TSPDT 2013: Bangiku (Late Chrysanthemums)

The lives of four former geishas.  Okin (Haruko Sugimura) lives only with her deaf-mute maid.  But she wields the most economic power of any of them, and as a moneylender, all the others are in her debt.  Nobu (Sadako Sawamura) runs a bar with her husband, but can’t afford to have children.  Tamae (Chikako Hosokawa) is an ailing widow, and her son Kiyoshi (Hiroshi Koizumi) is unable to find a job and is involved in a questionable relationship.  Otomi (Yûko Mochizuki) is an alcoholic and a gambler, frequently borrowing money from her own daughter Sachiko (Ineko Arima) and squandering it.

Money is a running motif throughout Naruse’s work, perhaps never more so than here.  Most of the conversations revolve around it.  Sachiko is going to marry an older man because he makes more than the young fellas.  Okin constantly hounds her friends to pay their debts, even coming in Nobu’s house from the back door so she won’t sneak out.  There are discussions about who pays for what.  Several shots of cash.  As Otomi says, “Money is everything.”

But Okin gets little comfort from her financial security and secretly envies the others for their families.  There are two men in her life.  Seki (Bontarô Miake) tried to kill her in an attempted double suicide love pact many years ago.  He shows up again but she wants nothing to do with him (and what does he want from her? money, of course).  The one she longs for is her old flame Tabe (Ken Uehara), a hunky who she lost to another woman.  When she gets a letter from him announcing an upcoming visit, she gets giddy with delight and starts primping.  However, Tabe turns out to be a pathetic, passionless disappointment.

And Tamae and Otomi are ultimately disappointed and abandoned by their own children.  There’s no solace in money and there’s no solace in men and there’s no solace in family.  As they assess their lives now, their time as geishas appears to be their glory days, long behind them.  Naruse’s harsh cynicism once again separates him from Ozu, and there’s little room for sentimentality here.

All of the performances seemed pretty good to me.  Sugimura (especially notable for her work with Ozu, but excellent in just about everything) shines brightest, as a character who seems so mercenary at first but wins some sympathy as the movie progresses.  I quite liked Mochizuki as well, who has to do a lot of drunk acting but pulls it off well.

As usual, I was very glad to see Naruse’s work but still have not developed a strong affection for him.  However, not every director has to be a favorite, and I will continue to seek out more of his films, which are always intriguing or rewarding on some level.  Rating: Very Good (83)

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Skhizein

Another short, this one by French animator Jérémy Clapin.  A man is struck by a giant meteorite and he is now exactly 91 centimeters to the left of where he should be.  It’s a wonderful little premise, reminded me a lot of the high-concept work of one of my favorite authors, Italo Calvino.  There’s some clever business involving the man making chalk outlines of everything in his apartment 91 centimeters to the left of where the objects actually are, so he can do things like pick up the telephone.  But in the 12 minutes, Clapin doesn’t go very far with the idea, or maybe there’s just not many places you can go with it.  I also found the animation a bit off-putting, lacking any personality or sense of artistry.  Great concept, so-so execution.  Rating: Fair (67)

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Bakomfilm smultronstället (The Shooting of Wild Strawberries)

Not much to say about this.  It’s about 18 minutes of Bergman’s own behind-the-scenes footage during the filming of Wild Strawberries.  I believe much of it appears in Stig Björkman’s compilation of Bergman footage called Images from the Playground.  Narration was added by Jon Wengström of the Swedish Film Institute, providing some background information.  I don’t think any of it is new to anyone familiar with the film’s production, but he does identify some unfamiliar figures like the script girl, if you want to know that.  The most interesting thing is when it suddenly shifts to color.  Wild Strawberries wouldn’t be the same without Gunnar Fischer’s lovely black and white photography, but it is something of a revelation to see these gorgeous locations in color.

