An Iranian film winning an Academy Award? That might seem unlikely given the high tensions existing between our countries, but this excellent drama did take the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
The film, written and directed by Asghar Farhadi, has nothing to do with politics or international intrigue. Rather, it’s an intimate story about the collision between two families, and how a seemingly minor dispute rises into a life-changing event for both clans.
Nader (Peyman Maadi) is young in age but old-fashioned in his traditional beliefs about family. He is dismayed that his wife Simin (Leila Hatami) wants to leave Iran, and is suing for divorce because of his refusal to leave. Their young daughter is caught in the middle.
Nader’s father is suffering from dementia and needs to be looked after constantly, so he hires a lower-caste woman, Razieh (Sareh Bayat). Her husband Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini) is unemployed and ill-tempered.
Razieh and Nader get into an argument, there’s some shoving, and the next thing Nader knows he’s under arrest and charged with a serious crime. The two families end up hashing out their differences in a tiny, sweaty courtroom.
A big movie about seemingly small things, “A Separation” is first-rate storytelling, from a culture that remains largely a mystery to most Americans.
Extras are the same for DVD and Blu-ray editions, and are a little scant in scope but hefty in their impact.
Director Asghar Farhadi provides a feature-length commentary track. There are also two featurettes: “An Evening with Asghar Farhadi” and “Birth of a Director,” which explore his development of this film and evolution as a filmmaker.
The sort of psycho-sexual thriller that Alfred Hitchcock only wishes he could've made in his era, "The Skin I Live In" is the best film in a decade by the Spanish auteur, Pedro Almodóvar.
This wild, kinky story is about an obsessive plastic surgeon named Robert (Antonio Banderas) who has a woman cooped up in his country mansion. Wearing only a nude skin-tight bodysuit, Vera (Elena Anaya) is a walking enigma, observed through a barrage of video cameras.
Is she Robert's lover? His prisoner? His patient? Perhaps, somehow, all three?
Vera is anguished, having just attempted suicide as the story opens, but the strange new skin Robert has grafted onto her is nearly impervious to her knife slashes. Things get even stranger when a malevolent interloper invades their sanctuary, and makes lascivious overtures toward Vera.
This story is intercut with flashbacks to a few years ago when Robert and his teen daughter struggled to come to grips with the self-inflicted death of his wife. It's a thorny bramble of a story, leading the audience into temptation and chaos even as we draw closer to the answers to the film's mysteries.
What a weird, wondrous journey.
Extra features, which are the same for Blu-ray and DVD versions, are decent enough without being transformative.
The highlight is a collection of seven making-of featurettes that come together to give an extensive behind-the-scenes peek at the filmmakers' process. True, a feature-length commentary track would've been better. But coupled with a video Q&A with Almodóvar, viewers can get a pretty good insight into the Spaniard's creative process.
There is also an "On the Red Carpet" featurette at the movie's New York premiere.
"A Separation" continually surprises and astonishes with its depth and authenticity. This drama about two families caught in a legal and moral conflict that threatens to destabilize both clans just won the Oscar for best foreign language film, and deserved to.
Because this is an Iranian film, it adds an extra layer of context to the travails. Our two nations have grown used to accusing each other of wildly malicious intentions, some valid and some fabricated. After more than 30 years of this, we've become accustomed to thinking of the other people as exotic and unreasonable.
The film, written and directed by Asghar Farhadi, is entirely apolitical in message and theme. Its conflict is between families, and between the personalities within those families. It is a tale of relationships grown frayed, of affection that has been misplaced but not forgotten.
As the story opens, Nader (Peyman Maadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami) are divorcing after 14 years of marriage. Simin wants to leave Iran for reasons that are vague, but mostly having to do with finding a better life for their 11-year-old daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi). The child refuses to leave her father's side, and Nader seems to think his wife is bluffing about breaking up their family.
Complicating things is Nader's father (Ali-Asghar Shabazi), who is elderly and in the end stages of Alzheimer's. Suddenly a single parent, Nader must hire someone to look after his dad. Simin uses her contacts to find Razieh (Sareh Bayat), a lower-class woman with a young daughter.
Razieh is not comfortable with the job -- the commute is long, the pay is low, and her religious beliefs put her in a quandary about changing the old man out of his clothes after he has soiled himself. After one day, she tells Nader she must quit.
But then she has an idea: her husband Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini) is an unemployed cobbler. Nader meets briefly with the man and agrees to hire him. But the next day Razieh shows up again, explaining that Hodjat has been put in jail by his creditors. Despite her reservations, she agrees to keep coming until her husband can work.
Then something happens. At first it seems fairly innocuous -- an argument, a push out the door. Nader can hardly believe when he is arrested and charged with a very serious crime. Soon Simin and Termeh are embroiled in the case.
What is most genuine about Farhadi's tale is his refusal to portray anyone as a villain. Even Hodjat, who is hot-tempered and at some point in the past beat his wife, is portrayed as a man devoted to his family. Razieh struggles to balance the needs of her situation, her spouse and her faith.
Nader is a good and decent man, and proud -- too proud. He refuses to seek reconciliation with Hodjat and Razieh because he is convinced he has done nothing wrong. Even after he compromises the principles he has worked so hard to instill in his daughter, Nader thinks of himself as the good guy.
Hardest to peg is Simin. In her own way she is as vainglorious as Nader; we sense that if he were to ask her to return to him, she would. But she needs to feel needed. She finds herself getting more and more involved in Nader's legal troubles than an ex-wife ought to.
I was intrigued by the depiction of the legal system in Iran, where the aggrieved parties are shut in a small room with a judge/interrogator. Lacking lawyers, they argue and bicker while the judge attempts to puzzle out the pieces. The women even seek each other out between hearings to try to find a solution.
Adherents to our American jurisprudence structure might be appalled, but I can't help thinking their way boasts some benefits our system lacks. At least when people can confront their accuser, there is a chance to see how your antagonist thinks and feels.
"A Separation" is a bold and gripping portrait of the ways in which we come together, and how we isolate one another.
If Alfred Hitchcock were making movies in 2011 instead of mid-20th century, he might very well have concocted something like "The Skin I Live In." It's a stylish sexual thriller that takes much of Hitchcock's obsessive voyeurism toward the female form and dials it up to 11. Think "Vertigo," and layer on a whole lot of kinky, fetishistic behavior.
It's a highly disturbing film, and wonderfully so.
Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar -- one of the few filmmakers today who deserves that description -- delivers one of his most original and nightmarish visions. Based on a novel by Thierry Jonquet, it wears the clothes of a mystery/thriller, but like most of Almodóvar's movies the outer layer is just dressing for deeper and darker themes rumbling underneath.
The story opens with a wealthy and driven plastic surgeon, Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas), who has a woman locked up in a room of his remote mansion. Is she his prisoner? A patient? A caged bird he desires for himself? Perhaps all of these?
Known only as Vera, the woman (Elena Anaya) wears a strange, skin-tight bodysuit that hugs every inch of her body in a cocoon that is both protective and confining -- even her fingers and toes are tightly encased.
Vera is obviously unhappy: Robert returns home to find her having attempted to slash her wrists and chest. Curiously, she has been very unsuccessful in damaging herself. We soon learn that Robert has spent years perfecting a new replacement for human skin that is resistant to burns and cuts.
Because he achieved this miracle through transgenesis -- combining human and pig skin cells -- his work is forbidden and, therefore, kept strictly secret. His only confidant is his servant Marilia (Marisa Paredes), who has been with the family for decades and is privy to, or part of, all of the Ledgard secrets.
