4 stars

Star Trek: Into Darkness (2012)

André Crous

The famed science-fiction franchise is firmly on track to having a long life full of prosperity under the direction of J.J. Abrams.

star-trek-2012USA
4*

Director:
J.J. Abrams
Screenwriters:
Roberto Orci
Alex Kurtzman
Damon Lindelof
Director of Photography:
Dan Mindel

Running time: 130 minutes

Although the freshness of the Star Trek reboot may have worn off a little, its second instalment, titled Star Trek Into Darkness, is every bit as majestic and engaging as the first one that was released in 2009.

Only two films in, director J.J. Abrams has our complete confidence he has brought the franchise back from near-oblivion with films that invigorate the viewer and may even shape a new generation of fans seeking to travel to distant lands scattered among the galaxies. Abrams’s risky decision to include a few bouts of sentimentality is handled with extreme care and pays off in the end, proving this director is strong where it counts.

The major character arc involves the spontaneous, sometimes rebellious, Captain Kirk (Chris Pine), who showed his mettle in the first film, despite his rivalry with Spock (Zachary Quinto), the most intelligent officer on the ship and the one with whom he clashed with most often.

In the opening moments, Kirk and Spock are outrunning primitive beings on the planet Nibiru before Spock is catapulted into a volcano that threatens to destroy the entire civilisation before it has even had a chance to develop. Although their presence is mostly unexplained, except for a suggestion they had an urge to save the planet, even though there was no vested interested in taking such dangerous action, this sequence is important because it establishes Kirk’s nascent feelings of friendship for Spock. Flaunting Starfleet regulations and potentially altering the course of history, he reveals the ship to the spear-wielding populace in order to save Spock from certain death.

It is an act the pointy-eared Vulcan doesn’t quite grasp, but by the end of the film his half-human heart will have come round, and we will realise how much the two opposites have shaped each other’s behaviour. Abrams walks a very treacherous road by reminding us of Spock’s loss of his mother and his entire planet in the previous film and Kirk’s loss of his father. At times, it seems like the film is headed straight for primal territory where passionate reactions are only possible when the past is dug up, but luckily the characters are complex enough for us to assume these past incidents are part of their makeup and do not dominate their actions.

But Kirk’s proclivity for adventure leads him into a sticky situation at the heart of the film, which involves one of the series’s most notorious figures: the genetically enhanced Khan Singh, also known as John Harrison. That Khan is played by the pale Benedict Cumberbatch may come as a shock to Trekkies, but the actor’s depiction of the ominous character, whose intellect rivals that of Spock and whose cells have the ability to regenerate at warp speed, is effective because he is soft-spoken but firm, very persuasive and ultimately terrifyingly cold-blooded.

If you are a diehard Star Trek fan, you may relish the opportunity to practise your Klingon, as this is the first time the language of this warrior race appears in the new series. The relatively short scene features expert “xenolinguist” Uhura (a constantly weepy and emotional Zoe Saldana, whose character is the weakest in an otherwise very strong cast) producing the guttural language during negotiations with jittery fighters.

The storyline isn’t as clear as it was in the first film, and it does not generate the same kind of awe at the magnitude of space travel until the very last scene, but much of the interest lies in the development and exploration of personality, as even a relatively small character like Lieutenant Sulu (John Cho) is given room to grow in a visible, memorable and satisfying way.

Into Darkness is by no means a film that can only be appreciated by the Trekkies, but it ought to offer committed fans of the franchise a smooth viewing experience as well. It is popcorn science-fiction entertainment writ large that focuses on human stories (or human feelings, as in the case of Spock, who still pines for the planet he lost in the previous film) rather than grand ideas or scientific minutiae. Michael Giacchino’s sweeping pieces for orchestra, sometimes boosted by a choir, accompany large sections of the film in a rousing way.

We will have to wait until the next instalment to assess whether Abrams can break the curse of the “bad odd-numbered Star Trek film”, as he did with his 2009 motion picture, but for now, the voyages of the USS Enterprise and its crew will continue to enthral even the sceptics of science fiction.

Nymphomaniac: Volumes I and II (director’s cut)

André Crous

The 5½-hour uncut and uncensored version of Lars von Trier’s controversial film is smooth but hardcore and stronger than the sum of its parts.

nymphomaniac-directors-cutDenmark
4*

Director:
Lars von Trier
Screenwriter:
Lars von Trier
Director of Photography:
Manuel Alberto Claro

Running time: 325 minutes

This review complements the separate reviews of the two volumes:
– Nymphomaniac: Vol. I 
– Nymphomaniac: Vol. II

The long-awaited director’s cut of Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac has everything audiences were promised at the outset but didn’t get when the two shortened volumes were released separately. In this very lengthy version, more than 80 minutes have been restored after an outcry from the director and a wave of interest from viewers who were intrigued by what they got to see the first time around. The final cut, although still presented in two parts with their own final credits, is surprisingly strong, even as we can see why many of the shots were cut or scenes trimmed.

First of all, it has to be said that the editors on the shortened versions did a remarkable job paring the 325 minutes of the director’s cut down to around 240 minutes. Their work can only be thoroughly appreciated now that we can compare the two cuts with each other, which both convey the same story as before and have a remarkably similar focus.

The film is still a story-within-a-story, and it opens with the middle-aged Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) being discovered bloodied and beaten up in a London alley by the lonesome book worm Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård). Seligman takes her back to his place to recuperate and asks her what happened. She proceeds to tell him all about her life of loneliness, love and lots of sex, and how she ended up getting exactly what was coming to her, as she fatalistically suggests.

Out of the two volumes, the first, which covers most of Joe’s years as a teenager and a young adult, had far less footage cut (around 30 minutes) than the second (almost a full hour), and indeed it is not always easy to point to new material. There surely are standout moments, such as a depiction of the god Odin in the ash tree (the Norse world tree) that Joe’s father tells her about as a young girl, or the much-extended sequence at the hospital while her father writhes in agony as he leaves this life.

