleashed a newfound sense of freedom
within the
rest of the family. What followed was one of the most unique and
touching final
acts of the year. In confronting the harsh realities of the 21st
century,
Kurosawa perfectly balanced personal and social issues, traversing
unexplored terrain
within both.
BRIGHT STAR
Dir. Jane Campion
The first of two female-helmed films on my top 10, Bright
Star is decidedly the more feminine of the two, exploring the
love affair
between John Keats and Fanny Brawne through sensual visuals and
increasingly
tender encounters rather than succumbing to the typical period piece
fallbacks
of overbearing parents or the constraints of an oppressive class system. Those elements do figure in the story, but
Campion intelligently relegates them to the background allowing for the
interesting dynamic of the duo and Keats’ friend and collaborator
Charles Brown
to flourish. Brown’s attachment to Keats
is a wonderfully complex mixture of admiration, respect, love and
jealousy and
counterbalances Fanny’s far less-grounded yet undoubtedly powerful love
for Keats. Oddly enough, this film ends up being more about Fanny
and Charles than Keats himself, who remains entrapped between friend
and lover, work and life.
A SERIOUS MAN
Dir. Joel & Ethan Coen
The Coen’s latest entry into their increasingly bleak canon
is both expansive and intimate, focused on everyman, or rather
“everyJew”,
Larry Gopnik’s quest for meaning amidst the swirling chaos that
explodes from
his initially innocuous life. The film’s
mantra, “But I didn’t do anything!” embodies its deceptively complex
and
ambiguous (emphasis the “do” or the “anything”?) examination of
religion and
free will. The bar mitzvah scene along with the meetings with the three
rabbi’s
take some scathing swipes at organized religion, yet remain free of
overt
preachiness, even allowing the viewer to, as one rabbi suggests,
“accept the
mystery”. Its deterministic perspective
does force you to examine the greater forces at work in the film. Some
see God;
I, like others, see the Coens coyly manipulating their creations to
stir things
up. And boy, do they ever.
FILM IST. A GIRL
& A GUN
Dir. Gustav Deutsch
Using clips mostly from obscure, silent, and often explicit
films, along with quotes by Plato, Hesiod, and Sappho, Deutsch
constructs his
own unique history of love, lust, desire, and violence on the silver
screen.
Deutsch's editing approach avoids the limitations of chronological or
categorical contextualization by opting instead for a more poetic and
truly
cinematic style of montage and match cuts. Through melding images as
disparate
as nature footage and pornography, he is able to not merely introduce
viewers
to an alternate history of heretofore mostly unseen images, but piece
them
together in support of his overarching thesis on the symbiotic
relationship
between sex and violence in cinema. Beginning with Genesis and ending
with the
apocalypse, Deutsch covers the history of both film and mankind.
Opening images
of minimal avant-garde films and unpopulated nature recalls a primal,
pre-narrative cinema, an art form briefly concerned with movement and
images as
opposed to story. The growth of cinema from this "pure state" is
embodied in the links drawn between often mundane actions, gestures,
glances,
and motions that together form a nearly seamless dance of pure emotion.
With
but a few words, FILM IST. a girl
and a gun outlines the battleground of which
Fuller spoke. While it's far from new to view sex, violence, love, and
death as
inexorably linked, it's both refreshing and invigorating to view such
an artful
rendering.
THE HURT LOCKER
Dir. Kathryn Bigelow
I have no illusions that The Hurt Locker is a truly accurate
representation of the day-to-day lives of a bomb diffusion unit, yet
I’m also
unsure if those burdening Bigelow’s suspenseful, visceral film are
aware of the
functions of fiction. Whatever details are misrepresented or tactical
miscalculations
made within its loose narrative threads, The Hurt Locker, at its core,
captures
the sensation of always living on the edge, each action and reaction
seemingly
a coin flip whose result, at best, keeps your heart beating just one
second
longer. In focusing on the nuts and bolts of the soldiers daily tasks,
Bigelow
avoids pro-war hurrahs and liberal back-patting in favor of the purely
experiential exploits of her characters. No film can accurately
represent the
totality of even one soldiers exploits in war, but here Bigelow gives
us, at
the very least, a peak into the mental and physical stresses of one of
the most
dangerous military jobs out there. And really, creating a wartime film
that
neither toes the line nor displeases the left or the right is a
magnificent
enough achievement on its own.
