4 stars

Summer Hours (2008)

André Crous

France
4*

Director:
Olivier Assayas
Screenwriter:
Olivier Assayas
Director of Photography:
Éric Gautier

Running time: 103 minutes

Original title: l’Heure d’été

Trees and children are reminders of the passage of time. In the first scene of Olivier Assayas’s Summer Hours, the grandchildren of the oldest surviving member of the family, Hélène, who is celebrating her 75th birthday with her family, are playfully running around her garden in search of treasure. Hélène lives alone in a big house outside Paris, in the upper-class suburb of Valmondois. The house is filled with works of art, either bought or made by Hélène’s late uncle, the painter Paul Berthier.

Berthier’s name is central to the first thirty minutes, during which Hélène’s conversations with her children mostly serve to gauge their readiness to deal with the house and its memories after her death. Of course, the subject is more or less taboo, and they don’t like the idea of discussing things that have not yet come to pass. Her eldest son, Frédéric, seems especially determined to reassure her that nothing will change and that the family will still spend their holidays at the house that they will maintain as well as she has done.

But Hélène wasn’t born yesterday and has no qualms about her children selling off her collection after her death: “No need to become keepers of the tomb”, she tells her son. She realises that her other two children, Jérémie and Adrienne, have their lives abroad – in Shanghai and New York, respectively – and that it would become more and more difficult for them to call her house home. Memories may last forever, but the development of the present shouldn’t be stunted for the sake of physically preserving the past. As the child who has spent the most amount of time in the house, Frédéric is naturally more attached to the place, and the events of the past strongly echo in the present, for example, the plastic bag from Leclerc containing loose pieces of plaster from a sculpture by Edgar Degas that Frédéric and Jérémie had broken decades earlier.

Somewhat reminiscent of the famously sudden demise of Mrs Ramsay in brackets, in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, we learn that Hélène has passed away, but it takes some time before we realise that weeks, if not months, have elapsed since the family reunion at her home. And Assayas uses the medium of film to elide the jumps in time almost imperceptibly, the content making clear that important events can quickly become mere memories.

Besides all these memories and the different weight that objects have in the eyes of the beholder, the film provides a very refreshing look at the social complexity of inheritance, without ever stooping to the level of melodramatic backstabbing. While Frédéric had counted on his brother and sister to help out with the upkeep of the house because he assumed that the house and its objects are as important to them as it is to him, Jérémie and Adrienne have their lives elsewhere and have not only lost touch with the house but even with the culture and with their country. They have no wish to disillusion their brother, nor to seem like they are acting as a united front against him and shattering his wishes, but the fact of the matter is that the memories of the past cannot extend into the future, because they are no longer the people they were when they were young.

All three siblings are warm, engaging people who like to laugh and don’t have a malicious bone in their body, but want to get to the business of making their own memories. The actors (Charles Berling; Jérémie Renier, looking more mature than ever before; and Juliette Binoche), despite their pedigree, are kept in check by Assayas, who ensures that a character always trumps the actor playing the part.

The issues of time and memory are embedded in the film without ever taking on the air of abstract philosophy, and the filmmaker takes care to follow the characters, instead of leading them to contrived situations of high drama. The end does lose the plot a little, when Frédéric has to pick up his daughter at the police station, but eventually, her own role in the story is made clear, as the final scene demonstrates the possibility of making new memories even though a longtime dream may never be realised.

It is interesting to note that this film was commissioned by the Musée d’Orsay, an institution that features prominently towards the end of the film, because when Frédéric and his wife look at a piece in the museum that used to be in Hélène’s study and agree that it “is nicely displayed”, it is clear that a museum is not a home but merely an exhibit: pieces without any real context, pretty vases without flowers.

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

André Crous

USA
4*

Director:
John Frankenheimer
Screenwriter:
George Axelrod
Director of Photography:
Lionel Lindon

Running time: 126 minutes

The Manchurian Candidate leaves the viewer with a lasting impression of conspiracy and treason at the highest levels of government, and is filled with magnificent set pieces, from the brilliantly staged nightmare sequences that frighten us because horrific acts are perpetrated with poker-face serenity and a willingness to carry out the orders given, to the film’s thrilling climax at a political party’s National Convention.

In light of the film’s premise, that evil forces are at work and will stop at nothing to infiltrate the government and take over the country on a wave of anti-communist nationalism, the film slowly picks up speed before charging towards its suspenseful resolution. These final moments are enormously rewarding, for despite having received confirmation of all the characters’ intentions and desires, we are still left with lingering doubts about the plot, which soon clear up once the tension reaches breaking point.