Things really get strange when a man named Zeca wearing a tiger costume for Carnival shows up on the doorstep, and eyes Vera with an animalistic lust.
Clues are dropped like so many bread crumbs in the forest -- are they leading the audience to the answer, or luring us further into a bramble of temptation and madness? Either way, the journey is delectable.
The action suddenly switches to years earlier. Robert's wife, horribly burned in a car accident, kills herself in front of their daughter, Norma. Later, at a wedding party Norma will meet Vicente (Janet Cornet), a charming young rake whose actions will set them all on the path to tragedy.
I cannot say more for fear of ruining the filmgoer's experience. Suffice it to say that all I have described is mere prologue.
Almodóvar, known for pushing boundaries, blows past many of them with this daring vision. Anaya spends almost the entire movie either nude or in that odd bodysuit, and at one point during her transformation wears a translucent mask with a cross-like cutout for her eyes and mouth, too.
The director and his cinematographer, José Luis Alcaine, shoot with bold close-ups and crisp images, so sharply defined it seems everything is lit up like an operating theater. But with splashes of warm color, the feel is anything but sterile -- the visuals are vibrant and breathtaking.
The film's only weakness is that the main character remains something of a cipher. But then, at some point we come to question who exactly is the protagonist.
"The Skin I Live In" is a wonderfully twisted cinematic expedition into territory rarely traveled.
"Certified Copy" is a truly an international film. It's a French, Belgian and Italian production, set in Tuscany, spoken in interweaving languages of Italian, English and French, and was written and directed by Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami.
The reality of the story shifts with the languages, and if we spend all our time trying to discern the puzzle of its plot, we won't be able to fully enjoy its subtle charms. The acting is extraordinary, by Juliette Binoche and William Shimell, and in the end we stop trying to understand the film and simply embrace the fact that it is true to itself, rather than any conventional understanding of narrative veracity.
That is the nature of the story, at least to start with. James Miller, a British author, has just written a new book bearing the same title as the movie, arguing that the distinction between an art forgery and the original is unimportant. Both should be embraced for their value as objects of beauty, not as commodities.
Miller gives a talk in an Italian city. He is middle-aged, handsome and charming in a detached, slightly cool way. What's extraordinary about Shimell's performance is that it is his first film role -- he's an opera singer by trade. I hope he makes more movies: His voice aside, here is a performer fully in control of his instrument.
Attending the speech, but leaving it early, is Elle -- although I don't believe we ever actually hear her name spoken. She is a harried single mother whose 11-year-old son seems to delight in teasing and vexing her. After forcing her to leave the author talk early to buy him a cheeseburger, the boy gleefully says he hopes she will marry Miller.
Indeed, they have a date set. An dealer in art and antiquities, Elle arranges for Miller to meet her at her shop to talk about his book. He suggests they go for a drive, and she takes him to a remote town to look at a revered painting that was later discovered to be a forgery. She thinks he'll be thrilled, but he's rather indifferent. Miller talks about embracing the emotional, sentimental nature of art, but he seems to have to summon it up for himself.
Their journey takes them to a cafe, where a curious thing happens. While Miller steps away to take a call, Elle talks with the Italian shopkeeper about the relationship between husbands and wives. The older woman (Gianna Giachetti) has mistaken Miller for her husband, and Elle does not correct her. She relays this to Miller when he returns, and from that moment on they talk and behave as if they are actually a married couple who have been together 15 years.
Are they pretending? Carrying on a charade to amuse themselves? I don't think so. Miller had stated unequivocally that he did not speak French or Italian, and yet he suddenly starts conversing in them flawlessly.
Whether pretend or not, their marriage is not a happy one. His work consumes him, taking him away for months on end, and she resents the way he acts as a visitor in the lives of his own family. Miller is different from the suave, slightly know-it-all author of the first half. He's distant and peevish, easily driven into a rage by an inattentive waiter at a restaurant.
Binoche is a revelation as Elle, the emotions pouring out of her face like wine from a decanter. Although she's lost some of the coquettish beauty of her early career, Binoche's face has more depth and versatility now. In both her roles here, she plays a woman consumed by a deep inner rage at being left alone so much of the time, when all she wants is someone to lean on through life.
What is the truth of the relationship between these two people? Are they strangers or distant lovers? For Kiarostami, it is both, and neither. He shows us how these two people would interact if they had just met in mid-life, and then draws a portrait of them deeply intertwined in a romance turned sour.
It's like an artist sketching a pair of models, first in once pose and then another, wearing one set of clothes and then switching. The circumstances are in flux, but the essence of who these two people are is unshakable.
In essence, "Certified Copy" is two movies, both lying to the audience, and both telling the same truth.
"Potiche" is a delightful mix of farce, sex comedy, paean to women's liberation and soft-pitch socialism. As if you couldn't discern from that description, it's French.
This amusing, heartfelt film comes from writer/director François Ozon, who made the creepy/sexy psychological thriller "Swimming Pool," adapted from a play by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Grédy. Set in 1977, it stars Catherine Deneuve as a trophy wife who takes over the umbrella factory of her rich industrialist tyrant of a husband after he falls ill, and finds the new role awakens long-dormant desires about the direction of her life.
Deneuve -- nearing 70, and still radiant -- is a completely engaging screen presence as Suzanne Pujol, living a life as carefully coifed as her bouffant hairdo. She oversees the household staff, jogs through the verdant countryside, writes snippets of joyful poetry, and knits. Accused by her daughter of being secretly miserable, Suzanne insists it can't be so, since she made the decision to be a happy person.
(The film's title is French for a decorative vase of little usefulness, and is also a slang term for a trophy wife.)
Her husband Robert (Fabrice Luchini), while diminutive in stature, is a giant when it comes to riding roughshod over others, whether it's his workers or his own family. He's a serial philanderer, including with his secretary Nadège (Karin Viard), and tells Suzanne her job is not to have opinions of her own but merely to support his.
As the story opens the union is threatening a strike due to Robert's draconian outmoded work conditions. One thing leads to another, and soon Robert is laid low by a heart attack, and Suzanne is tapped as a consensus pick to watch over things until his return. Lo and behold, she turns out to be a natural at a more maternal, hands-on style of management, and things dramatically improve.
(It helps that the unions' most critical demand is new bathrooms.)
The X factor is Maurice Babin, an old communist revolutionary who's now the town mayor and local representative to Parliament. He egged on the nastiest protests against the Pujol clan, but now steps in as Suzanne's secret counselor and ally. Complicating things between them is a long-ago fling from their mostly forgotten youth, but a few embers still give off heat.
Babin is played by Gérard Depardieu, and there's some nice romantic chemistry between him and Deneuve, despite that Depardieu is apparently following the Marlon Brando School of Late Life Rotundity for Acting Icons. Seriously, guy, time to push away from the dessert tray.
Suzanne's children, Joëlle (Judith Godrèche) and Laurent (Jérémie Renier), at first laugh off their mother's newfound enthusiasm for business leadership. But soon they're converts, working at mom's side and rooting on her growing ambitions.
Ozon directs with a breezy light touch, cascading the audience in a rainbow of DayGlo colors, feathered '70s hair and disco pop tunes. There are even cheesy musical cues I swear were lifted straight out of the "Charlie's Angels" TV show.
It doesn't add up to more than an entertaining piffle, but it's nice to see a French film that doesn't drown its audience in melancholy. OK, there is a sad moment or two ... it is French, after all.
"Wings of Desire" is one of those modern foreign classics that every serious movie lover is told they simply must see, and adore. I'd heard about it going as far back as my tenure in the cinema studies department at NYU in the early 1990s, and always meant to get around to it.
I did admire it, without really liking it all that much.