ANTICHRIST
Dir. Lars von Trier
The notion of women being
intrinsically linked with nature
has been around for ages, but Lars von Trier transforms it into a
nightmare
where She, played brilliantly by Charlotte Gainsbourg, confronts
nature's
terrifying indifference and chaos. The loss of her son, an act given an
almost
comical level of gravitas in the film's prologue, is ultimately seen as
something just as cruel and random as the violent impulses of nature. A lifeless fetus hanging limply from a deer,
a fox eating itself from within, acorns banging ceaselessly against the
metal
rooftop - all part of the natural order, an endless cycle of existence
which
women help perpetuate. He's ultimate act
against She is a rebellion against nature itself, a violent outburst of
frustration and anger at the failure of calculated reason to
successfully deal
with grief, pain and despair. Viewing it as misogynistic is to miss the
point;
von Trier is not representing human behavior, but the nature of
existence
itself, which is laid out bare for all to see. Only a nihilist like von
Trier
could bring such an unflinching vision of the world to light.
AFTERSCHOOL
Dir. Antonio Campos
In a year where Michael Haneke’s The
White Ribbon has
garnered much of the attention of the international press, the young
director
whose work most resembles his actually
does him one better. Campos’ vicious, artful vision
of
disaffected youth may not be revolutionary in its topic matter, but its
pitting
of omnipresent technology against the relentless battleground of the
hormonally
imbalanced hierarchy of high school taps directly into the zeitgeist
without
announcing itself as some sort of defining statement. Campos’s insight pushes past
merely
examining the various technological outlets his precocious teens engage
with
and into the multitude of ways this technocracy shapes their identity.
Centered
around the tragic death of two of the school's students, Afterschool reveals
that the true horror lies in fleeting, superficial representations, be
it the
school-approved memorial video for the twins or students’ own pictures
and
videos that ultimately shape their congregal reality moreso than their
actual personal
interactions. Morality and self-worth have become subservient to
technology, which at first empowers the individual only later to shape
and devour it.
STILL WALKING
Dir. Hirokazu Koreeda
Accumulating a surprising
amount of emotional power as it
goes along, Still Walking
rewards the patient with an array of emotional shades
and experiences, portrayed through carefully framed shots and
performances that
are both exact and naturalistic. Koreeda is masterful at dealing with
the
oppressive effects of memory and the residue of tragedy without ever
bringing
it to the forefront. It reminds me of why I dislike Ordinary People, a film
also about a family dealing with the loss of their son. There are no
explosive
confrontations or blunt psychological platitudes - everything bubbles
beneath
the surface and the pain, guilt and resentment is expressed through
subtle,
passive-aggressive conversations and the most minute of gestures,
glances.
There is one cut in particular that cuts like a knife and embodies the
remarkable control Koreeda has over the material and his actors and how
his
restrained approach allows for individual moments to carry lasting
power
without resorting to histrionics.
TWO LOVERS
Dir. James Gray
For the past 15 years,
James Gray has quietly built up his
auteur credentials in intensely personal, small-scale dramas. Despite
his films'
distinctive New York City settings, Gray has been
far more
popular in France than in the States for
his unique
genre twists. With Two Lovers,
Gray finally struck a chord with American
audiences. Joaquin Phoenix's performance as the damaged, depressed
Leonard was
downright mesmerizing, replete with awkward fragility and hopeful
tenderness.
Gray's keen eye reproduced the sensations of wintry New York City with remarkable
acuteness,
conveying both the warmth and anxieties of the close-knit Jewish family
with
conviction and authenticity. The titular characters, one damaged yet
alluring,
the other traditional yet infinitely compassionate, elucidated
Leonard's mental
state to a degree that far surpassed their undeniably cliché
origins. With Two
Lovers, Gray breathed new life into a familiar setup and
retained a melancholy
tone in line with its protagonist while also instilling the film with a
genuine
humanity that kept it vibrant.
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
Dir. Quentin Tarantino
Marketed as a Nazi head-bashing bit of the old
ultraviolence, Inglourious Basterds proved to be Tarantino’s biggest
curve ball
yet. Not only did he defy expectations
by wrapping his most mature, complex work to date, a film that both
utilizes
and questions the tactics of propaganda, in the packaging of
exploitation
cinema (the title, trailer, etc.), but has, for the first time since
Pulp
Fiction, used structure in a truly visionary and unique way. For a film that promised violence and
thrills, Inglourious Basterds
is anything but, lingering on the array of minute
details of conversation, displaying the importance of language in a war
where
language was entry into the trusting arms of the enemy.
This ode to cinema, complete with detailed
treatments of film-splicing, reel changes, and the chemical nature of
nitrate
film, does not yearn for truth at 24 frames per second but rather
celebrates
everything those 24 frames have made possible. A hodgepodge of fact and
fiction,
extreme violence and thoughtful dialogue, Tarantino takes his audience
through
the extremes of cinematic representation, attempting to milk the art
form for
all it's worth to create a unified statement of everything he holds
dear about
it. Love it or hate it, this is Tarantino's most personal film yet and
quite
possibly, his masterpiece.
Cinematic
Reflections