The film is about brainwashing and about communism; however, in a reversal of the usual approach, the former is treated very seriously while the latter is used for the sake of humour, though it has some darker implications. In 1952, a soldier and his platoon are captured in Korea, but on their arrival back in the United States, some time later, this soldier, Raymond Shaw, is awarded the Medal of Honor for having saved the lives of his fellow soldiers, who – each and every one of them – describe him as “the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.”

Shaw is the stepson of Senator Joseph Iselin, a buffoon who is about to be re-elected, the campaign run by his devious, ambitious wife – Shaw’s mother, Eleanor (Angela Lansbury). Shaw clearly has some mother issues, but these will only come into focus in the second half of the film. For the time being, we are treated to Shaw’s former captain, Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra), who struggles with the same hellish nightmare over and over every night, in which he sees the decorated Shaw forced to murder two soldiers of the platoon – the exact same soldiers who were supposed to have “died” in Korea.

It is revealed that Shaw has been brainwashed to respond to certain cues – phrases or images – that make him susceptible to suggestion, and these are directly linked to his relationship with his mother, a diabolical woman who will stop at nothing to quench her lust for power and her unspoken lust for her own son. In case you were wondering: yes, Freud is mentioned explicitly, though not within the context of Raymond and Eleanor. In flashback, Raymond’s first love, Jocelyn, mentions Freud when she tells him of her father’s fear of snakes.

The film does have its handful of flaws, most important of which is the development of Janet Leigh’s character, Eugenie, who meets a tired Marco on the train, speaks to him in what seems like coded language, and proceeds to fall head over heels in love with him. Perhaps this part of the story was included to counterbalance the tragic relationship of Raymond and Jocelyn, but Eugenie brings very little to the plot and could have been ditched completely. The role of a Korean interpreter, Chunjin, who comes to America and takes a job as Raymond’s valet, is also left too vague, and by the end of the film we have no idea whether his intentions were pure or not.

As a cautionary tale, released around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis at the height of the Cold War, shortly after the McCarthy years and one year before the assassination of JFK, the film was relevant to the point of being clairvoyant. It contains some unforgettable scenes, including a tense scene with the Star-Spangled Banner, though the music at other points in the film can be quite heavy-handed. The idea of a communist acting as a publicly anti-communist crusader is also still very relevant today, as can be seen in the American Congress, where quite a few closeted gay men are, in public, vehemently opposed to homosexuality. Today, watching Eleanor mention the kinds of emergency powers she intends to secure for her husband, saying that they would “make martial law seem like anarchy”, one immediately thinks of the Patriot Act, which just goes to show that politics change very little over time. It’s not entirely clear to what extent Senator Iselin is aware of his wife’s grand design, but the fact that he dresses up as Abraham Lincoln during a dinner party (and is reflected in a portrait of the president in another scene) provides interesting clues to his awareness of what everything is leading up to.

Frankenheimer, who would go on to direct another political thriller, Seven Days in May, slowly reveals the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, and in the end, we do get the whole picture, but some pieces seem to belong to a different puzzle.

Make Way for Tomorrow (1937)

André Crous

Make Way for TomorrowUSA
4*

Director:
Leo McCarey
Screenwriter: 
Viña Delmar
Director of Photography:
William C. Mellor

Running time: 91 minutes

Leo McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow will forever be known as the American film that anticipated Yasujiro Ozu’s celebrated Tokyo Story by more than a decade. It is the story of an elderly couple who have lost their home during the Great Depression and need the support of their five children, all of whom are unwilling to put a roof over both their parents’ heads because of the disruption it would create in their own lives. So, their father and mother spend most of the film separated from each other, waiting for a letter or a phone call that would offer reassurance about each other’s health and good spirits.

The film is affectionate towards its two main characters without being sentimental or schmaltzy, and the director’s very simple presentation of the material makes for an unassuming visual quality that does not seek to highlight any part of its content; the impact of the film on the viewer is the result of many small incidents that we fear might tear at the relationship of a couple who has been married for fifty years.

Barkley and Lucy Cooper are in their late sixties or early seventies and the bank has recently foreclosed on their home, because Barkley hasn’t worked in four years, and is visibly affected by his age. They have gathered together their children to explain the situation, but their children seem to think it would be a terrible bother; not one of them is keen on putting up both the parents, so Barkley and Lucy go their own ways to spend time with their children for what is supposed to be a temporary arrangement. It does turn out to be very temporary, and in the process the generation gap quickly becomes evident and unbearable. The film itself starts with a title card that implies the natural difficulty of communication across the generations: “…there is no magic that will draw together in perfect understanding the aged and the young. There is a canyon between us, and the painful gap is only bridged by the ancient words of a very wise man — ‘Honor thy father and thy mother’.”