This is one of those films where the idea behind the movie is much stronger than the one they actually made. Wim Wenders' romantic (supposedly) fantasy about angels envying mortals is a lovely storytelling frame, particularly the angels' ability to read the thoughts of every human they meet. They exist to observe and catalogue the wondrous diversity of mankind's existence. Angels are the ultimate voyeurs.
Unfortunately, in Wenders' conception the interior monologues of every person is filled with poetic, sing-songy existentialist gobbledygook. It's like peeking over the shoulder of some Goth teen scribbling the worst kind of self-involved, morose verse imaginable.
Bruno Ganz -- familiar to American audiences for playing Hitler in "Downfall," a wonderful drama known for its many YouTube re-edits -- plays Damiel, an angel tempted by the people he watches. In Wenders' screenplay (co-written with Peter Handke and Richard Reitinger), Damiel has grown tired of always observing and wants to experience life for himself. He confides to Cassiel (Otto Sander), a fellow angel surveying Berlin for all eternity:
It's wonderful to live as a spirit and testify for all eternity to only what is spiritual in people's minds. But sometimes I get fed up with this spiritual existence. I don't want to always hover above. I'd rather feel a weight within, casting off this boundless freedom and tying me to the earth.
I loved the device of how the angels go about their business. Clad always in black trench coats (their wings are invisible), the angels move about unseen among the humans, pausing to listen in on their inner thoughts. Though they're never shown flying, we know they have this ability since we often see Damiel or Cassiel perched high up on a building -- preferring to congregate near statues of angels.
Occasionally, an angel will actually touch the human they're observing, which has the effect of calming them and even improving their mood. Cassiel performs this act on a man on a subway in a black mood, who is suddenly filled with resolve to start his life anew.
The plot, such as it is, revolves around three humans these angels are following. The least interesting is Homer, an ancient man who spends most of his time at the library contemplating the end of his existence. He is a storyteller who has been forgotten by his audience, but isn't particularly bitter about it. At first there's a suggestion this is the actual Homer of antiquity, but he spends too much of his time musing about peace to be that spinner of war tales.
Another is Marion (Solveig Dommartin), a young trapeze artist in the dying circus on the edge of town. Marion is desperately lonely, and in observing her Damiel is convinced they are soul mates. Marion worries about having to go back to waitressing after the circus is closed by the local authorities, and spends her off time in her trailer home listening to Nick Cave records. (His band, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, makes a brief cameo near the end.)
The last person being watched is Peter Falk -- the actor, playing himself. He's in Germany to shoot a World War II film, and spends his down time drawing sketches of the extras. "These are extra humans," he muses in his inner thoughts.
Damiel is surprised when Falk seems to be able to sense his presence, and even begins talking to him. Later it is revealed that, like Damiel, Falk was an angel who grew bored with his spiritual existence and traded it in for a corporeal one. There's a funny joke about the angels arriving with their suit of armor after they turn into humans. Damiel pawns his for 200 marks, and Falk tells him he was robbed -- he got $500 for his at a New York shop 30 years earlier.
The cinematography by Henri Alekan is simply astonishing in its spare yet lyrical quality. Using a perspective employed in other films, including "A Matter of Life and Death," the heavenly visions are in black-and-white (with a slight sepia tone) while the earthly view is in color. In this case it fits, since the life of an angel is studious and even-keeled, while humans are filled with messy emotions.
This being a German art film, it wouldn't be complete without a ton of stock footage of Nazi atrocities, as Wenders' probes the nation's psyche tormented with guilt and remembrance. "Wings of Desire" is as much a meditation on Germany as heaven and earth.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't find the movie terribly boring at times. The languid scenes of the angels moving from human to human to listen to their thoughts are so lovely visually, but then we have to listen (or read in subtitles) to the pouty, self-obsessed interior lives of these people, whose thoughts bear little relation to those of actual humans.
"Wings of Desire" ends with an explicit invitation of "To be continued," but few people remember the 1993 sequel, "Faraway, So Close!", in which Cassiel checks in on Damiel with his new partner, Nastassja Kinski. There was also a 1998 sorta/kinda/quasi Hollywood remake starring Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan, "City of Angels," which plays up the sappy romance angle.
"Dodes'ka-den" nearly ended Akira Kurosawa's film career -- and his life.
The great Japanese auteur was so devastated by his first color film's failure that he attempted suicide, slashing himself dozens of times with a razor. He recovered, and eventually resumed making movies ... but not for five years.
This gentle drama-comedy about the denizens of a garbage-strewn shantytown is certainly one of Kurosawa's minor works, but I still count myself blessed for having seen it. I saw a brief clip of it years ago in a retrospective of the director's work, and knew I had to see it.
No ronin or samurai or ancient codes of battle honor here. This was one of Kurosawa's rare films set in modern times -- though it still has a lyrical, almost fairy tale quality that makes it feel like it could have been plucked out of ancient mythology.
It's a timeless tale about the disadvantaged and the downtrodden, a celebration of humanity's differences and glorious imperfections.
The title is the Japanese sound for a train or trolley car in motion -- roughly the equivalent of "choo-choo" in English. It's chanted repeatedly by Roku-chan (Yoshitaka Zushi), a mentally challenged boy who lives with his mother in a landscape of hills and valleys shaped by the refuse of humanity.
Roku-chan fantasizes that he is the conductor of one of the trolleys that pass by their house/store every day. He puts on an imaginary hat, lovingly inspects his non-existent train, inserts his key and guides it on a path through the junkyard, shouting "dodeskaden-dodeskaden-dodeskaden-dodeskaden."
The other denizens, of course, consider him insane, and his long-suffering mother repeatedly scrubs graffiti dubbing him "train freak" off their walls. Roku-chan is oblivious, though, and prays to Buddha to "make my mother smarter" -- obviously parroting some of the prayers he's heard her make about him.
I was really intrigued by this pair, and disappointed to learn that they only appear fleetingly in the film, more or less as a framing device for a host of other stories and characters. I would have loved an entire story about just them.
There are too many names and faces for this non-Japanese speaker to keep straight. As is often the case with films featuring a large, ensemble cast and a host of intersecting storylines, we find ourselves intrigued by some and impatient with others. The tale of a grocer whose gaggle of children doubt their own paternity, for example, goes nowhere.
I never could quite understand the tale of the strange, wordless older man who stalks about the shantytown like an apparition, talking to no one and appearing to see nothing. The local harlot once tried to seduce him, but was unnerved by his groaning in his sleep. One day a woman named Ocho shows up and makes herself at home in his shack. She begs him repeatedly for forgiveness, but for what is never made clear. We guess that this is his wife, returned after a long self-imposed exile for the crime that turned him into a walking dead man. But her mission is fruitless, and she eventually leaves without ever being acknowledged.
Also bemusing is the tale of two workmen who return home every day so they can drink themselves into a stupor and complain about how their wives don't treat them right. Kurosawa uses a playful trick with his new medium of color, dressing one man in red and the other in yellow, and even decorating their houses in the same shades. One day the yellow man passes out drunk in the red home, and vice-versa, and they essentially swap wives for awhile. The wives seem content with the change of pace, but the local women who gather at the junkyard's lone faucet to do laundry -- and act as the film's Greek chorus -- are shocked.
The most heartbreaking tale is that of the young girl who lives with her aunt and uncle. Thin and plain, she is compelled to make paper flowers day and night to support her elders. Her uncle is a lazy tyrant, and uses his wife's absence for surgery at the hospital as an opportunity to force himself on the girl. Soon she is pregnant and facing a terrible choice. Her only relief is the kind boy who delivers sake to their home, and sneaks her candy and compliments.