There are other moments, too, that are rather easy to notice, and it is equally understandable why the editors removed them. These include, for example, two shots in the train that show Joe’s friend Bee followed by a conquest, to underline Joe’s frustration at not having the same success at hooking up. In the shorter version, there is only one shot, and the scene is significantly shorter. The same is true later on, when both girls pretend to be heartbroken in order to tease comfort from the male passengers in their respective compartments. In the shorter version, we see only how Joe went about this performance. The cuts served to narrow the focus to Joe rather than the event in its holistic sprawl and were very effective. We also got much less of Bee’s elaborate recounting of one of her sexual episodes to a group of promiscuous young women who call themselves the “little flock”, which serves no real purpose in the director’s cut.

Although it took out very little material, one of the most significant cuts becomes apparent in “Chapter 2: Jerôme”: In the short version, when Joe decides to deliver a love letter to Jerôme, her boss, who also took her virginity when they were both teenagers, she arrives at his office only to find he has left with his secretary. In the longer version, we see two scenes in which Joe shares her feelings with the secretary and is told that she should deliver the letter on a specific day, which turns out to be the day they leave together.

These specific scenes add much greater depth to Joe’s character, as they depict a kind of longing or yearning for Jerôme that was not as evident in the shorter version, and ultimately these moments elicit more empathy for her from the viewer.

The largest chunk of new material in the first volume forms part of the black-and-white “Chapter 4: Delirium”, in which Joe’s father dies. While the shorter version did make an impact, the effect was much weaker than it is now, as we get a much firmer sense of unconditional love between the father and daughter, and his ultimate demise is truly affecting.

In general, however, the most obvious difference between the two cuts is the quantity of full-frontal nudity, as there was a modest amount in the edited version compared with the copious number of male members, often presented in close-up, entering a variety of holes – one of which, we now learn in this latest cut, Joe calls her “Pandora’s box” – in the director’s cut. Particular mention has to be made of Von Trier’s unexpected use of the Proustian idea of the madeleine (wholly absent from the edited version) after a graphic scene of oral sex performed on the train, which before had been heavily cut.

We also learn her father left her his calliper, which they used to measured leaves with. These two details tie in with subtle indications of incest later on in Vol. II, as the calliper features in a self-performed abortion scene, and Joe flips through her book of dead leaves shortly before she starts to touch herself.

The abortion scene is a showstopper. It lasts (or feels like it lasts) an extraordinary amount of time and was completely omitted from the shorter version of Vol. II. It is without a doubt the most gruesome and grisly scene in the entire span of Nymphomaniac and is one of the most wrenching scenes I have ever witnessed on film, right up there with Irreversible’s head-pulverisation with a fire extinguisher and the climactic sequence of misery at the end of Requiem for a Dream. And yet, while a conversation between Joe and Seligman about the pros and cons of getting an abortion is too long, the act itself – in which Joe uses some of her medical training (shown here in a few restored shots in Vol. II) to expel her foetus with, among other things, a knitting needle and a clothes hanger – is as powerful as anything you will ever see on film.

Another scene in Vol. II that is much longer now is the “sandwich”, or the three-way sex scene between Joe and two very well-endowed men from somewhere on the African continent, which is the film’s only scene that unquestionably falls into the area of pornography.

A film that lasts 5½ hours will either draw us in and make us feel like we are a part of the world of the story or annoy the viewer with the feeling that time is standing still. In this case, while the film’s “present” is only one night, the events recounted last many decades, and thanks to a plethora of sexual adventures and a comparable spectrum of philosophical and socially relevant discussions, the film is never static.

The energy of the relatively quick succession of events in the shorter version has dissipated, but the more ample information we get now is always interesting, even when it seems entirely tangential. One odd shot, however, which may or may not have been in the shorter version, is of a mirror inside Seligman’s apartment. In an inexplicable moment of obliquely breaking the fourth wall, Von Trier’s camera appears in the mirror for a longer-than-brief period of time when this object is shown to us. What this overt manifestation of the author inside his own work implies is not at all clear, but with topics ranging from the Fibonacci numbers and sexual polyphony to Zeno’s paradox of Achilles and the tortoise, perhaps these just add to the elusive quality of this work that simultaneously appeals to and repulses us (a bit like the suffering and the joy that relate to the Western and the Eastern Church, respectively, in the film), and whose intended meaning we may never grasp in full.

The director’s cut (of which Vol. I was screened at the Berlinale, and Vol. II premiered at the Venice International Film Festival) smoothes out the rough edges of the dialogue scenes between Joe and Seligman in the short versions, presents us with too many giant trouser snakes to count and emphasises the beautiful rapport between Joe and her father that made for the one truly unblemished relationship of her life.

Von Trier, whose first language is not English, fails to engage us with many of the smaller roles, whose actors often sound like they are reading their lines, but all the main parts are admirably played, and Uma Thurman, in particular, is absolutely captivating in her role as the wife who loses her husband to Joe’s lustful escapades. Unfortunately, the director’s cut has no additional footage for their unforgettable confrontation.

The cynics might say this strategy of teasing viewers by releasing two films before releasing their “final cuts” less than a year later is all a marketing ploy on the part of director Von Trier, who has worked in the industry for long enough to know how things work. That may well be the case, but neither the story he tells nor the way he tells it have changed substantially, and whether viewers get to see the shortened or the original long-form version, the experience ought to be one of great fun and pleasure that also leads us to deeper questions, not only about sex but about our lives as human beings. And that certainly cannot be said for any other film that features this much nudity (although the fans of Last Tango in Paris may disagree). It may not be as coherent – and driven by a strong central issue – as his magnificent Manderlay, but the talent, intellect and yes, provocation, of Von Trier is unmistakable. 