This is one for Bergmanphile completists only, but I always get a bit of a kick out of seeing this kind of stuff.  Rating: Good (71)

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TSPDT 2013: La nuit du carrefour (Night at the Crossroads)

At a tiny country crossroads, Inspector Maigret (Pierre Renoir, director Jean’s brother) is investigating the murder of a jeweler.  The neighborhood consists of merely a gas station and three houses.  The body is found in a stolen car in the garage of the Danish Carl Andersen (Georges Koudria) and his sister Else (Winna Winifried).  In the second house is Emile Michonnet (Jean Gehret) — the owner of the stolen car — and his wife (Jane Pierson).  The third belongs to the gas station owner Oscar (Dignimont) and his wife (Lucie Vallat).  Carl is the primary suspect, though he swears he never saw the jeweler in his life.  Maigret grills him and gets nowhere.  Carl disappears, raising suspicion… but meanwhile the list of potential suspects is growing and growing.

This was the very first movie based on Georges Simenon’s popular Maigret character… the inspector would go on to appear in scads of films and television series.  This is my first encounter with the character (although I have seen adaptations of other Simenon works, including the noir The Brothers Rico and Bela Tarr’s The Man from London) so I can’t say whether or not Pierre Renoir’s portrayal is at all faithful.  He plays it with a slight cynical sarcasm, but mostly all business… observing carefully and picking up on details.  The real star here is Winifried, a sultry, unpredictable femme fatale.

The film has very odd editing, and apparently a reel is missing.  There are a number of unusual cutaway edits.  For instance, when Carl is being interrogated, Renoir will cut away to a newsstand announcing different editions of the paper to indicate the passing of time.  That’s unusual enough on its own, but what makes it really different is that these shots are filmed from gutter level, showing water and trash drifting into the sewer.  There’s also a couple of shots showing Else, for no apparent reason, amusing herself with a large turtle.  All this gives the movie a surreal edge and while the plot is very confusing, it’s an atmospheric piece that’s very moody.  Exteriors are usually smothered in fog, interiors in cigarette smoke.  Many shots have important action in the background.  The film’s roughness feels sloppy, but also enhances the strangeness of it.

The ending features the traditional scene where the detective gathers all the suspects in a room and explains how it all went down.  It’s an unsatisfying conclusion, largely because the plot is so convoluted that it doesn’t feel like anything is really resolved.  But as a filmic experience, it’s an unconventional and delightfully weird diversion with some sly bits of humor.  Rating: Good (75)

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Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted (rewatch)

The film opens with Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern — perhaps as Sailor and Lulu from Wild at Heart, perhaps not — talking to each other on the phone.  Cage is leaving Dern, she pleads with him to stay.  The remaining 40-ish minutes of the film are Dern’s (as “Heartbroken Woman”) dream.  Julee Cruise (billed as “The Dreamself of the Heartbroken Woman”) sings a number of the songs written for her by David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti in a dark warehouse environment.  A pair of dancers (Lisa Giobbi, Félix Blaska) writhe around the scattered scaffoldings.  Michael J. Anderson (the little person from “Twin Peaks”) appears as something like a foreman or ringleader… later he repeats the entire opening dialogue.  A demonlike creature — John Bell in a disturbing costume with stilts, billed as “The Tall Skinned Deer” — is brought to life and appears either menacing or tormented.

Lynch is known for dream imagery in his films, but this is a little too much non-sequitur even for a fan like me.  Or maybe not enough non-sequitur… there’s way too many shots of Cruise on wires, hovering above the stage.  That’s only interesting for so long, no matter many angles you shoot it from.  Visually there’s not a lot of intriguing elements and they’re a bit too disconnected and “random”.

But a huge part of Lynch’s work is the soundtrack, and being a fan of this music helps the immersion process.  Badalamenti’s music and production is deeply hypnotic, a sea of reverb-drenched guitars, lush keyboards, droning rhythms.  Lynch’s lyrics are almost moronically simple, the kind of thing an 8th grade girl might scribble in the back of her notebook… but they have the quality of a heart laid so bare that there is no room for artifice, a haunting sincerity.  And Cruise is a most enigmatic presence.  There’s an unreality to her, like a doll come to life.  Her breathy singing gives voice to Lynch’s childlike sincerity.

Still, the movie (or perhaps more accurately, long-form music video) does try my patience at times.  It really gets cooking about halfway through, with the amazing “Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart”.  The song and the presentation literally gives me goosebumps.  Cruise serenading from the back of a Volkswagen, a dancing chorus line, a pair of prom-dressed backup singers accompanying Cruise via television.  It segues into the strangest segment, with air raid sirens, bombers in the sky, and baby dolls dangling from the ceiling.