There's also a beggar and his young son who live in the shell of an old automobile. They are slowly constructing an elaborate house using only their imaginations as tools and materials. The man loves to tinker with various styles and ideas, changing things around on a whim. His son is not really an active participant in the building the dream house, only agreeing obediently with his father's latest suggestions and choices.
The boy supports them by begging for food at restaurants in town. One time the father refuses the cook's instruction to boil the fish before eating it, insisting it is sour mackerel pickled in brine, and they both become quite ill. The wise old man who acts as the conscience of the community, and is something of a medicine man, counsels the beggar to seek out a doctor, but is refused. He is not proud, the old man surmises, merely weak.
There are a few other story threads -- a businessman with an embarrassing tic and a harpy of a wife among them -- but there really isn't a central theme or coherent plot in the traditional sense. We're merely peeking in on these vignettes among the garbage, where life is messy but thriving.
And so it goes.
"The Bicycle Thief" is the best-known of the Italian neorealism movement, which was characterized by non-professional actors, naturalistic light and shooting in real locations -- often with passersby serving as unwitting extras. It grew up out of necessity due to the lack of much filmmaking infrastructure following World War II, and soon became an ethos that influenced generations of movies.
The immediacy and unornamented sentimentalism of the pictures, which tended to focus on the plight of the underclass, gave these films a visceral heft that connected with audiences. "The Bicycle Thief" is often cited as one of the most emotional films ever made, particularly its depiction of the relationship between an itinerant worker and his son searching for the stolen bicycle that represents their very livelihood.
A bit of controversy over the title: The original Italian is "Ladri di biciclette," or "Bicycle Thieves." This is of course a reference to the film's tragic climax, where the father, desperate after a long search has come to naught, tries to steal a bicycle himself and is caught and humiliated. I for one am a proponent of retaining the English translation of foreign films, even if they are inaccurate.
Besides, one could argue that using the original title kind of gives away the ending. Otherwise newbies might watch the movie and be thinking: "They keep chasing that one kid who stole his bike ... who are these other thieves?"
Director Vittorio De Sica, who co-wrote the script along with five (!) others based on the novel by Luigi Bartolini, cast non-actors in the lead roles, to stupendous effect. Lamberto Maggiorani, with penetrating but soft eyes and flaring cheekbones, plays the father, Antonio Ricci. Maggiorani was just an ordinary factory worker when De Sica cast him.
Lianella Carell plays his loving wife Maria, who seeks guidance from a local mystic, which Antonio considers a waste of money. Still, her prophecy that he would find a job came true, and so he turns to the old woman to help find the bike. Sure enough, as soon as he exits her building, the thief (Vittorio Antonucci) walks by.
Enzo Staioli is an absolute revelation as their son Bruno. With a mop of irrepressible hair that even a downpour of rain cannot long suppress, Bruno is a 7-year-old fellow pilgrim and witness to the joyous and heartbreaking events -- the film's silent narrator.
After more than a year out of work, Antonio is blessed with a job putting up movie posters around Rome, on whose outskirts they live. But it comes with a condition: He must provide his own bicycle to get around with a ladder and supplies. No bicycle, no job.
Unfortunately, they hocked his bicycle to pay for food. Maria pawns the household's entire supply of bedsheets to get the money needed to reclaim the bike. There's a telling scene where Antonio watches the clerk climb a high storage wall to place their sheets amongst a mountain of others people have been forced to pawn. It reminded me of the last scene of "Raiders of the Lost Ark," where treasures great and small are entombed in a vast warehouse.
Antonio is thrilled about starting work, taking pride in his new uniform (which is basically just overalls and a cap) and gleefully tallies all the money he'll soon be bringing in -- 12,000 lire a month in wages, and at least 2,000 in overtime, plus a family allowance of 800 a day. They won't be rich by any stretch, but can put their days of hunger and worry behind them.
Alas, on his first day the bicycle is stolen while resting against the wall where Antonio is putting up a poster of Rita Hayworth. He chases the thief, a teen boy wearing a German-style hat, but he gets away.
The look on Antonio's face when he arrives by bus, instead of by bike, to pick up Bruno at his own job at a gas station is one of pure shame. He can't even stand to face Maria, so after dropping the boy off immediately goes looking for help. He enlists the aid of his friend Baiocco, an actor and sanitation worker. The next day he, Baiocco and his men, and Bruno set out to look for the bike, stopping at a huge outdoor venue devoted to nothing but bicycles. After hours of searching and one nasty, fruitless confrontation, they come up empty.
It's hard today to think about bicycles being such a huge enterprise, but in post-war Europe, they were the primary source of transportation.
After Baiocco bids adieu, Antonio and Bruno search night and day, knowing that failure means ruin for the entire family. They spot the thief on the bike talking to an old beggar. Failing to catch the boy, they follow the old man to a church, where a shave and soup are offered in exchange for attending service. When they lose the old man outside the church, Antonio loses patience with Bruno and slaps him sharply, and the betrayal in the lad's eyes is just wrenching.
To make it up to him, Antonio takes the boy to a restaurant -- an alien experience for young Bruno, who mimics the rich child at the next table theatrically pulling long strings of mozzarella away from his mouth.
In the end they find the thief, and Antonio is nearly killed by a mob from the boy's rough-and-tumble neighborhood. Bruno summons a policeman, but lacking any witnesses or evidence of the bike, Antonio is forced to decline to press charges.
The denouement is one of the most memorable in cinema. Outside a football arena, Antonio is taunted by thousands of bicycles left by the spectators. He settles for stealing a lone bike leaning against a wall, but of course its owner quickly emerges and begins chase. Ironically, the shouts of "Stop, thief!" that produced no reaction from the crowd when Antonio uttered them less than 48 hours earlier elicit an immediate reaction now, and in moments a dozen men are chasing him.
He is quickly caught, slapped around and frog-marched toward the police station. But the bicycle owner, seeing the bawling Bruno clutching at his father's coattails, takes pity and orders him released. The movie ends on the ambiguous note of father and son, humiliated and despondent, clutching hands and weeping as they walk away into the crowd toward home, their hopes of a new life dashed and their prospects bleak.
The musical score by Alessandro Cicognini, a sweeping breeze of strings and horns, pulls the audience along in its sorrowful journey. It was the music of the streets, set to a story about the people who live there, work there, and if they're lucky enough, ride past on a bicycle.
The name Ingmar Bergman is like a dividing line in the cinematic landscape. To some, he is synonymous with ambitious foreign filmmaking -- movies at their highest plane of existence, unabashedly striving for art rather than entertainment.
To others, though, the Swede epitomizes the self-serving, "artsy" side of movies -- films that are made by, about and for those who consider themselves the cultural elite.
I trend much closer to the former side when it comes to Bergman, though I'll confess that after sitting through a whole slew of Bergman for a class on him at NYU, I developed a shorthand for mockery: Characters kneeling while facing the camera as they gaze upward slightly in the distance while contemplating the remoteness of God.
The remoteness of God is very much the central theme of "The Seventh Seal," perhaps the best-known of Bergman's films. Rather than being dull and self-important, though, the film is an exhilarating if allegorical look at the struggle between faith and reason.
Being away from Bergman for a long time, I was reminded how playful the great Swede could be. This child-like quality is represented in the characters of Jof and his wife, traveling actors who have a baby boy. Jof (Nils Poppe) plays a fool and mostly behaves like one, too, but has a spiritual purity that allows him to see heaven-sent visions. His wife Mia (Bergman favorite Bibi Andersson) adores Jof, but dismisses his stories -- such as seeing the Virign Mary teaching the Child to walk -- as nonsense.