Oslo, August 31st (2011)

André Crous

Norwegian wunderkind director Joachim Trier’s second feature is devastatingly intimate as it gracefully follows its main character, a former drug addict, around the capital for one life-changing day.

oslo-31-augustNorway
4*

Director:
Joachim Trier
Screenwriters:
Eskil Vogt
Joachim Trier
Director of Photography:
Jakob Ihre

Running time: 90 minutes

Original title: Oslo, 31. august

The silence that bookends wunderkind Joachim Trier’s slightly ethereal but always solidly grounded Oslo, August 31st is potent. It channels our curiosity more than our emotions, but it also envelops this powerful film about life post-addiction in a soft bubble with a core that is complex and deeply felt.

The main character, 34-year-old Anders, does not even speak a word until more than 10 minutes into the film. By the time he does, however, we have already seen him try to commit suicide by weighting his clothes with rocks and walking into the river à la Virginia Woolf. He backs down and – in another subtle moment of bookending, this time intra-scenic – the camera, which has stayed on him throughout the scene and without cutting away, tracks back across the waters to the river bank. When he comes back out, we see he has lost his jacket, and this loss of a level of protective clothing is the first layer whose disappearance eventually reveals a man terrified of rejoining society.

The framework within which the action takes place is the special day, August 30, for which Anders has received permission to travel into Oslo. After an extended period of time recovering at a drug rehabilitation clinic, this marks the first time he is able to return to the city of his former, wilder self. While the purpose of his visit is to go for an interview at a magazine, he takes the opportunity to meet up with an old friend, Thomas.

Once they meet, the film suddenly reveals itself to be something very special indeed. “I’m a spoilt brat who fucked up”, Anders admits to his friend, who has recently become a father and thus part of the mould of the city’s social fabric, unlike Anders, who is single and whose clinic is located outside the city limits. Not coincidentally, Thomas is wearing a shirt while Anders has on a much more informal grey T-shirt.

The two men’s conversation is pointed and lightly skims over issues of life and death. They know they have to discuss these things, but they don’t quite know how. Above all, their words make it clear that Anders’s opinion of himself is scraping rock bottom. Thomas is kind and understanding, and he tries his best to be supportive, but he is walking on eggshells around Anders, and when his friend suggests he might commit suicide, Thomas is so stunned he has no idea how to react. These scenes, taking place on a peaceful summer morning in a park in the city centre, bring with them a mixture of tenderness, nostalgia and desperation whose power takes the viewer’s breath away.

Their meeting ends on a slightly surreal note, as the moment of their separation, albeit with the faint prospect of seeing each other at a party later in the evening, is replayed in front of our eyes. The result is both ominous and strikingly beautiful, as we can just about feel time slipping through our fingers as it turns from reality into a memory.

This first social interaction of the day, meant to console Anders, brings with it a surge of feelings that taint the rest of his day. Even though he arrives at the interview and appears to be connecting on an intellectual level with the magazine’s editor in chief, when the questions turn personal, he experiences intense humiliation and retreats into himself. It is one of the saddest moments in the film, as we realise that the possibilities are plentiful, but for Anders, the greatest obstacle is overcoming the broken image he sees when he looks in the mirror. He doesn’t want anybody’s pity; what he really wants is a solution, but one that still makes him feel good about himself.

It is hard to ignore the sadness at the heart of Oslo, August 31st, especially during those moments when Anders looks at the people around him blissfully going about their lives, seemingly without a worry in the world. These scenes lead to a voice-over contemplation – heartfelt yet tinged with melancholy because of their absence – of his parents’ role in forming his life. 

The rest of the story develops with Anders walking on a knife’s edge as he tries to be the same guy as he was before, but different. A planned meeting with his sister doesn’t go as planned, and when the late-night party offers old friends who haven’t changed much, the past catches up with him. This final act is by far the most disappointing aspect of the film, as it veers towards territory we expect rather than the original, meticulously crafted dialogues, interactions and styles we relished up until this point. 

Anders Danielsen Lie shines in the lead role as his namesake. Determined to somehow make it through the day in a city he knows like the back of his hand but in a state that frequently has him on the verge of tears, the character is deeply affecting, even when the answers to our questions are often opaque. Trier’s film draws strength not only from the director’s empathetic view of humanity but also from Danielsen Lie’s sensitive performance that draws deep from the well of emotions inside the actor and washes over the story (and us) with the force of a silent tsunami.

The Snake Brothers (2015)

André Crous

Two brothers – one addicted to drugs, the other yearning to be his own boss – make the most of their limited means in the bleak Czech countryside.

snake-brothers-kobry-uzovkyCzech Republic
4*

Director:
Jan Prušinovský
Screenwriter:
Jaroslav Žváček
Director of Photography:
Petr Koblovský

Running time: 110 minutes

Original title: Kobry a užovky

Petr, aka “Cobra”, is in his 20s and unemployed in Kralupy nad Vltavou, a town just north of Prague. He dyes his short hair purple, and in the opening scene, we find him walking down an empty street with bolt cutters on his back. He notices a semi-abandoned wooden house and decides to empty it of its electrical appliances. Shamelessly, he piles them into a trolley – in full view of the gobsmacked neighbour – before heading back out.

His older brother, Vojtěch, aka “Viper”, is working in a factory but often arrives late because he so frequently has to deal with the police who phone him up at night when Cobra causes a public disturbance, yelling from the rooftops about his latest “plan”. Viper is tired of the factory work, exhausted because he is not sleeping enough and fed up with being told he is not pulling his weight. He tells his employer to go jump in a lake and makes his way to the nearest pub.

The Snake Brothers was directed by Jan Prušinovský and stars real-life brothers Kryštof and Matěj Hádek as the two fictional siblings. The characters in Prušinovský’s film have little chance or ambition to escape the closed cycle of existence in their small town, but the director is never too hard nor too soft on them, and sometimes their desperate acts can be simultaneously heartbreaking and humorous.

The main thrust of the narrative concerns Viper’s steady trajectory towards control, as he opens a clothing store and works hard to make it successful. His evolution into a master of his own destiny is helped, in no small part, by his unexpected decision to seize the moment and address a group of German businessmen in German, a language he hasn’t spoken since his East German father left the family years ago.