Inconsistent, but with occasional moments of that Lynchian brilliance.  A must for fans of Cruise, probably a pass for most others.  Since it’s hard to get a hold of, here is the aforementioned “Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart” part of it.  If you like it, you may want to track down the whole thing.  Rating: Good (76)

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Under the Skin of the City

Tuba (Golab Adineh) has a lot on her plate.  Her husband Mahmoud (Mohsen Ghazi Moradi) is crippled, so she brings home the bacon working in a textile factory.  Her daughter Mahboubeh (Baran Kosari) and son Ali (Ebrahin Sheibani) live at home.  Ali has been skipping school to participate in leftist demonstrations.  Her oldest daughter Hamideh (Homeira Riazi) is pregnant with her second child, and frequently returns home when she’s been beaten by her husband.  And oldest son Abbas (Mohammad Reza Forutan) works as an errand boy for a clothing shop, but has dreams of going to Japan to further his career.  But the visa costs money and what Abbas wants to do is sell the family home, promising that the money he’ll earn overseas would buy four new houses.  Tuba is getting old and dealing with asthma, the last thing she wants to do is move.  And to make matters worse, the girl next door (Mehraveh Sharifinia) is regularly beaten by her brother and when she runs away, Mahboubeh tries to help her… with disastrous results.

This is my first experience with director Rakhshan Bani-Etemad.  Her work — at least in this case – is not as conceptual or original as many of her Iranian contemporaries, but she has a flair for family drama.  There are numerous plot threads and characters to keep track of, but one rarely feels lost.  And the opening and closing scenes, involving a documentary crew, does have some of that meta-ness that makes so much Iranian cinema intriguing.

Overt political commentary is kept to a minimum, but there is certainly a strong feminist viewpoint at play here.  Tuba keeps the family in line, and it’s mainly when people take action behind her back that things start to fall apart.  Despite the fact that she’s bothered by her persistent cough, she works like hell to keep everything together.  The point is made that Iranian women are expected to maintain the household, regardless of whether or not they have a job, and that violence from husbands and relatives just comes with the territory.  When she tries to make an important business transaction, the man tells her he won’t deal with women and she should come back with her husband.

The cinematography is primarily functional, focused mainly on telling the story rather than going for expressive shots (Bani-Etemad did have to fight for one shot, though… of Adineh washing her hair).  It seemed a little on the dark side but that may have been just a subpar transfer.  Adineh is very strong in the central role, showing concern and impatience and love with her children.  She is the type of hard-working, long-suffering mother you can imagine in a family from any culture.  The other actors all manage well enough, although there are moments when Forutan seems to be overdoing it a bit.

Very watchable drama with some incisive social observations.  Rating: Very Good (81)

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Oväder (Storm)

An elderly gentleman (Uno Henning) lives alone with his maid Louise (Mona Malm).  He spends his days chatting with the confectioner (John Elfström) who lives and works downstairs, playing chess with his brother Karl Fredrick (Ingvar Kjellson), and content with his memories.  His young wife Gerda (Gunnel Broström) ran out on him five years ago, taking their young daughter with her.  Now, unbeknownst to the gentleman, she’s back… and living in the upstairs apartment with the child and her new husband.  When Gerda finally faces the man, sparks will fly and old wounds will be reopened.

Yet another Strindberg play directed by Ingmar Bergman for television.  This one feels the closest to Bergman’s own sensibilities.  Henning’s character has constructed his own little world around him, preferring to bask in the past rather than face the humiliation of his reality.  When forced to confront his situation and relive the sour parts of his history that he’d buried, bitterness and pettiness rise quickly to the surface.  The conversation between him and Gerda is a verbal sparring game, an exchange of hurts.

Although some of the actors had minor roles in a few Bergman films, none from his usual cinematic stable are present.  However, there are all very fine performances, especially Henning who works on different layers of self-delusion and keeping up appearances.  As with most of Bergman’s televised theatre works, the production is a bit too stagey for my tastes, but that’s a matter of personal preferences.  The camera blocking is thoughtful and provides some good close-ups.