We spend most of the film in the company of Lucy, the mother, who is staying with her son George, his wife and their daughter. We quickly realise that Lucy is not as out of touch with reality as her family thinks she is, and while she doesn’t want to impose, her daughter-in-law, who teaches bridge at home in the evening, makes no bones about the fact that her stay is interfering with the established rhythm of the family. In the meantime, her own son has made contact with a restroom for elderly women. I found, however, that certain scenes were a bit overdramatic in the sense that Lucy did meddle with the guests – being the only person standing up, while the others are seated at the tables, she goes around looking at people’s cards and making comments about their hands.

Lucy’s husband, Barkley, is spending time with his daughter Cora, a woman whose pride blinds her to the generosity of others and whose stinginess makes her appear to be completely heartless. As opposed to the events of Tokyo Story, the children in this film, while arguably even worse than the children in Ozu’s film, do realise, in the end, that they have not lived up to their parents’ expectations. The emotional shock that George’s wife gets when she becomes aware that there is also a communication gap between her and her daughter is a significant development, for it becomes a mirror held up to the adults and reflects their relationship with their parents.

The film contains beautiful moments of reminiscence between Barkley and Lucy that may be compared to the beginning of Up, and by the time Lucy recites a poem she memorised as a young girl, half the audience will have teared up. Make Way for Tomorrow is not a life lesson as much as it is a look at a couple whose relationship has lasted 50 years, and can even withstand the condescension of their own children, though we might not always believe what they are capable of.

The poem that Lucy recites is the following:

A man and a maid stand hand in hand,
Down by a wedding band.
Before them lay uncertain years,
Promised joy, maybe tears.
‘Is she afraid?’ thought the man of the maid.
‘Darling,’ he says, in a tender voice,
‘Do you regret your choice?’
‘We know not where the road will wind,
Or what strange byways we may find.
Are you afraid?’ says the man, to the maid.

She raised her eyes, and spoke at last.
‘My dear,’ she said, ‘the die have been cast,
The vows have been spoken,
The rice has been thrown,
Into the future we travel alone.’
‘With you,’ said the maid, ‘I’m not afraid.’

Silent Light (2007)

André Crous

Mexico
4*

Director:
Carlos Reygadas
Screenwriter:
Carlos Reygadas
Director of Photography:
Alexis Zabé

Running time: 127 minutes

Original title: Stellet licht
Alternative title: Luz silenciosa

It is not only light that is silent in Mexican director Carlos Reygadas’s third film: the characters’ world seems to be in perpetual stasis, though we rarely get the sense that they are frustrated with their quiet way of life. It is refreshing to see a heavily faith-based community presented in a way that makes them appear completely understanding and accepting of human nature, and it is this aspect that raises the film above similar other projects dealing with the same dramatic thread.

The three main characters are Johan, his wife Esther, and Johan’s mistress Marianne, who all form part of a small Mennonite community in Mexico, and almost all the dialogue is in Plautdietsch – a mixture between Dutch and German, with a pronunciation that made me think of Danish. Esther knows about Marianne, because Johan has told her about his mistress from the very start. We discover this important piece of information when Johan confesses to his father, the local preacher, about the affair, and the handful of scenes that precede their conversation is filled with tender moments of interaction between Johan and Esther that make it clear there is love and affection but not without some unknown sadness.

When discussing this film, audiences will focus on the rhythm of the film and the second to last scene, which is very reminiscent of the famous climax in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Ordet, though Reygadas refuses to provide a simple “miracle” and instead his film ends on a suitably ambiguous note. The rhythm of the film is slow without being overbearing, and while the camera certainly takes its time recording what seems to be the minutiae of everyday life in the community, the frames are not void of action, and the many actions that do cross the screen are all of great importance to the characters. Perhaps it was not necessary to record a very long take of Johan driving, in which the camera first shows us the road in front of the car, and then Johan at the wheel, but the tedium of this particular scene early in the film quickly dissipates.

The honesty of the main character is admirable and so is the complete lack of judgment of his affair in this tiny community – an affair that ultimately (at least, indirectly) leads to a tragedy. Distinctions between good and bad may only be made by the viewer, for the film does not venture into such territory of clear-cut oppositions, and the drama that does exist is the result of the viewer’s projections and expectations based on the material that is given to us in a very straightforward manner that is unembellished. The film also uses non-professional actors to create a world that is plain yet far from simple.

Silent Light opens and closes with impressive shots that seem to bring cosmic significance to the film, and the sustained lens flares during a romantic scene on a hill also make visible the presence of light in the characters’ lives. The amazing state of grace in which these characters exist is beautiful to behold and a far cry from the usual dramatic tension that results from actions, reactions and tension between polar opposites. The film seems to relate an optimism about forgiveness, but it is important to note the central issue that is the internal struggle of all three main characters and how they deal with it. While Silent Light is entirely divested of extradiegetic music, it does contain a very touching moment in a van when Johan and his children watch Jacques Brel on television performing “Les Bonbons”, a song whose lyrics vaguely mirror Johan’s love triangle.