At the same time, Viper has to contend with Cobra’s ever-fried mental state and proclivity toward kleptomania in order to finance his cocaine habit. He also has to deal with his lazy shop assistant, Zuzana, who is, unfortunately, the wife of his best friend, Tomáš.

Although the relationship between the brothers is obviously front and centre in the film, Tomáš is easily one of its most interesting characters. Actor Jan Hájek channels a man who is focused, sensitive and patient, and he is perhaps the only person in the story whom the viewer can truly admire, although Viper has by far the most complex personality. 

Dialogue tumbles like a dirty river out of the characters’ mouths. In fact, they might just be the most foul-mouthed of any film this year (unfortunately, the English subtitles don’t fully convey the power and the unfailing filth of the original Czech), but our attention always remains riveted to what they are saying, and how they are saying it.

The language, sometimes comical but often used by people in desperate situations, is complemented by actions that are similar in kind and work wonders to prevent the audience from feeling like they are falling into the characters’ abyss of desperation. In one scene, for example, Cobra steals a phone from someone’s handbag at a party. The victim sees him, but instead of assaulting him in response, the lady merely takes back her phone and returns it to the handbag.

It is a small moment that elicits a big laugh and shows that the people around Cobra have understanding for him. He is not a threat to their existence, and while he is utterly irresponsible, there is no need for trumped-up drama to entertain us. In this case, on the contrary, it is the unexpected lack of drama that sometimes provokes our amusement.

What sets this film apart from other similar depictions of desperation in the Czech countryside (Zdeněk Jiráský’s incredibly affecting 2011 feature film Flower Buds comes to mind) is that while it has many moments that appear to suggest a future of near-hopelessness for its central characters, the filmmaker does not put them through hell just to make a point or to stun us with despair. The scenes of Cobra getting wasted or going to the local gambling den to waste the money he has stolen from a vulnerable member of his family remind us of the constant monotony and melancholy in which he finds himself.

The final scene brings with it a shocking revelation that we don’t see coming, as we realise one of the central characters has become the replacement for one of the most despicable individuals in the film. To some extent, we are happy there has been development but mournful over the direction in which this has occurred for this person.

The Snake Brothers is presented very tightly with some highly commendable decisions made in the editing room, especially one late-night act of larceny that involves a television set.

Far from being the gloomy and/or uneventful work that similar features often want to be (like Flower Buds and Nowhere in Moravia, respectively), this is a strong tale told by a storyteller in total control of his material, complemented by a wonderful soundtrack.

Viewed at the 2015 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 

Timbuktu (2014)

André Crous

Splendid film about oppression in historic city occupied by Islamic radicals draws us in with its multifaceted view of humanity.

timbuktuFrance/Mauritania
4*

Director:
Abderrahmane Sissako 
Screenwriters:
Abderrahmane Sissako 
Kessen Tall
Director of Photography:
Sofian El Fani

Running time: 95 minutes

Born in Mauritania and raised in Mali, Abderrahmane Sissako has set his last two films in the latter, their respective titles referring directly to the country’s two most famous cities. His thoroughly engaging Bamako literally put the World Bank on trial, and Timbuktu examines life under the Islamists who controlled the famed city with its mud buildings for a few months during the Northern Mali conflict in 2012.

Timbuktu was actually shot in Mauritania, and we don’t get a coherent impression of the city in the film, but rather snapshots of characters at various places, mostly inside their homes, under their tents, at the lake where they fish and on the plains where their cattle graze. We don’t know at what point in time the film is set, but what is clear is that the self-installed Islamist overlords are not welcome in the city.

The opening shot is a memorable one. A gazelle is running in total silence, faster and faster, seemingly gracefully, until we hear the rat-a-tat of machine guns. The men in pursuit on the back of a Land Rover are Islamic extremists, whose demands include that Sharia law be carried out, meaning – as we see in the next shot, when wood carvings are shot to pieces – traditional culture or any form of idolatry is rejected. Music is also forbidden, and people have to start covering themselves. Men have to pull their socks up, and women have to wear gloves. The latter demand leads to a bitter confrontation between a strong-willed fishmonger, already fed up with having to wear a veil, who points out the absurdity of her having to handle fish with gloves on.

Such scenes of tension are essential to making this film and its topic accessible, especially to a Western audience. We naturally side with the women who resist the oppression by the all-male ultra-orthodox wing of Islam, who see no contradiction in using Western-made automobiles, mobile phones and video cameras while condemning the sin that is the West and all its works. The hypocrisy of the movement is exemplified by a character called Abdelkrim, who doesn’t only smoke, albeit behind a tree where he is not in the company of his fellow jihadis, but also openly covets a married woman.

Every scene that makes the sham and the friction within the movement visible is wonderful because it gives the audience a real sense of life’s many facets and demonstrates how the director is not interested in presenting the Islamists as a unified block of identical individuals. Unfortunately, Sissako does not do a very good job of introducing his characters to the audience, and it takes us nearly half the film to learn one of the main characters is called Kidane. Living a modest life with his wife, Satima, and their daughter, Toya, he is proud of his eight cows and has a young boy, Issan, look after them during the day.

But the cows are not acting in lockstep either, and when the pride of the drove, humorously called GPS, veers off-course and into the nets of a local fisherman, Kidane’s life takes an unexpected turn that shows just how fragile the peace is in this seemingly laid-back community.

Elsewhere in Timbuktu, a group of young people are arrested and tried when they get caught late at night singing songs together in the privacy of a house, the same way hundreds of thousands of other youngsters their age in other parts of the world spend their evenings.

Many of these scenes have powerful conclusions, sometimes admittedly verging on the melodramatic, but Sissako is very adept at striking a consistent tone in his story. He uses the nuances of the events and our natural attachment to very likeable (mostly female) characters to bring us along on a ride that has many a tragic undertone.