In contrast to the unburdened acrobat, Antonius Block struggles to find God in his heart. A nobleman and a knight who has just returned from the Crusades to find his homeland infested with the Black Death, Block (Max von Sydow) has seen the worst that humanity has to offer. Finding no redeeming value upon the earth, he has little faith that something better awaits in Heaven.
Block's squire is Jöns, a cynical rapscallion who delights in upsetting his master's delicate sensibilities with his bawdy songs and behavior. He's played by Gunnar Björnstrand, who starred in many Bergman films.
Jöns has a horrible scar running from the crown of his head to his eyebrow, putting a strange unnatural part in his close-cropped hair, but seems ready to resume his old life if given the chance. While the squire bears the physical mark of 10 years at war in the Holy Land, his knight is a beautiful, almost angelic presence with a halo of white hair. But his soul has been indelibly etched.
The framing story is a game of chess played between Block and Death himself (Bengt Ekerot). The reaper has come to claim Block's life, but is amused by the knight's challenge to let him live as long as their game goes on. Block quickly gains the upper hand in their game, but Death disguises himself as a priest and hears the knight's confession, in which he reveals his strategy. From there, it is only a matter of time until Death prevails.
Block takes Jof and his family under his protection, not realizing he has brought his doom upon them as well. Later, though, he distracts Death long enough to let them make their escape.
The films ends with one of Jof's visions, the iconic image of Death leading Block and his party away on a far hillside in a forced dance of death. (Interestingly, crew members stood in for the real actors in that long shot, since Bergman captured it spontaneously at the end of a long day of shooting.)
For me the most affecting sequence of "The Seventh Seal" is when a group of flagellants wander into town, whipping and tearing at each other's flesh in the name of God. It stops the movie dead cold, but it's meant to, as we are presented with a stark depiction of the horrors committed in the name of religion. (The Flagellants were a very real and briefly popular movement in the Middle Ages.)
Block and Jöns also encounter a young girl who's been convicted of being a witch and sentenced to burn at the stake. The knight talks to her to see if she truly has had congress with Satan -- if he can have substantive proof of God's negative reflection, that would at least serve as something to bolster his own faith. But he looks in her eyes and sees only terror at her fate.
Jöns contemplates killing the mercenaries hired to carry out her execution, but Block appears willing to let matters take their course. He does, however, take steps to ease her suffering.
The title, of course, refers to the Book of Revelations, foretelling the end of mankind. The seventh seal is opened, followed by a period of silence before God lets fall his Final Judgment. "The Seventh Seal" is a film not about the end of time, but the silence between man and God.
Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" is probably my favorite animated film of all time, and I've been meaning to watch the 1946 live-action French film that heavily influenced it for some time.
It's really geared more as a children's fairy tale -- I saw it on Turner Classic Movies as part of a bloc of kiddie flicks. I think the animated version has much deeper themes that it explores more fully -- especially the beastly nature of men.
You already know the basic fable: A beautiful young woman is forced to live as the prisoner of a hideous Beast in order to spare the life of her father. Over time the gruesome creature grows to love young Belle, and she returns the affection. Their love breaks the spell that was cast upon him, and he is revealed as a handsome, rich prince who will take his lady love far away to live happily ever after as his queen.
Director Jean Cocteau, who also wrote the screenplay based on the fairy tale by 18th century writer Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont (which she adapted from an original story by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve), created a visually stunning world in which to populate his characters. Even seen today, the technical and artistic achievements of the film are quite impressive.
Let's start with the amazing make-up for actor Jean Marais to portray the beast, which reportedly took five hours to put on, and another five hours to take off. What's really amazing about it is that it covers his face without completely disguising his facial features and expressions. His eyes, in particular, are still able to emote beautifully.
Cocteau's conception of the Beast is a little more canine in appearance and behavior than subsequent versions like the animated film and 1980s TV show, which bent toward a leonine mien. Although you can clearly see the similarities to the Disney Beast, especially in the ballroom dance scene where he dresses up in formal wear, which the French beast wears all the time.
The disembodied servants in the Beast's magical castle are there, although they remain wordless hands and faces appearing and disappearing out of the walls and furniture. No Mrs. Potts singing songs about being our guest, unfortunately. Still, the sight of stony faces peering out of the fireplace mantle, slowly tracking Belle with their eyes, is enchanting ... and haunting.
The magical rules regarding the Beast and his curse are quite different. Here his furred, taloned hands smoke every time he kills -- though this is merely implied, since we never actually see him hunt animals, or in fact commit violence of any kind.
He still has the magic mirror that allows the bearer to gaze upon anyone near or far, and also has a glove that instantly transports the wearer wherever they want to go. In one unintentionally funny bit, Belle zaps herself from her father's house to the Beast's castle, realizes she forgot the key he entrusted her with, blinks back to look for it and then back to the castle again.
I really enjoyed the self-loathing Marais brought to the role, though I must say I found Belle (Josette Day) a dreadful bore. She's simply a reflection of a feminine ideal here -- beautiful, humble, devoted -- rather than a distinctive individual.
Belle has evil sisters (no step; they share the same father) who constantly plot against Belle and humiliate her. It's interesting how in fairy tales and mythology sisters are almost always at war in some way, and never have a deep and meaningful bond.
She also has a layabout brother, whose best friend is Avenant, who wishes to marry Belle but is continually rebuffed. He's also played by Marais, who additionally appears as the Prince that the Beast turns into when Avenant is shot dead by an arrow while trying to break into the Beast's treasure trove. Avenant then turns into the Beast, and the Beast, who had just died, turns into the Prince, who happens to look exactly like Avenant.
I confess the metaphysical logistics of the story left me baffled. Especially when you consider the final dialogue between the Prince and Belle, in which she confesses that she really had loved Avenant, and only refused him out of loyalty to her father. I thought the whole point of the fable was that True Love conquers all; apparently, it's actually True Love needs another True Love to die before it can live.
At the risk of offending film purists, while I cherish the stupendous beauty of Cocteau's version, I still much prefer Disney's "Beauty and the Beast." It's just a more ambitious, fully realized version of a riveting piece of mythology.
I'd love to be a European, at least for the summer. Our chums across the pond know what it means to get away: Their vacations last a month. Sometimes two. And everybody takes off at once.
This means whole regions and industries close up shop while everyone's away, which leads to a problem: What are all the devoted Italian sons to do with their elderly mothers while they're on vacation?
"Mid-August Lunch" is a gentle observational comedy about a middle-aged man stuck looking after four old women for Ferragosto, a traditional Italian holiday. Held on Aug. 15, centered around a meal with religious overtones -- isn't every holiday in Italy? -- Ferragosto is a national excuse to stretch a long weekend into a full-out escape.
Except Gianni isn't going anywhere. He looks after his aged mother, and they have serious financial troubles. The electricity bill has not been paid in three years. The condominium membership wants to kick them out over uncollected fees.
The administrator offers a deal: He'll forgive most of their debts if they take in his mother for Ferragosto. He doesn't bother to mention that his aunt will be joining them, too. Then the family doctor begs them to look after his mother as well.
Suddenly it's Gianni stuck in a hot apartment with four squabbling old ladies, toiling away in the kitchen and acting as peacemaker when their conflicts crescendo.
Gianni is played by Gianni de Gregorio, a veteran screenwriter also making his debut as a director. Handsome, 60-ish and with a put-upon charm, Gianni is an affable host. He may resent his lot, and lubricate his complaining with a copious amount of white wine, but he takes his role as caretaker seriously.