The “storm” metaphor is way too obvious, but otherwise this is a compelling work with strong acting.  Rating: Very Good (80)

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Girl Walk // All Day

Girl Talk is the musical moniker of Gregg Gillis, a mashup artist.  For the uninitiated, mashup is the blending of two or more pre-existing songs (most commonly a rap lyric over pop or rock music) into a new creation, creating juxtapositions and associations that put the original songs in a new context, finding sounds that mix together well in unexpected ways.  I’ve heard some good mashups and a lot of terrible mashups, but I don’t really follow the scene.  So although I’ve heard of Girl Talk in passing, this is my first exposure to the music… a 75-minute music video of the entire album All Day.  Gillis culls from a huge variety of samples.  In the first 12 minutes alone I heard The Doors, General Public, Ludacris, Black Sabbath, Slick Rick, Beck, Jean Knight, Jay-Z, Electric Light Orchestra, Jane’s Addiction, The Ramones, and Sir Mix-a-Lot, among others.  In general the mashups are quite good, some really interesting pairings (“Paint It Black” w/ “Black and Yellow”) and smooth transitions.  It’s an energetic mix that keeps evolving.

The movie itself consists of “The Girl” (Anne Marsen) dancing through the streets of New York, having occasional encounters with “The Gentleman” (Dai Omiya) and/or “The Creep” (John Doyle).  Occasionally they have interactions with other dancers, and sometimes they just dance around, near, or with the unsuspecting public.  The film loosely sketches a love triangle of sorts, with The Girl and The Gentleman being into each other and The Creep stalking The Girl.  Other “subplots” sometimes develop, like a passerby (another dancer) stealing The Gentleman’s hat.

But the real focus is just the exuberant delight of it all.  Marsen has an irresistible smile as she moves and grooves around the Staten Island ferry, a boutique, Yankee Stadium, parades, et cetera.  Most of the pedestrians stoically ignore her, but the greatest moments are when she gets an appreciative smile or even a dance partner for a few seconds.  Her dancing (and that of Doyle and Omiya) appears to be largely improvised on the fly.  Director Jacob Krupnick is also listed as choreographer, but I assume this is mostly for the more obviously staged parts.

The world needs more things like this.  There isn’t an ounce of cynicism or snickering irony in it.  It’s the delight of unbridled freedom (speaking of “free”, the movie is free to watch at http://girlwalkallday.com/ and the album is free to download).  It’s unfiltered joy.  It’s wild jubilance, it’s soaring happiness.  It’s fun and smiles and silliness.  It’s bodies in nonstop motion.  It’s a heart.  It’s the beat.  It’s the heartbeat of a city.  Rating: Masterpiece (96)

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The Reluctant Fundamentalist

As a young man, Changez Khan (Riz Ahmed) came to New York from Pakistan to find the American dream.  Top of his class at Princeton, he lands a highly coveted financial analyst job, having made an impression on the director, Jim Cross (Kiefer Sutherland).  Soon Changez is valuating companies’ worth and coming up with cost-cutting measures to make them more profitable… i.e., eliminating huge numbers of employees.  Although his artist girlfriend, Erica (Kate Hudson), can’t get past the death of her previous beau, they enjoy a mutually satisfying relationship.  Then the American dream starts to sour for Changez.  Racial profiling in a post-9/11 world makes him a target.  He feels misunderstood by and frustrated with Erica, who he sees as using him for cultural bonus points.  And he grows disillusioned with the work he’s doing.  He returns to Pakistan and starts teaching at Lahore University.  When a fellow professor, an American, is captured by terrorists, Changez is once again a target of suspicion.  He has a lengthy conversation with a journalist (Liev Schreiber), one of many who believes that Changez knows where the American is being held.  The film is set in a Lahore café as Changez tells the story explaining who he is and how he got to be who he is in flashback, while the CIA tries to find the missing professor.