The images are some of the most beautiful in African cinema but never overwhelm our experience and understanding of the narrative. On the contrary, as can be seen in a key scene that takes place at a lake, what starts out as a gorgeous depiction of nature sometimes ends with a startling reminder that man’s impact on nature can be devastating.

Far from being activist or anti-Muslim, Timbuktu shows the strife ordinary, God-fearing people are facing because of a handful of self-righteous individuals who cannot even live by their own rules but insist on carrying out their interpretation of Allah’s regulations on a society that was functioning very well before they came along and ruined it all.

Viewed at the 2014 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

Lucy (2014)

André Crous

Luc Besson’s fantastical, mad rush of a movie reminds us that the cinema is capable of wonderful things.

lucy-luc-besson-posterFrance/USA
4*

Director:
Luc Besson
Screenwriter:
Luc Besson
Director of Photography:
Thierry Arbogast

Running time: 90 minutes

Effortlessly referencing films as disparate as Nymphomaniac, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Transcendence, although with a deliberate lack of seriousness, Luc Besson’s Lucy is a breathless combination of visual effects and sympathetic fantasy like only the cinema can deliver. It never strives for anything more than pure entertainment and even sidesteps issues of power in favour of showing us unexpected domination, often by very gentle means, but the result is a thrilling ride you won’t want to miss.

The central (widely debunked) idea is one that most people have heard about at school or at college: Humans use a very small amount of their brain, and there is no telling what deeds we may be capable of if we used more. The screenplay hypothesises what would happen in a scenario where someone absorbed large quantities of CPH4, which is supposedly formed in the bodies of pregnant women to help the fetus grow, thereby rendering the individual almost infinitely brilliant.

Scarlett Johansson plays Lucy, the girlfriend of a smalltime drug dealer in Taiwan, who is kidnapped and forced to be a drug mule carrying CPH4, hidden in a bag stitched into her stomach. But when one of her kidnappers tries to fondle her and she fights back, she also gets kicked in the stomach, and the CPH4 bursts into her veins, filling her with immense power and boosting her mental capacity into the higher double-digits.

The person who gives meaning and a measure of credibility to her rapid development is the brain researcher, Samuel Norman (Morgan Freeman, who provides the fantastical plot with the right measure of gravitas it needs while also linking the material with that of Wally Pfister’s Transcendence, a similar but far inferior movie in which he played a very similar part). Norman has written volumes on the potential of the human brain, but most of it is pure conjecture. That is, until Lucy contacts him. She has just read all his work in a matter of minutes and tells him he is on the right track. However, she has only about 24 hours left on Earth as her mind will expand to the point where her body cannot contain her any longer.

And so the clock starts ticking while director Luc Besson points us in strange but thoroughly entertaining directions. The first half of the film is unexpectedly closely tied to Lars von Trier’s two-part Nymphomaniac films, as simplistic metaphors are made very vivid, although the effect is at times laughable, such as when Lucy is in danger and there is a sudden cut to an antelope being chased by a cheetah. These references culminate with Besson’s use of Mozart’s “Requiem”, which Von Trier also used in his film.

But the film’s loose structure enables Besson to incorporate references to 2001: A Space Odyssey, in particular the stargate sequence but also the unforgettable monkey, obviously played by someone in an ape suit, with which both Kubrick’s and Besson’s films open. By the time we meet up with the monkey again towards the end of Lucy, having gone through something of a magical ride on a time machine that conjures up haunting images, we realise that Besson is attracting us on a primal level, through memories and desires to see moments from the past in a way only made possible by the technology of the present.

The film is not entirely successful, however, as it suffers from a few dialogues that don’t come across as particularly believable, such as the overly descriptive telephone conversation between Lucy and her mother, and a faux stargate sequence that simply cannot compete with the one that came 45 years earlier in one of Kubrick’s masterpieces.

A few details are also missing, such as an explanation for her ability to learn languages without any significant exposure to them, or her inability to notice her car being tailed when her level of brain use is nearing 99 percent. But in general, the plot is very easy to follow and while the film never appears to be pretentious, it certainly strikes a very able balance between amusement and intelligence, inasmuch as the one is constrained by the other in a form of mass entertainment like this one.

This may seem at times like a dumbed-down version of Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life, but while there is enough to keep the popcorn gallery entertained, Lucy also shows us the wonders the cinema can make us a witness to by recreating time in its almost unimaginable richness. Words cannot adequately describe the sense of awe we feel seeing the world going in reverse in fast motion, and while these sequences are also slightly comical, they remind us what movies can make us see and feel that we can never experience in the world outside the theatre.

White God (2014)

André Crous

The (under)dogs will not take abuse lying down; expect them to fight back with a vengeance in this gorgeous film from Hungary’s Kornél Mundruczó.

white-godHungary
4*

Director:
Kornél Mundruczó 
Screenwriters:
Kornél Mundruczó
Viktória Petrányi
Kata Wéber
Director of Photography:
Marcell Rév

Running time: 120 minutes

Original title: Fehér isten

White God, a Hungarian film about a crossbreed dog thrown out on the street after new laws come into force banning its kind, the underworld of dogfighting he is exposed to and ultimately the revenge he exacts, is both gory and glorious, with scenes of great poignancy admirably offsetting some brutal violence.

The film is for those who like dogs but perhaps not for those who like them too much: A central part of the narrative involves the dog, named Hagen, being enslaved, drugged, physically and psychologically abused, and made to fight against other dogs. The scene of two dogs fighting, and the half-dead, soon-to-be carcasses of the hounds littered around the site, may be too tough for some to take. However, despite the bloodbath that concludes the film, it is at heart a story about a dog whose emotional development is immediately recognisable. For days after seeing the film, you will likely find yourself walking the street, noticing a dog and acknowledging it as more than just a furry pet. Director Kornél Mundruczó deserves tremendous acclaim for his ability to portray animals with astonishing humanity.

The film opens with what at first seems to be a dream sequence: Budapest has come to a standstill, and all we see is a single girl on her bicycle driving through the capital’s desolate streets. Suddenly, a large group of rabid dogs turn a corner and chase her down. She rides her bike faster and faster, but they are gaining on her.