Carlos Reygadas has made a very special film that illuminates the isolated community of the Mennonites in Mexico and while one might argue that the story is too small for a two-hour film, the pace of the film is as steady and as firm as the flow of the characters’ lives and these lives end up unexpectedly moving our emotions.

Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983)

André Crous

Japan/United Kingdom
4*

Director: 
Nagisa Ôshima
Screenwriters: 
Nagisa Ôshima
Paul Mayersberg
Director of Photography:
Toichiro Narushima

Running time: 118 minutes

Original title: 戦場のメリークリスマス
Transliterated title: Senjō no merīkurisumasu

“War makes friendship among men stronger“, says Lt. Colonel Lawrence to Sergeant Hara of the Imperial Japanese Army. Of course, it does. But Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence examines the consequences of such intimacy between soldiers a bit more closely than most other films, with the exception of Robert Altman’s masterful Streamers, which was released the same year. This “intimacy between soldiers” obviously implies some level of attraction, and the film’s very first scene makes it clear what the two camps, namely the British and the Japanese, make of such behaviour.

This film, by the Japanese director Nagisa Ôshima, is set during the Second World War on the island of Java, while it was under Japanese control. Allied troops, mostly British soldiers, are held captive by the Japanese forces, and while the scenes under the hot sun, among the palm trees, showing British soldiers listening to a Japanese captain who follows orders rather than reason, might look familiar, any comparison with Bridge on the River Kwai would be very superficial indeed. Ôshima’s film starts with a scene that immediately puts the Japanese and British views on homosexual attraction front and centre. When it is discovered that Kanemoto, a Korean soldier. has been committing “improper” acts with a Dutch soldier, the Japanese Sergeant Hara at first decides to execute Kanemoto, lest his shameful acts be made public. But moments before the sword falls, the commanding officer, Captain Yonoi, arrives on the scene to stop the overzealous Sergeant.

Yonoi seems to be a rather complicated individual. The filmmaker introduces him as a slightly effeminate character, approaching the would-be execution in a white robe and sandals; he also seems to be wearing eyeliner, but his fellow soldiers seem not to take any notice. He delays the execution and is called up to Batavia where he participates in a military trial for a captured British soldier called Celliers, played by David Bowie. At this point, during Celliers’s appearance in court, we get the most visible indication that Yonoi is fascinated – perhaps even enchanted – by the blond Brit: he can’t take his eyes off him.

While the charges against Celliers are read out loud, the viewer’s attention is rapt by the very slow zoom in, across the courtroom, on Yonoi’s face, staring at Celliers. When he is finally given the opportunity to speak, he comes to Celliers’s defence and proposes that the Brit be taken as a prisoner of war, rather than executed.

After Celliers arrives at the camp and Yonoi discovers that he used to serve with Lawrence, he questions the latter about him in a very innocent way that nonetheless reveals his interest to us and to Lawrence, who is very bemused by the captain’s almost childlike fascination and the fact that he doesn’t know how to interpret his own feelings. While Celliers notices Yonoi’s eyes on him and takes advantage of the special treatment he consequently receives from the Japanese commander, he is not interested in Yonoi, except as a means of redeeming himself. The viewer is made aware of the need for redemption during two significant incidents that occur as flashbacks – the first takes place years earlier when Celliers protects his younger brother by being beaten up in his place, and the second occurs years later when Celliers does not protect his brother when he is bullied at school.

Celliers’s eventual attempt at redemption demonstrates great cunning on the parts of both Celliers and the director, for it clearly links a number of different events into a solid final moment of courage. Celliers realises that, if violence is not an effective tactic of resistance, the opposite might just be worth trying out, and in the process he not only stands up against his oppressors, but he frees himself from the shackles of the past. The scene is short, simple, and stripped to its bare essentials, yet surprisingly complex, given the resolution of two issues effected in a single leap.

Yonoi shows great promise for dramatic intrigue in the first half, which moves along rapidly once the captain lays his eyes on Celliers in court, and it is very interesting to read the looks of the other Japanese soldiers, who fear that their captain has been bewitched by an evil spirit – the only explanation for the sudden change in his behaviour. However, the second half does not deliver on the promise of the first half but rather shifts the focus to the title character, John Lawrence, who serves as mediator between the Japanese and British language and culture, and Sergeant Hara, whose initial eagerness to kill changes over time and reveals a more human character than we might have expected.

Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence takes on an interesting subject, but while David Bowie’s character, Jack Celliers, is carefully drawn, I did not find the same kind of depth in either John Lawrence or Hara, though this does not mute their likeability in any way. Nagisa Ôshima focuses on the human dramas of four men, and while the two groupings do not provoke the same level of emotion, the characters are all very firmly established and carry the film squarely (and firmly) on their shoulders.