I have to say, this is the weakest feature I’ve seen by Mira Nair.  From what I’ve seen, it’s been a steady decline since her first fictional feature, Salaam Bombay.  It’s not this is a bad movie.  It isn’t.  But it is too blunt, too obvious.  There’s very much a “preaching to the choir” quality to it.  I saw potential in the idea of comparing “fundamentalist” capitalism to fundamentalist religious terrorism, but it’s all stated so plainly that it doesn’t leave the viewer much to chew on.  Who’s really going to disagree that ruthless corporate layoffs are bad?  Or that racial profiling is bad?  Or that sacrificing innocents is bad?  Nair tries to make a nuanced film that doesn’t paint people as black or white (“Looks can be deceiving” is a repeated motif) but it’s all either too scattershot or too didactic.

One moment really stood out to me.  When Changez relates his feelings about 9/11, he says that before the shock and sorrow set in, his first reaction was one of awe, of feeling impressed that someone did something so massive.  This is a bold thing to come out of a protagonist’s mouth.  It’s a sentiment I haven’t seen expressed before, in a movie or anywhere else I can think of.  And I remembered that my first reaction was “Wow, this is huge and crazy” before the awful reality of it sank in.  More surprises like that would have been welcome.  Unfortunately, little about the film is surprising at all.  Most of it plays out in very predictable fashion.  Thus the film felt very long to me, as it was pretty much exactly what I expected it to be.

Ahmed is quite good, though.  He’s also a rapper (“Riz MC”) and has previously shown off his chops in Michael Winterbottom’s provocative The Road to Guantanamo and the uncomfortably hilarious (hilariously uncomfortable?) satire Four Lions.  Here the weight of the film is on his shoulders, and he handles it admirably, even having to deliver some pretty ham-fisted lines.  Sutherland is basically a caricature, although not without some entertaining bits of personality.  Schreiber doesn’t do anything that compelling.  Hudson is a drag, partly because her character is paper thin but also because her delivery feels amateurish.  On a technical level, the cinematography is just fine, and the music is quite nice, although a lot of the lyrics (subtitled) are — much like the rest of the film — too on-the-nose.

If this sounds like a lot of complaining, I guess it is, but I would classify the movie as “okay”.  Its heart is certainly in the right place, and I appreciate that Nair is trying to present some alternate viewpoints.  But mostly it comes off as wasted potential.  There are good ideas here, but they’re lost in an execution that’s too crammed with different themes and too transparent.  Rating: Fair (61)

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Bandini

It is 1934, and Kalyani (Nutan) is serving time for murder.  The prison staff needs a volunteer to take care of a tubercular patient.  The others are too afraid of catching the disease, but Kalyani steps up.  While working with her and seeing her gentle nature, the doctor Devendra (Dharmendra) falls in love with her.  He wants to marry her, but Kalyani turns him away, haunted and guilt-ridden over her past.  The warden (Tarun Bose) tries to talk to her and, unable to speak it, she writes out her story for him.  Back in her village, she had fallen in love with Vikas Ghosh (Ashok Kumar), a freedom fighter watched by authorities… and he had fallen in love with her.  Through a series of events, Vikas had to announce that he was married to her.  Before they could actually get hitched, however, he had to leave… and was never heard from again.  This was the first step on the path to Kalyani’s downfall….

This is decent melodrama.  It relies on some of the farfetched coincidences that are common in Bollywood cinema, and the depiction of the penal system makes it seem ludicrously lenient, but otherwise it stays pretty well grounded in reality.  The film’s structure is unusual… kind of made me think of Mildred Pierce in that it’s a long long time before we find out the circumstances of Kalyani’s murder.  In fact, it’s over 45 minutes before the flashback even begins.

Cinematography is generally quite strong, not genius or anything but there are some nicely expressive shots and movements.  A flashback within the flashback has a heightened sense of style, enhancing the sense that it’s coming from a removed point of view.  Nutan gives a solid and often complex performance, staying very much on tone with nothing hammy.  The other actors are quite fine as well.  As for the songs, I thought they were all very nice and interacted well with the narrative.

I realize this is a rather vague and shallow review.  Truth is, I’ve got another review to write after this one, so I’m trying to keep two different trains of thought/critique in my head.  I’ll just wrap this up by saying that although I didn’t think the movie operated on any especially intriguing levels, I’ve seen much worse from classic Bollywood.  It’s a fine bit of heartfelt drama without any hugely detrimental flaws.  Rating: Good (75)

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