Some could easily argue that this opening scene, repeated later in the film, when we realise it is all too real, is superfluous, but it does set a mood of uneasiness for us, as the viewer is thrown into the deep end while getting the strong flavour of contrasts in the film: Beautiful tracking shots accompany this otherwise startling event, and for much of the rest of the film we will find ourselves riveted by the images while often being repulsed by the actions of both people and dogs.

We meet the girl from the opening scene just after the title appears onscreen. The title is never explained, although it probably refers both to Samuel Fuller’s White Dog, in which a dog trained to attack black people undergoes retraining, with ambiguous results, and to the status of the white man in the life of the Hungarian dog, and more generally to the race’s cachet across Europe.

The girl’s name is Lili, and when her mother and stepfather go on holiday to Australia, she has to stay with her unwilling father, Daniél. But Daniél dislikes the dog she has brought with her, Hagen, and has no problem throwing it out on the street when he gets a warning from the authorities that all crossbreeds now have to be put down. This is where the narrative splits into two strands, as we follow the stories of Hagen and Lili, both trying to cope in new worlds they know very little about: life on the street, and life as a teenager, respectively.

Lili’s story is almost entirely forgettable and doesn’t offer much of interest. This is the most serious misstep of the production, as Mundruczó easily could have spared us this rather monotonous view of life as a teenager. Her father, Daniél, also displays a limited range of emotions, and his character has exasperatingly little depth. By contrast, every scene with Hagen contains either a thrill, a shock or a moment of pathos, the latter most often occurring during the dog’s interaction with other dogs, in particular a rough-coated Jack Russell terrier that memorably shares a couch with Hagen.

These scenes are simply phenomenal because they offer us a glimpse of Mundruczó’s ability to tell a story and to move us with amazing tenderness, without using any words. Animal trainer Teresa Ann Miller deserves great kudos for her work to assure our immediate recognition of traits like friendship, kindness, goodwill and even intimacy in these animals.

Towards the end, unfortunately, there are some jumps in the narrative that don’t make much sense, in particular Lili’s seemingly clairvoyant ability to know where to go look for her dog in downtown Budapest.

The uprising of the crossbreed canines should serve as a wakeup call to those in Europe, and perhaps around the world, that the downtrodden will not go quietly into the night. They may be smaller in size, and they may not conform to traditional categories, but if they are mistreated, they will eventually fight back, and those who have power today should take note. This is a powerful message for the people of the Continent who believe their way of life is threatened by those who are different from them and that the minorities need to be kept underfoot because there is no telling how violent the reactions will be.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)

André Crous

Iranian-American filmmaker’s Farsi-language vampire film is unusual in all the right ways.

a-girl-walks-home-alone-at-nightUSA
4*

Director:
Ana Lily Amirpour
Screenwriter:
Ana Lily Amirpour
Director of Photography:
Lyle Vincent

Running time: 100 minutes

The gorgeously greyscale landscape of a noir reality that seems familiar yet distant, sweet yet mysterious, even mystifying, is the setting for a Farsi-language vampire film that is certainly unlike your average Iranian film. With major themes of drug use and prostitution, and even a very revealing scene in the bathtub, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is as unusual as it is entertaining, and while the filmmaking is minimalist rather than schlocky, the Farsi-speaking female vampire is as appealing as any femme fatale.

Set in Bad City, the two threads of the narrative – involving a lonely vampire on the prowl and a young man whose father has drug problems – come together when the two main characters meet late at night. As usual, the girl, who always walks home alone at night, is on the hunt for a fresh jugular vein, but when she sees the young Arash, dressed up as Dracula and crashing after an Ecstasy high, looking up in wonder at a street lamp, she has second thoughts, and that is when the magic happens.

The magic is an unexpected moment of audiovisual bliss, as a static camera captures the two slowly moving toward each other in the girl’s subterranean dwelling while a disco ball inexplicably keeps spinning, throwing little spatterings of light on the wall behind them. All the while, the music on the soundtrack, the White Lies’ “Death”, is infectious and can easily rouse the viewer out of her seat. But even this scene is just a forerunner to greatness, as a few minutes later, a prostitute, a balloon and an unbroken take from a mobile perspective come together to create the most poetic and poignant moment of the entire film.

Director Ana Lily Amirpour, a British-born Iranian-American who collected money for her film online through Kickstarter in 2012, has crafted a film that doesn’t seek to subvert the conventions of the vampire genre as much as it wants to play with those conventions to tell a story of two unusual individuals who find love in a way neither of them ever would have expected.

The girl’s black-as-night waist-length hijab, which looks a bit like a fashion accessory, suggests mourning, and she is certainly not a barrel of laughs; on the contrary, she barely says a word. But it is this silence that makes her so mysterious, and while we might have our suspicions that she is up to no good, we are also very happy when one of her first victims is the drug dealer who is keeping Arash’s father in crushing debt. She also appears to care a great deal about the prostitute, Atti, who just wants to get by but is tormented by loneliness, and she becomes a friend of sorts to her.

Despite the Farsi-language signage on the street, Bad City is very obviously neither in Iran nor in the United States. It forms part of a filmic reality that suits the genre and functions remarkably well because there is always a feeling that we don’t exactly know what to expect.

While the characters speak Farsi, the film’s sexual imagery – which includes, among others, fingers that find their way to mouths, and pumpjacks that piston in and out of the ground across the desert landscape on the outskirts of the city – is wholly unexpected for an Iranian production and contributes to the pleasure of watching something wholly unorthodox. The film was shot in the United States and was produced in part by Elijah Wood.

Director Amirpour has a light touch when it comes to the use of the vampire genre conventions, and while the title character only drinks blood, doesn’t eat and doesn’t appear during daytime, she does have a mirror (all the better to put on her lipstick) and there is no mention of garlic or stakes or coffins that serve as night-time sanctuaries of repose. Amirpour’s use of music is equally laudable, with the soundtrack, ranging from Western-like and Morricone-inspired to British post-punk, impossible to fault and thoroughly enjoyable.