Like de Gregorio, the female actresses -- Valeria De Franciscis, Marina Cacciotti, Maria Calì, Grazia Cesarini Sforza -- all use their given names for their characters. They're acting novices, too, which lends their bickering and rambling chats an unforced charm.
Plot-wise, there isn't much to speak of: Gianni's mother and the administrator's mother ensue a power play over control of the one barely-working television, and the doctor's mother has strict dietary restrictions that she treats as an annoyance.
At 73 minutes, "Mid-August Lunch" is agreeable light fare, pleasing to look at and drink in. It's a pleasant little cinematic aperitif, to cleanse the palate and refresh us. That it does.
"Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky" is the second recent film about the life of the fashion icon. It and "Coco Before Chanel" actually debuted in France around the same time last year, but this movie is just now coming to American shores.
Strange how people like Coco and Truman Capote are ignored for decades, and suddenly filmmakers are fighting over themselves to do a film biography.
I will say I much preferred Anna Mouglalis' Coco Chanel to Audrey Tautou's. With her brazen stare and low rumble of a voice, her Coco effortlessly brushes aside society's conventions, whether it has to do with the clothes women wear or the independence she savors.
She's the sort of woman who can say to her lover, Igor Stravinsky: "You think a man is worth two women? I'm as powerful as you are, Igor ... and more successful."
It's debatable whether Chanel and the great Russian composer actually had an affair, but it's the sort of legend that is more salient than the truth. Chris Greenhalgh wrote the screenplay based on his fictional novel.
The story opens, briefly, in 1913 Paris for the debut of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring." The audience was so torn by his cutting-edge use of rhythm and dissonance that it literally started a riot. Stravinsky and Chanel share but a glance.
Cut to 1920, and much has changed. Chanel is now a famous fashion designer, and her affair with Arthur "Boy" Chapel has ended with his tragic death. Stravinsky is virtually penniless, cramming his wife and large family into a hotel room.
Seemingly on a whim, Chanel invites the composer and his brood to stay with her in her luxurious villa outside Paris. Proud but destitute, he accepts.
I loved the scene where the Stravinskys are given a tour of their new home, which is decorated fashionably but monochromatically. "You don't like color, Mademoiselle Chanel?" asks Katarina, Igor's wife. "As long as it's black," she dryly responds.
Stravinsky is played by Dutch actor Mads Mikkelsen, probably best known to American audiences as the bleeding-eye villain in "Casino Royale." His performance is much more internal than Mouglalis'; we sense that the affair never would have started without Chanel making the first move. His devotion to his wife and family is genuine, but he can't escape her gravitational pull.
Mikkelsen's command of several languages in the film seemed genuine to me, and I consider it a compliment when I say that his mien is authentically Russian.
It's quite a thing to carry on an affair with the woman of the house while your wife and kids are sometimes literally in the next room, and director Jan Kounen clearly but subtly demonstrates the rotting effect it has on familial relations. The children play and pout like regular youngsters, but their eyes see the dying of the grace between their parents.
Yelena Morozova plays the wan Katarina, in a beautiful performance of sadness and dread. She's smart enough to recognize and even appreciate the bold way Chanel has ordered her life in defiance of patriarchal constraints, but herself is trapped in a prison of her own making. Katarina loves Stravinsky the artist, possibly even more than the man, and her greatest fear is not that she will lose her husband but that the affair will corrupt his musical gift.
"She collects people," she tells Igor, pleadingly but accurately.
"Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky" never quite convinces us of any deep soulful connection between the two -- it's more a lust story than a love story. But it's an absorbing tale of the intersecting orbits of two 20th century giants who each changed the world in different ways.
Even if it isn't true, we'd like to think it could be.
Tilda Swinton is marvelous in "I Am Love," playing a woman married into a wealthy Italian family who is desperate for meaningful affection. The film itself, though, is a lavishly-decorated soap opera masquerading as a deeply-felt human drama.
Emma is a Russian who married Tancredi Recchi (Pippo Delbono), scion of a dynasty of textile manufacturers from Milan. Though an accepted part of the family, she consciously distances herself subtly from the Recchis -- even from her three adult children.
She is a woman playing the part of gracious hostess without ever having really joined the party. And the Recchis love to throw parties: As the story opens, they are celebrating the birthday of the family patriarch. Emma oversees the extensive preparations, but retires to her bedroom just as the festivities are kicking into high gear.
Director Luca Guadagnino, who also co-wrote the screenplay, has a distinctive oblique way of shooting his subjects. We're continually seeing them from odd angles, extreme close-ups, or long shots where they meld into the Italian environs.
Technically it's brilliant, but I admit my Americanized brain found his style overly ornamented for its own sake. The languid pace as Guadagnino's camera obsesses over mundane details of food preparation and expensive clothing will thrill European cinephiles, but the words that repeatedly came to my mind were "quit dawdling."
This film seems less directed than designed.
Swinton speaks both Russian and Russian-flavored Italian in this movie, and it sounded flawless to my ear.
She plays Emma as a woman who's been hiding herself for the last 20-odd years, and it's only a matter of time before her buried passions burn through her careful facade and find a way out.
Opportunity presents itself when her son Edoardo (Flavio Parenti) introduces her to his new friend Antonio (Edoardo Gabriellini), a quiet, intense chef. Emma arranges to bump into him in a remote town, and their sun-dappled coupling is depicted with intoxicating sensuality.
Other members of the Recchi family float around in the background, occasionally coming to the fore. Emma's daughter Betta (Alba Rohrwacher) cuts her hair short and confides her new love affair to her mother, which only seems to encourage Emma's own yearnings. Edoardo's girlfriend (Diane Fleri) hesitates as the Recchis slyly judge her as a potential mate; her experiences likely mirror those Emma had a generation ago, but Guadagnino strangely never acknowledges this obvious connection.
In a film that centers on an extramarital affair, not depicting the rift lines in the marriage cheats the audience. Tancredi, though, remains a bit player in this melodrama. Guadagnino tacks on a nasty, indignant moment near the end to make the husband seem like the bad guy, but the truth is he's the wronged party in this equation.
"I Am Love" is exactly the sort of film that critics tend to adore and audiences tend to ignore. In this case, I throw my lot in with the masses.
"Micmacs" is French for "shenanigans," and there certainly are plenty of them in this farce about a troupe of riffraff giving the middle finger to evil corporations.
It's a sweet and funny confection, with some biting satire swirled into the batter.
Dany Boon plays Bazil, who lost his father to a mine in Afghanistan in 1979. Thirty years later, he's working at a cruddy video store when a bullet from a random drive-by shooting lodges in his skull. Doctors couldn't pull it out safely, so now "any minute my brain could pop," he confides.
Bazil's not exactly the confrontational type -- he's more like a street mime perpetually out of costume, sometimes punctuating his words with intricate little hand claps and snaps, or speaking in excited gibberish. But it seems to him that the two arms manufacturers who caused (in his mind) the twin tragedies of his life ought to pay for their crimes.
Penniless and jobless after his long recuperation, Bazil is "adopted" by a group of junk collectors who live inside a fortress of scrap metal. They collect salvage and fix it up, or turn it into bits of mechanical art. This motley crew launches a series of carefully orchestrated practical jokes designed to pit the two companies' arrogant CEOs at each other's throat.
Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet ("Amelie"), who also co-wrote the script with Guillaume Laurant, infuses the action with a puckish humor and a generous helping of slapstick. There's an almost silent-movie quality to the high jinks, and Boon has a little bit of Buster Keaton in his mopey expression and passive-aggressive stubbornness.
Imagine a heist movie directed by Terry Gilliam in French, and you've got a good idea of the vibe of "Micmacs."