Stalker (1979)

André Crous

USSR
4*

Director:
Andrei Tarkovsky
Screenwriters:
Arkadi Strugatsky,
Boris Strugatsky
Director of Photography:
Alexander Knyazhinsky

Running time: 163 minutes

Original title: Сталкер

Andrei Tarkovsky has a reputation for making films that are slow. This reputation is not entirely warranted, except for that eternal take inside the empty swimming pool in Nostalghia. His films usually have an average shot length no longer than 60 or 70 seconds, and his debut, Ivan’s Childhood gallops along at a refreshing pace. Now, compare that number to the films of someone like Béla Tarr, and you’ll see what “slow cinema” really means. Stalker is the second Tarkovsky film that I’ve watched in a week – the other being Solaris – and what struck me at the beginning of Solaris, and all the way through Stalker, was the number of monologues and dialogue in both. These minutes of speech, though necessary to sketch the characters in real-world terms, constitute my major gripe against both; however, they remain my favourite films from this extraordinary director.

Stalker is an incredibly simple story set in a film that constantly generates different perspectives on the theme of religion, and Christianity in particular. The “Stalker” is a man who guides anybody with enough money to a house deep within the forbidden area called “The Zone”, where it is alleged that their innermost wish will come true. In this story, the Stalker leads two anonymous men – a Writer and a Scientist – to the “Room” that is their Jinn. However, the Stalker never sees anybody again after their encounter with the Room, and he has never tried it himself. All of this can be taken as a metaphor for Heaven, from which no one has ever returned but whose existence, according to those who believe the guide, in the form of a preacher, cannot be denied. But Tarkovsky’s film never pivots to any particular interpretation of events and remains wholly ambiguous from beginning to end. While the mystical nature of the Zone may just be hogwash, the events may easily be interpreted, by those who believe the words of the Stalker, as proof of the Zone’s sentience.

The Zone is one of the most beautiful areas ever conceived on film. The different shades of green, the water, the fog and the serenity of the silence make for an atmosphere that can only be described as heavenly. At the same time, however, the characters are mostly enclosed by frames – window frames, door frames, walls – and seem to be trapped even while they should feel completely liberated. One very impressive use of this technique occurs during a scene where the characters wait in a room where a telephone suddenly starts to ring – a moment that startles because the landscape around the building is littered with broken telephone poles and power lines. Tarkovsky, by means of sound and image, suggests a boundless complexity in his characters; however, as I mentioned above, it is unfortunate that a few very long speeches contribute to this complexity, but even so, they are relatively effective.

There are a few obvious religious references, such as the narrated Biblical story of Jesus’ meeting with two men shortly after his death without being recognised by either of them. It is the voice of the Stalker that relates the story to us, but the story is changed slightly: the men don’t have names either. The choir’s rendition of “Ode to Joy” in Beethoven’s 9th Symphony also ends the film on a beautifully spiritual note.

While the film deals with hope, desire, dreams and religion, it has been composed in a way that eludes definitive interpretation but is easily accessible and while a few scenes do drag on a bit, in particular, the climactic scene at the Room, as well as another silly scene in a room full of small sand dunes, the film overall is an absolute joy. The film’s cinematography is pitch-perfect and the entire film is on the level of some of the other very moving moments of beauty in Tarkovsky’s films, such as the frozen lake in Solaris and the final shot of The Sacrifice.

A Reasonable Man (1999)

André Crous

South Africa
4*

Director:
Gavin Hood
Screenwriter:
Gavin Hood
Director of Photography:
Buster Reynolds

Running time: 101 minutes

The South African A Reasonable Man is a carefully executed investigation into the importance of tribal or traditional beliefs in a country that sees itself as Western-oriented. The screenplay takes great care to handle the material sensibly, demonstrating the significance of the past in the present, and highlighting the fact that non-Western beliefs should not be dismissed out of hand, for they too have a role to play, however “unreasonable” their basis might be in the eyes of the law.

The film opens in Angola in 1988, during the final years of the South African Border War. South African soldiers arrive in a tiny village where they find nothing but abandoned houses. The squad separates and a young Sean Raine goes to hide in one of these houses. When a closet door creaks, the tense Raine unloads his gun on the flimsy plywood door. What tumbles out of the closet will haunt him for a long time.

Ten years later, having recently returned to South Africa after spending a decade abroad with his wife, Raine meets a young cowherd named Sipho in a village in the Eastern part of the country known as Kwazulu-Natal. Sipho is found with a bloody hatchet in his hands, while a woman clutches a one-year-old baby in her arms, its head split open. Sipho swears that he was only trying to kill the “Tikoloshe” (or “Tokoloshe”, as I know it), an evil spirit, and not the baby. Luckily, Raine is a lawyer, and because of his experience in Angola, he decides to give the boy a chance and chooses to represent him in court.