The girl who walks home alone at night is a vampire, but that doesn’t take away from her romantic timidity, and when she finds a man willing to love her in spite of her immortality and thirst for blood, we readily share her initial reluctance to pursue the affair. The character, whom we still don’t know much about by the end of the film, suggests enough complexity for the viewer to keep watching.

The result is very different from the noirs or the Westerns we may know (and it very well may not live up to the expectations of fans of the latter), and although there are small quibbles with the development of the story, this heavily stylised film is comical, moving and sexy, and it will entertain many a moviegoer.

Hany (2014)

André Crous

With almost no editing, Czech director Michal Samir’s first film depicts the spectacular tumult of a night out in Plzeň.

hanyCzech Republic
4*

Director:
Michal Samir
Screenwriter:
Michal Samir
Director of Photography:
Martin Žiaran

Running time: 85 minutes

James Joyce had Dublin, Richard Linklater had Paris, and Michal Samir has Plzeň.

Each deploying their respective, considerable talents, these three storytellers used the space of a city that already existed to let their tales play out in real time: Joyce in the “Wandering Rocks” chapter of his Ulysses, Linklater in Before Sunset and Samir in Hany, which is somewhat of a technical watermark in filmmaking. Samir may not have the experience of either of the other two, but the risk he took with this project has paid off handsomely and provided the movie-going public with a work that is equal parts funny, jaw-dropping, shocking, gentle and raw.

When people talk about this particular film, however, the first thing they discuss very likely won’t be the identity of the space, but rather how the camera moves around inside it. That is because Hany is that rare breed of film that was shot almost entirely in a single take, without any visible cuts. The film consists of one long take lasting most of the film, before a short epilogue (once again, shot in a single take) that occurs a little later in time.

In 2002, Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark (Russkij Kovcheg) focused the art film world’s attention on the use of the long take in the cinema today, and his ballroom scene, in particular, remains a remarkable demonstration of one director’s ability to control dozens of actors and camera movements simultaneously. But the film was filled with vignettes separated from each other as the halls of Saint Petersburg’s State Hermitage Museum were divided by walls, doors and corridors.

Hany moves into different territory – to which the long takes of Soy Cuba, Boogie Nights and Kill Bill belong – where the camera is not limited by space and can move freely into and out of buildings and even up and down along the vertical axis. It is important to note, however, that the camera never completely frees itself from its terrestrial shackles (by contrast, think of that beautiful shot in Mathieu Kassovitz’s La haine when the camera flies out through an open window over a public housing development), and the crane shots deliberately do not convey a sense of freedom but rather a brief sensation of release.

The “single take” actually comprises three separate takes, shot on three consecutive nights and imperceptibly stitched together; one would guess the stitches occur when the horizontal and vertical axes change, but these transitions are all but impossible to detect.

But even before we notice the long take, there is a moment early on that catches our attention. The film opens at 10 p.m. inside a bar (we don’t see the name, but it’s the Anděl Café and Music Bar on Plzeň’s Bezručova Street). A poet named Egon Alter is about to start a one-man reading of his latest play. Next to him, his friend Dušan sits beside a chessboard. The camera slowly pulls back and eventually tracks back and makes a 360-degree turn to show us the entire bar and its band of revellers. Such panoramic shots, which seem to reveal there is no one standing behind the camera directing the action or holding a boom, support our belief that this is all happening “for real”. A shot like that is rare, and when it happens, the audience had better sit up and take notice.

The black and white pieces on the chessboard in that opening shot suggest the tension between the darkness and the light that pervades the film in many ways and comes to a head during one of the final scenes, taking place at main character Jiří’s flat, in which the darkness is lit up by lasers in the colours of the rainbow.

Jiří is a guy in his 20s who sells drugs in a back room of the bar and has no problem provoking those around him. For most of the first part of the film, he is in the company of Míla, Hana, Hanka and Zuzana. By the end of the film, he will have alienated some of his friends, but we will have learned a little about him in a way that is wholly credible and far from contrived.

The scant knowledge we gain has to do with one of the themes that underlie the narrative in a way that is nearly cloaked from our sight by the events of the film. That theme is family, and although it doesn’t seem to influence Jiří or Egon directly, a few small moments clue us into the depth of their characters. Egon, who remains in the background almost throughout, suddenly takes centre stage towards the end, when his storyline unexpectedly delivers the most poignant scene of the entire film.

The image of moths drawn to a flame – which the camera also seems to embody as it floats between its sources of light, the characters – is presented to us early on, when we leave the bar for the first time, and it starts to become clear the camera will really be travelling around the city in a seemingly unbroken take. There are almost as many moths circling the lights on the street as there are characters with speaking parts, and Samir accomplishes something of a Robert Altman effect by sometimes having people talk over each other. While this is going on in the foreground, more things are happening in the background, adding to an impression of richness that is unusual in the cinema but that ought to be a prime concern for the works that want to reflect reality in all its glorious messiness.

For all the movement and spectacle, especially towards the end, it is the opening and – in retrospect – relatively subdued sequence in the bar that shows Samir’s skill as a director, as he interweaves multiple layers of action to create a shimmering, vibrant atmosphere that is dynamic, authentic, believable and entertaining.

The problem with having so much going on and following so many groups of characters is of course that there is no clear central storyline, and the viewer may struggle to summarise the plot in terms of action rather than space. Despite the occasional impression that the connections between all the pieces elude us, the epilogue delivers a stunning narrative blow as we reassess some of the scenes that came before (including one in a pub that at first seems random) with our newly acquired knowledge.

Not all of our questions are always answered, and at times this uncertainty works to bring about the feeling of ambiguity that André Bazin credited for making films seem realistic. In one scene, a tram from 1954 arrives to pick up two characters on Plzeň’s Square of the Republic and among the passengers, at the side of the frame, we see someone with a scarf covering his mouth. Is this the same man we see a few minutes later striking the first blow against the police, thus ushering in a quick transition to the chaos that reigns over the final act?