(Incidentally, the entire original title is "Micmacs à Tire-Larigot," which means "non-stop shenanigans." I guess they had to stop for the English version.)
Bazil's chief co-conspirator is La Môme Caoutchouc (Julie Ferrier), a contortionist who develops a crush on him -- I think I felt my back crack watching her unbelievable bending and twisting.
There's also Placard (Jean-Pierre Marielle), an elderly con man; Fracasse (Dominique Pynon), a stuntman who celebrates his many injuries; Remington (Omar Sy), an African with strange speech patterns; a mousy little woman who can calculate the dimensions of anything she sees; and a mousy little man with the strength of an elephant.
The heavies are Nicolas Thibault de Fenouillet (André Dussollier), a politically-connected arms dealer whose hobby is collecting celebrity body parts -- nothing starts a party like offering to show Marilyn Monroe's molar -- and his younger upstart competitor, François Marconi (Nicolas Marié), whose voice reaches a screeching decibel when he's upset.
"Micmacs" isn't anything terribly original or clever, but it's a modestly enjoyable caper. Maybe with more heart than brains -- if I were Bazil, I'd be hassling the guy whose gun shot me, and not the company that made the bullet.
"The White Ribbon" makes for an interesting exercise in discriminating between American and European films. This highly stylized German drama was a top prize winner at Cannes, and an Oscar nominee for best foreign language film. It received good write-ups from most American critics, but wasn't much of a hit here, even by art house standards.
I consider myself pretty egalitarian in my cinematic tastes, but I admit I found this movie dense and off-putting. It seems to revel in its own mysteriousness, in confounding and misdirecting its audience, rather than taking them someplace.
Set in a tiny pastoral German town before World War I, "Ribbon" opens with the local doctor being seriously injured in a horse riding accident when someone strings a wire across his garden. As the folk grow more angry and fearful, more attacks occur with increasing violence.
The baron's son is kidnapped and whipped, and for awhile the unrest appears to be rooted in resentment between the classes. But answers never come with any sort of clarity.
Visually it's a dazzling film, shot in austere black-and-white by writer/director Michael Haneke. But if American films are often formulaic and predictable, "The White Ribbon" is just too ... foreign.
Extras are a fairly generous mix, though the emphasis on on-set footage grows a bit tedious.
There's a 38-minute making-of documentary, which is dominated by Haneke. He reveals that he first began thinking about the film 20 years ago, and at one point considered making it as a three-part television movie.
More than 7,000 children were considered for roles -- a casting process that took six months. In one interesting aside, Haneke reveals that they bused in Romanians to play the village extras, since German actors were too modern-looking for his taste.
Another tidbit: The manor house featured in the film was the only one in Germany that wasn't in ruins or fully restored.
There's also a 50-minute retrospective on Haneke's career, an 18-minute featurette on the film's debut at Cannes, and a solo interview with Haneke that runs 14 minutes.
Movie: 2.5 stars out of four Extras: 3 stars out of four
It's said that Werner Herzog wrote the screenplay for "Aguirre, The Wrath of God" in less than three days. I believe it, since this 1972 German film eschews narrative for hallucinatory images and long takes that plunge you into the whirlpool of the main character's madness.
It's less storytelling, and a visually disturbing fever dream.
Francis Ford Coppola was clearly influenced by this film when he made "Apocalypse Now" several years later. Thematically, the movies are similar in that they take place on a nightmarish river journey whose destination grows more figurative they further they get.
Herzog based the film on actual historical figures and events, but has acknowledged that the story is entirely fictitious. In 1560 Spanish adventurers led by Gonzalo Pizzaro search the Andes for the mythical city of gold, El Dorado. Mired in the thick jungle and unable to make progress, Pizzaro organizes an expedition of 40 men to sail downriver to find food or help. Pedro de Ursua is appointed to lead, with Don Lope de Aguirre as his second-in-command.
Aguirre clearly has greater ambitions than his superiors, and will not let anything stop them. When one of the rafts is caught in an eddy and the men slain by Indian arrows, Aguirre blows it up with a cannon rather than allow Ursua to waste time recovering the bodies for burial.
Soon Aguirre overthrows Ursua, who is shot but not slain in the mutiny, so he can continue the journey. He forces the election of Fernando de Guzman, a fat and lazy nobleman, as the new leader, intending to use him as a puppet. They declare their independence from Spain, establishing a new kingdom of El Dorado. In a surprise to Aguirre, Guzman grants Ursua clemency and allows him to live.
After their rafts are borne away by the rising river, they build a new, larger one to carry the entire expedition. Eventually they leave the rapids behind and find themselves slowly floating down the river with little to do. Guzman sits on an erstwhile throne decreeing all the land they see as part of their new kingdom. At one point he gleefully estimates their nation is six times the size of Spain -- despite the fact that they are too afraid of Indians to even go ashore.
Aguirre is played by Klaus Kinski, the volatile actor who would have a long collaboration with Herzog. The two clashed during filming, with Kinski wanting a raving mad portrayal, while the director wanted something more restrained and creepy. Herzog won the argument by simply waiting until Kinski's rages had subsided, and then filming the quieter takes.
It's an amazing performance, one of pure venom and unbridled ambition. In the film's remarkable closing scene, with all of his men and his own daughter slain by arrows, Aguirre stumbles around the raft, which has become overrun by hundreds of monkeys. He vows to mate with his daughter and start a new, pure royal bloodline, and to conquer not only this land but the colonies of Spain.
One interesting thing about Kinski's performance is that he always seems to be looking at the camera sideways. He's constantly turning and twisting his body and head, as if trying to present the most oblique angle possible to the camera.
Another aspect that adds to the film's hallucinatory quality is the blurring of languages and nationalities. You've got a largely German cast portraying Spaniards, so their dialogue is in German. Except the dialogue was actually spoken in English on the set, since it was the only common language on a very multicultural crew. So you've got Germans speaking English pretending to be Spanish. Plus, Kinski refused to re-dub his lines in German without considerably more money, so another actor was brought in to do his dialogue.
"Aguirre, The Wrath of God" remains an often mesmerizing tone poem, about man's folly and lust for wealth, power and fame.
The 2009 Oscar winner for best foreign language film lives up to its billing, with a labyrinthine plot that will keep even the most astute audiences guessing right up until the end.
Much like Pedro Almodovar's "Broken Embraces," which also came out last year, "The Secret in Their Eyes" has a story that flashes back and forth in time, with the present holding the secret to the past. It's a human drama that wears the clothes of a whodunit.
Director Juan Jose Campanella, who co-wrote the screenplay with Eduardo Sacheri based on his novel, craft a meditation on justice and revenge intertwined with a powerful unrequited love story. The parallel timelines, set in the mid-1970s and a quarter-century later, touch on some Argentine historical themes that may be fuzzy to American audiences.
Benjamin Esposito (Ricardo Darin) is a retired assistant prosecutor who can't let go of the past. Everything leads him back to the Morales case, a brutal rape and murder of a young wife that was the high point of his career, and the cause of his downfall into obscurity.
He goes to talk with his old boss, Irene Hastings (Soledad Villamil), who's now the district attorney, for encouragement to write a novel about the case. From the moment their eyes meet, it's clear something monumental resides between them.
Flashing back to 1974, we watch as they are first introduced and he began work on the Morales murder. Irene comes from a wealthy, politically influential family, and was appointed Benjamin's superior despite being about 20 years younger.
The other figure in their tiny three-person office is Pablo Sandoval (a wonderful Guillermo Francella), a middle-aged alcoholic who spends most of his days avoiding work. He always answers the phone with the name of a fictitious business, and claims the caller has a wrong number. (My favorite greeting was for the sperm bank. "Deposit or withdrawal?" Pablo asks.)