But “Tikoloshe” is not a word that anybody takes kindly to – except Sipho and a witch doctor (or “sangoma”) who would help rid Sean Raine of his demons from the past – and it seems unlikely that the boy, who admits to having swung the hatchet, would be judged innocent. Hearing this case is Judge Wendon, whose initial surprise at Raine’s refusal to let his client plead insanity defence slowly morphs into a more accommodating view of the young lawyer. Starring as Judge Wendon is Nigel Hawthorne, who brings a very welcome combination of compassion, wit and judicial solemnity to the role.

At the centre of the film, however, is director Gavin Hood himself, who is cast as Sean Raine, a man whose big clean-shaven face is innocent yet shimmers with conviction and perseverance. The film is as much about Raine’s personal story as the criminal proceeding, for he feels that he would finally be freed from this “snake deep inside” if he manages to assure Sipho’s acquittal.

Now, it is made clear that Sipho took a hatchet and struck a baby in such a way that the baby was killed. Sipho believed that it was the Tikoloshe, but the steadfastness of one’s beliefs has nothing to do with the law, as Judge Wendon makes very clear in his comparison of Sipho’s beliefs with those of mass murderers and historical figures such as Hitler and Stalin.

Hood’s screenplay flows very well, although its desire not only to meet the audience more than halfway but to spell everything out in overly informative sentences sometimes seems quite contrived. Sipho’s character has to be a bit of an enigma in order for the film to exist, but the lack of interaction between him and Raine, as well as the complete absence of the mother of the murdered baby, left me wondering whether Hood was not too interested in his own character.

The film makes an interesting analogy between Christian and tribal beliefs, including the ever-popular metaphor of Christ’s blood and body, and in this regard, Hood is successful in introducing his audience to customs that might be foreign to them. Hood’s choice to make the state prosecutor a black advocate and himself, a white man, the representative for the defence of tribal beliefs, is very interesting and provides this film with a much richer texture than it would have had otherwise.

The implications of an imbalance, in the eyes of the law, between Western and non-Western morality is hammered home a bit too forcefully, but in the end, the film survives its examination of social and religious customs and certainly provides ample material for discussion afterwards. The courthouse is in Pietermaritzburg, in South Africa, a town whose licence plate designation is NP. Perhaps this is a coincidence. But, considering the film’s attention to detail, perhaps it isn’t.

Solaris (1972)

André Crous

SolarisUSSR
4*

Director:
Andrei Tarkovsky
Screenwriters:
Fridrikh Gorenshtein
Andrei Tarkovsky
Director of Photography:
Vadim Yusov

Running time: 160 minutes

Original title: Солярис

The reality of the world in Tarkovsky’s Solaris seems to be as clear as daylight and yet as difficult to pin down as the reality of the three individuals on board the Solaris Space Station. Things seem to be straightforward (despite being a science-fiction film, there are no aliens here), but as characters’ memories start to physically materialise around them and we realise that no one can really trust the physical existence of anyone or anything around them, the world of the central character, Kris Kelvin, becomes very flimsy indeed, and many essential questions can never be answered.

Andrei Tarkovsky’s film, arguably one of his most accessible (together with Ivan’s Childhood and The Sacrifice), is based on the novel Solaris by Polish writer Stanisław Lem, which was published in 1961. People and their situations constantly shift in and out of focus, and while the central dilemma is quite easy to comprehend (Kelvin is confronted with the physical manifestation of his late wife), the questions resulting from this situation are profound and incredibly relevant today given mankind’s ability to (re)create images.

Kris Kelvin is a psychologist sent to the space station above the planet Solaris to investigate the situation there. Solaris itself is covered by a whirlpool of an ocean, and Kelvin soon discovers that the ocean is sentient. At the space station, a close friend, Gibarian, has committed suicide under strange circumstances, and the only crew members remaining are a Doctor Sartorius, who spends all day locked up in his laboratory, and Doctor Snout, who tries to warn Kelvin about the unexpected apparitions onboard.

These apparitions take the form of someone whose trace of a memory is found deep in the recesses of a crew member’s soul, and in the case of Kelvin, it is his late wife, Hari, who committed suicide 10 years ago. Kelvin is visibly affected by her appearance, even though he knows that she is not real. After he sends her out into space, a substitute appears. These substitutes are, of course, externally identical but always copies of the memory. As such (and this is an important point that is made much clearer in the 2002 remake by Steven Soderbergh), Hari can never know anything that Kelvin does not.

Even though Kelvin knows that Hari is merely a copy, he interacts with her in a way that causes him joy instead of sadness. She does not remind him of a loss as much as her presence makes him happy, and therefore, ultimately, Solaris fails to succeed in torturing Kelvin.