The quick descent into disorder is preceded by an elegant shot of a man on a bicycle whom we watch while Egon’s rich, melodious voice reverberates in a voice-over on the soundtrack. Egon is one of the film’s many outsiders, which include the naïve and apologetic Míla, the Arab referred to as “Salaam”, and Martin the Slovak, a genuinely nice guy who experiences the malice of a drunken Jiří.

While Jiří is the main character by virtue of making the most noise and the one we see most often, the others are there to offer a mixture of hope for humanity and fear of what may happen to the ones who are weaker than the rest. The director doesn’t take sides, and he doesn’t judge, and while we never laugh directly at anyone, there are many moments that make us laugh out loud at the antics of some of these people. We can nitpick about the empty streets, the acting of a Vietnamese saleswoman who has her merchandise stolen, or a car crash that is not particularly believable, but these are negligible exceptions in a film that is in many respects astounding.

Director of photography Martin Žiaran’s work with the Arri Alexa doesn’t draw unnecessary attention, and Samir’s blocking of his actors is equally laudable because they seem to move freely, even though almost every single movement was planned out in advance. And when the camera floats down the street and the score swells on the soundtrack for the very first time, we cannot help but shiver with wonder.

Hany contributes to the art of filmmaking by immersing us in the world of the film, explicitly situated on the border of fiction and reality but presented in a way that is absolutely thrilling and never dull, even if the riot scene so ominously announced in an opening voiceover is over all too quickly. Whatever the achievements of Russian Ark, it was not a constant thrill.

The film eschews artifice and succeeds in representing a lively night out. In life, things sometimes happen out of the blue, and in that regard perhaps the film’s sudden switch in tone from restraint to anarchy is not all that far-fetched. The dirty, alcohol-soaked and drug-infused final scenes can be difficult to stomach, but the images will stay with you.

Egon refers to his unbroken performance in the bar as a literary night. Samir’s unbroken performance through the streets of Plzeň doesn’t aim to be literary, but despite its thin storyline, his is undeniably one for the books.

Nebraska (2013)

André Crous

Alexander Payne returns to his native Nebraska to charm us with eccentric characters who will warm your heart.

nebraskaUSA
4*

Director:
Alexander Payne
Screenwriter:
Bob Nelson
Director of Photography:
Phedon Papamichael

Running time: 115 minutes

The Midwest of Alexander Payne is at times reminiscent of the kind of America that Umberto Eco wrote about, although the former tends to focus on suggestive details rather than the vapid excess at the heart of the latter’s fascination with the country.

Early on in Payne’s Nebraska, there is a single shot of signs lined up next to each other in a small town, pointing to different religious establishments. We read the first two, and they seem like the kind of signs you would find anywhere else, but then the third sign, similar in appearance catches our attention: “Masonic Temple”.

After a delightful detour to Hawaii in The Descendants, Payne returns to his native Nebraska for his particular kind of comedy, which works because his comic timing is perfect. He evinces a kind of humour similar to that of Buster Keaton, or some of Jim Jarmusch’s films, which takes the deadpan very seriously and can take almost any subject that would make us uncomfortable and turn it into comedy suitable for anyone older than first grade.

Nebraska opens in Montana, hundreds of miles from the title state, where we meet septuagenarian Woody Grant, his thin white hair completely dishevelled, as if he stuck his finger in an electric socket, on the side of the highway leading out of the city of Billings. He seems to be walking both aimlessly and determinedly. A policeman takes him back to his wife, who is angry with him for having left and probably also for not having stayed away.

Woody is either going senile or has Alzheimer’s disease (we never get a conclusive answer), but that is only one of his problems. Payne chose as his central character someone who ought to be unlikeable and who fits all the stereotypes of growing old: He has lost about as much of his hair as his mind, he is forgetful and simple-minded and always grumpy. And yet, in no small part thanks to a heart-warming performance by Bruce Dern who benefits from a very strong echoing board in his onscreen wife, played by June Squibb, we are always interested in and never scared by whatever foolhardiness he may be capable of.

He has his mind set on going to Nebraska because he got a “You’ve won $1 million” sweepstakes letter, and he wants to collect the money in person, conveniently overlooking the fine print that mentions the requirement of a subscription to multiple magazine titles.

After the third or fourth try, he makes to undertake the 850-mile trek on foot, one of his two sons, David, relents and decides to take time off work to spend with his speedily ageing father and prove to him the letter is a scam by driving to its distributor, Cornhusker Marketing, in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Woody’s forgetfulness, hardness of hearing and stubbornness make for a ride that is probably more interesting for the viewer than for his poor son, who believes a dose of reality will shock his father out of the dream he clings to with such passion that he may do something stupid to make it real.

They eventually end up in Nebraska, but before they get to Lincoln, they stop over in the town where Woody grew up and where his family and many of his old acquaintances still reside: Hawthorne. The characters that populate this rural hamlet all grab our attention the moment we meet them, and Payne easily succeeds in drawing our attention to the beauty of some of these people even while we may snicker at their almost unbelievable goodness.

That is particularly true of the utterly sweet and fragile Peg Nagy, the editor of the local newspaper, The Hawthorne Republican, whose history with Woody goes back a long time and whose fondness for him nearly breaks our collective heart.

The decision to shoot Nebraska in black and white is an odd one, as the desaturated images appear to have had their lifeblood sucked out of them, and although we are not alienated from the film, the monochromatic images in combination with the steadily approaching winter we feel when we notice the frost on the grass next to the highway create a gloomy impression that is at odds with Payne’s more kindhearted approach to his characters.

The theme of growing old has been a theme in storytelling since time immemorial, but in Nebraska Payne has struck exactly the right tone to show us no matter how different people are, a life shared with others is one that those others will appreciate you for.

Viewed at the International Film Festival Bratislava 2013