The relationship between Benjamin and Pablo is just lovely. Benjamin's constantly being called to pull his friend out of a bar fight or some other scrape, and lending him money to fuel his binges. He tries to be hard-hearted, but always melts when his friend needs help.
The Morales case is closed for lack of evidence, but after meeting with the woman's husband (Pablo Rago), who seems stuck in time since the murder, he has Irene pull strings to reopen it.
Unlikely clues keep the case stumbling forward. It's Pablo who notices old photographs of the murdered girl with a neighbor who always seems to be staring intently at her. They eventually track down this man, Isidoro Gomez (Javier Godino), and try to link him to the crime.
This story unfolds through Benjamin's older eyes, so we're unsure if what we're seeing is unvarnished history or colored by his recollections and emotions. He isn't certain himself, and starts poking into the mystery he long thought resolved.
Others advise him to let it go: "Forget about it. You'll have a thousand pasts and no future." Obviously, I can't say too much for fear of spoiling the twists. Suffice to say that they kept even this veteran deducer of plots pleasantly misdirected.
With its mix of mystery, romance and political intrigue, "The Secret in Their Eyes" is quietly thrilling.
"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" could have been a standard international potboiler. It’s about a disgraced journalist hired to investigate the mysterious death of the daughter of a wealthy dynasty decades ago, with every clue taking him deeper into a maze of intrigue and dark family secrets.
What makes this Swedish thriller exceptional is, well, the girl of the title.
It might interest you to know that its original title is "Men Who Hate Women," and it was only given its new, somewhat clunky moniker for international release.
Lisbeth Salander does indeed have a dragon tattoo. It’s so large it doesn’t so much decorate her body as entwine her in its coils. She dresses like a punk rocker, glares at the world from beneath a mane of haphazardly sawed-off tresses, and works as a professional hacker, burrowing into the lives of people targeted by her clients.
Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube), an elderly tycoon, hires Lisbeth look into Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), a famous investigative reporter who has just been convicted of libeling a rich businessman. He checks out clean, so Vanger brings Mikael to his remote island and relates the sad tale of his niece, Harriet.
Harriet disappeared mysteriously nearly 40 years ago during an annual meeting of the Vangers. Henrik freely admits that his clan is a nest of vipers, greedy and suspicious of one another. He suspects one of his relatives might be involved in her death, but the police inquiry turned up nothing.
For awhile, Mikael and Lisbeth’s stories run parallel. Unbeknownst to him, she’s been hacking into his computer, keeping up to date on his investigation. She gives him a tip that breaks the case wide open, and soon they’ve joined forces as they elbow through the morass of the Vangers’ twisted legacy.
Played by Noomi Rapace in a mesmerizing performance that vacillates between inner turmoil and outward explosion, Lisbeth has her own history of disturbing secrets.
In a horrifying sequence early on, she is assigned a new probation officer who uses his power to send her back to jail to perform unspeakable acts of degradation. Rather than wallowing in victimhood, though, Lisbeth acts out, displaying both her keen intelligence and a ruthlessness that allows her to give as well as she gets.
Even as Lisbeth and Mikael work the conventional end of the murder-mystery plot, it takes the back stage to their relationship – if one can call it that. The brooding, brilliant girl quickly becomes the dominant personality, despite being half Mikael’s age. She calls the shots and decides what level of intimacy they will, or will not, share.
At 2.5 hours, "Girl" is longer than it needs to be; director Niels Arden Oplev dithers on montages of characters typing furiously on the computer or poring through printed archives, searching for clues. But since the interplay between the two main characters is the far more compelling mystery, the occasionally languid pace doesn’t detract too much.
The Swedes have been on a roll lately with darkly atmospheric movies that seem inspired by American films, and in turn spawn imitations. "Let the Right One In," the chilling vampire film, is getting a U.S. remake. So is "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."
While I lament the perceived necessity of an English version for audiences who won’t venture into subtitled films, I am warmed in knowing that Hollywood recognizes excellent material to rip off.
I'd been wanting to see "Throne of Blood" for years, ever since I saw a short clip of a scene from the film where a Japanese lord is killed by his own men with arrows. It's an arresting moment, full of poetry and violence, as only the great Akira Kurosawa could compose.
After finally seeing the movie, I consider it one of the great director's minor works, even though I know it is widely considered one of his best.
The plot is a more or less straight adaptation of Shakespeare's "Macbeth," transposed to feudal Japan. An ambitious general is egged by his wife into assassinating the Great Lord, and usurps his position. But he is brought down by his own foolishness and suspicion.
Toshiro Mifune, in one of his 16 collaborations with Kurosawa, plays the lead role, Washizu. His wife, Asaji, is played by Isuzu Yamada. Washizu's lifelong friend and comrade is Miki (Minoru Chiaki).
On their way Spider Web Castle -- which is the film's Japanese title -- Miki and Washizu encounter a strange spirit. Bathed in white light and spinning a loom, the old ghost woman makes two predictions: That both men will be promoted that very evening, and that both Washizu and Miki's son will eventually become lord of the castle.
The two generals laugh at this, but indeed upon presenting themselves to the Great Lord they are promoted to the positions the spirit predicted.
Thus begins the deceit of Washizu by his wife. Whispering in his ear a la Lady Macbeth, Asaji convinces Washizu that it is only a matter of time before the Great Lord hears about the prophecy and dispatches him. His choices are but two, she claims: Serve loyally and wait for the execution to come, or dare to grasp the reigns of power and become the Great Lord himself.
His chance arrives when the monarch comes to visit at his fort. Asaji drugs the Great Lord's guards, and puts one of their spears into Washizu's hands. He leaves and returns, almost in a trance, with the weapon, and his hands, covered in blood.
War breaks out, with the Great Lord's son supported by his old enemy. Miki, who had been placed in charge of Spider Web Castle, clearly knows that his old friend murdered their sovereign. Still, he acquiesces to Washizu's ascension to Great Lord in order to keep the peace. Washizu, who is childless, agrees to appoint Miki's son his heir.
But still the scheming continues. After inviting Miki and his son to a celebration feast, Washizu secretly dispatches as assassin to slay them before they arrive. He sees the ghost of Miki in the empty seat where his friend should be, and goes into a panic that alienates his other guests.
Washizu seeks out the forest spirit again, who tells him that he will not be defeated in battle before the very trees of the forest rise up against Spider Web Castle. Renewed with confidence against such an impossibility ever happening, he boasts to his soldiers about the prophecy.
But when his enemies cut down the trees and use them as cover, the men turn on their lord and slay him with arrows.
This death scene, coming at the very end, is just a startling sequence. Wild-eyed, Washizu runs back and forth across the parapet of the castle as arrows rain in. Kurosawa's battle scenes are always amazingly authentic in addition to being kinetically precise -- those arrows really look like they're screaming in at full speed, even thunking into Washizu's armor.
Compare this movie with the battle scenes from "Ivanhoe," a Hollywood movie that is a contemporary of "Throne," which featured arrows that looked like they'd been dumped out of a canister.
There's an astonishing amount of smoke and fog throughout the movie. Clearly, Kurosawa is saying something about people's perceptions being obscured by hate, ambition, lust, etc.
I liked "Throne of Blood," but while there are many scenes that just crackle with Kurosawa's distinct energy, there are many more that just ramble on and on. In particular, his obsession with ranks of soldiers maneuvering on the battlefield gets to be very old, very fast.
Fortunately, the film ends with a scene of such power and electricity, it overpowers the movie's tendency to amble.