The film opens at Kelvin’s house next to a lake, where clouds or fog are always visible in the background. The environment seems pure, and a lone horse passes through the frame now and again while Tarkovsky takes care to show us water flowing over lush green water plants. It seems to be nature at its most innocent, but the film slowly and surely subverts our preconceived notions until we are left with the realisation that things in the world of the film are never quite what they seem.

Solaris is long and contains a number of scenes that would have benefited from a number of cuts, including, most importantly, an early scene during which we watch a film extensively detailing a mission to Solaris. Another scene, which takes place in a library onboard the space station, has some interesting components, including references to Don Quixote, a work of literature that also investigates a world where reality is no longer virginal.

Bach’s organ choral prelude (“Ich ruf’ zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ”) is used in a striking way throughout the film, and the film’s final scene, when we are confronted with a frozen lake that brings to mind a painting by Bruegel (“The Hunters in the Snow”) shown in fragments earlier in the film, produces a moment of such beauty it nearly brought me to tears.

During a scene that immediately precedes Kelvin’s journey to the space station, viewers are obliged to immerse themselves in the flow of sound and image rather than story. It reminded me of sequences from Koyaanisqatsi and shows a car driving along the highways of Tokyo, at different speeds and in different colours, the sound changing as well to produce a sequence of indescribable energy that finally serves to propel the story itself forward, and Kelvin into space.

The film has a few scenes in black and white, but they are not entirely distinct from other scenes in colour, though sometimes they are flashbacks and sometimes they are not. However, our inability to easily distinguish flashback, dream and immediate reality from each other is of course part of the dilemma that the film poses to us and to Kelvin.

The examination of reality in a world where copies resemble the original to such a great extent is very pertinent and has recently been treated in many other films, from David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ to Christopher Nolan’s Inception. I found the plot more interesting and more accessible than Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, though they are both enigmatic in their own ways and lend themselves to hours of interpretation.

Days of Heaven (1978)

André Crous

USA
4*

Director:
Terrence Malick
Screenwriter:
Terrence Malick
Directors of Photography:
Néstor Almendros
Haskell Wexler

Running time: 95 minutes

Terrence Malick is a big ol’ romantic; just consider Badlands and The New World. Days of Heaven is in the same vein, and its images are breathtaking. It stars Richard Gere and Brooke Adams, who pretend to be brother and sister, lest other people “start talking”, and go to work in the Texas Panhandle in 1916, where they sack the wheat on the farm of a bachelor roughly their age. The farmer is never given a name, but ironically, he is the best-drawn character of the three.

Days of Heaven starts with the music of Camille Saint-Saëns, the famous seventh movement (“Aquarium”) of his “Carnival of the Animals”, and the music sets the tone for the rest of the score, composed by the master, Ennio Morricone. Malick’s images are dreamlike in colour yet very clearly “of this world”, and his characters seem to float through existence even though we can easily project our own fears onto them. For once, I think the film’s images themselves surpass even the beauty of the film’s Criterion DVD cover (the poster image at the top).

The film was famously shot mostly at magic hour (that brief window of time after sunset and before darkness), and as a result, the horizon is often bright orange, the sky is tinted purple-orange and the characters are bathed in hues of pink. Malick’s decision to shoot primarily (though, importantly, not exclusively) at this time of day inevitably led to some trouble, including errors in continuity, because shots would change from magic hour to full sunlight in a single scene. However, his directors of photography, Almendros and Wexler, knew how to cope with the demands of their director, and for the most part, these changes in lighting are not very significant.

It is true that the film has less plot than some music videos, but honestly, one doesn’t really care. Malick is a visual storyteller, and he easily manages to fill an entire film with action set on a single farm. The majestic farmhouse, perched on a hill, which looks out over the whole property and is reminiscent of the famous farmhouse in George Stevens’s Giant, appears in many shots in the background, and sometimes the camera pans from the action in a pond or in the fields back to the house in the background.

Brooke Adams’s character, Abby, who looks like a young Ali MacGraw, catches the eye of the farmer, who asks her to stay on at the farm past the end of the season. Her boyfriend, Billy, had heard that the farmer is ill, and they decide to let Abby stay on so that they could inherit the farmer’s money when he dies. Of course, he doesn’t die as quickly as they’d like,  and this fact generates some frustration in Billy. But Abby is carefree and starts to fall in love with the farmer, played by Sam Shepard, who never looked more handsome and genuinely cares for her.

Days of Heaven plays as a kind of memory – an idea supported by the voice-over of Abby’s young sister, Linda, who also joins them at the farm. But for some reason, the Linda on the soundtrack is the voice of the Linda as a young girl, which doesn’t make much sense. Also, the point of the view of the camera is always displaced from one character to another.

The inspiration for David Gordon Green‘s film, Undertow, is obvious, especially in the way both directors use dialogue in their respective films. In scenes with dialogue, Malick uses the age-old rule of starting a scene as late as possible and ending it as quickly as possible. These conversational moments are effective, although some scenes exist purely for the sake of producing one or two lines of important dialogue before we move on to the next poetic scene with wheat ears quivering under a gentle breeze.

Days of Heaven‘s finest moment, the attack of the locusts, may be compared to the buffalo hunt in Dances with Wolves, but it also has a very important symbolic role to play, as it comes at a critical point in the narrative, and Malick makes use of this moment to introduce his only vertically downward shot – a divine point of view that plays on the locusts’ significance in a biblical context as well.

But for all the beautiful imagery, the central story and, in particular, the characters of Abby and Billy needed to be fleshed out a bit more. Abby, in particular, seems to have no real attachment, and one doesn’t get a clear idea of her true interest. The film contains some interesting glances from smaller characters who are suspicious of the relationship between Abby and her “brother”, Billy, and these are well integrated into the flow of the story.

Terrence Malick’s film is enchanting and, despite any objections one might have about the story or the characters, he demonstrates that the cinema has a powerful ability to present even the simplest of stories in harmonious sounds and images that can be truly astounding.

Pather Panchali (1955)

André Crous

India
4*

Director:
Satyajit Ray
Screenwriter: 
Satyajit Ray
Director of Photography:
Subrata Mitra

Running time: 115 minutes

Original title: পথের পাঁচালী

This review is part of a series on the Apu Trilogy that also includes:
– Aparajito
– The World of Apu

This has to be one of the best debut films ever shot. Based on a Bengali novel by writer Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay (try saying that three times in a row), it was adapted for the screen and directed by Satyajit Ray, a man in his early thirties who had had no formal training in film making, but who had a passion for cinema and had founded the Calcutta Film Club in 1947. The other crew members were equally inexperienced, and Ray’s director of photography, Subrata Mitra, had barely turned 21. Many of the actors, including the young boy, Apu, hadn’t acted before either.

This was the start of the Indian New Wave, also known under the moniker “Parallel Cinema”, because the films were being produced in India as an alternative to their better known musicals. Similar in kind to the social realist Italian New Wave of the time, it also came about in part thanks to Ray’s involvement in Jean Renoir’s The River, released in 1951, for which Ray had met with Renoir and assisted during the shoot.

But Pather Panchali is much more gritty than the superproduction that was Renoir’s film, and it has certainly dated much better, primarily because the acting is more sincere and it does not contain any heavy-handed narration. The film is the first instalment in a series that would later be known as the “Apu Trilogy”, after the main character, whose life as a boy is portrayed in the first film; in the second film, Aparajito, we see him as a young man; and in the third film, The World of Apu, he has grown up and has to take responsibility for his choices earlier in life.

Pather Panchali seems like a very rough-and-tumble film, with little going for it as far as the plot is concerned, but the film’s memorable characters are all introduced very early in the film in such a way that we are immediately attached to them. The setting is equally difficult to pinpoint: We see crumbling houses in a big forest and an open field with tall grass that leads to the railway tracks, but that is the extent of the locations. And yet, it is enough: Ray finds beauty in everyday objects and has a very acute sensibility for composition that ensures our interest in the visuals as well as the narrative.

In one of the film’s most strikingly beautiful shots, we see Apu and his sister Durga following the sweet-seller. The camera shoots their reflections in the shallow pond next to them, as their movements are accompanied, as is so often the case, by the sitar music of Ravi Shankar. His music is used repeatedly throughout the film and the only time that it seems strained is during the scene when a parent finds out that his daughter has died.

While the film is clearly the beginning of a journey for young Apu, whose big, black curious eyes are impossible to overlook, almost all of the characters have something unique by which we can identify them and that serves the narrative in a very powerful way. The train is also a symbol that is hard to miss and it is interesting to note the scenes in which a train can be heard in the distance: at night, when Apu’s father mentions his desire to write and sell plays, and when his wife discusses her wish to move out of his ancestral home and let them settle in Benares (Varanasi). For the moment, these desires are unfulfilled, but as the seasons change, people’s eyes open to the possibilities that are available to them, and Apu’s eternally optimist father has to make up his mind about the way forward.

Speaking of eyes – another shot that will make an impression on the viewer is the introduction of Apu. Unlike the other characters, who simply appear in a shot, Apu is clearly introduced: His sister pulls open his eyelid through a hole in the cloth covering his face and when his eye is suddenly visible, this image, framed by the cloth around his eye, receives backing on the soundtrack with loud sitar music.

The entire family of characters, including the slightly senile grandmother, is a wonderful mix of people who cope as best they can with their abject poverty, and the small scenes that Ray has strung together form a very colourful impression that will stay with the viewer for a long time after the credits roll.