The rainbow flag, created in 1978, is one
of the pride symbols of the LGBT community.
A female nurse, an artist, a comforter, an political
activist, and a florist—all give their perspective of living in San Francisco
during the AIDS crisis of the 1970s through the 1990s, when over 15,500 people died.
Their riveting stories touch the heart. The speakers indeed serve as witnesses
to the fact that "we were here."
AIDS was originally
believed to be just a gay cancer that only gays could get. No one at the
beginning knew its cause nor how it was spread, but most Americans ignored its
impact until the number of the dead became staggering. The film uses personal
histories to teach what the personal and political impact those years had. As
people were seeming to disappear from the street, some political and religious
leaders began calling for quarantining the city and tattooing those with the
disease. Only after they realized some straight people might be affected did
things change.
The film was directed by David Weissman and Bill Weber. The cast includes Ed Wolf, Paul Boneberg, Daniel Goldstein, Guy Clark and Eileen Glutzer. The focus of this film is
purely on the San Francisco experience and the impact is often devastating. If you saw Milk and were inspired by it, see these real life stories told by the people who lived them.
We Were Here (2011) **** (Netflix
Streaming)
[Personal note: I helped create and sponsored for several years a Gay-Straight Alliance at a Chicago south suburban high school. This is one of the documentaries I would have welcomed to help students understand the history that shaped the modern gay movement. For those younger people who have little idea of the history of life before AIDS, this gives a sobbering perspective.]
When one talks about the
theoretical possibilities of time travel many theories are mentioned. One of
those is "the grandfather paradox” first described by Rene Barjavel in his 1943
book Le Voyageur Imprudent (Future Times Three). The paradox suggests that if a
time traveler went back to a time when his or her grandfather was not married
and killed his or her grandfather, the time traveler would never be born and
therefore not exist.
In "the Hitler’s murder paradox", if a time traveler had the chance to kill Hitler, what would the end
result be? The rise of another tyrant like Hitler? A post-apocalyptic future? In
Selden Edwards’ The Little Book, for example, the protagonists find themselves
in Austria during Hitler’s childhood. They go to Hitler’s hometown, but find
themselves unable to kill the innocent boy on his way to school even though
they know his future.
I have always been
fascinated by authors’ views of history and time travel. Think of Charles
Dicken’s A Christmas Carol or H.G. Well’s The Time Machine. I really like Jack
Finney’s two novels which deal with time travel called Time and Again and FromTime to Time, which suggest one can travel back and make changes, some subtle,
some great. Film makers have the same fascination with the subject, ranging
from works like La jetée, Star Trek, Planet of the Apes, Berkley Square, DonnieDarko, Field of Dreams, Brigadoon, The Portrait of Jenny, and Somewhere in
Time.
Director/writer Rian Johnson (Brick) brilliantly ponders
the fabric of historical time and the time traveler in Looper.
Johnson creates a sobering but fascinating future
in Looper. In a dystopian future of 2072, where the world is filled with
poverty and homeless and feels a lot like today, time travel has been invented,
but its use is illegal. Only mobs of the future use time travel to get rid of
their targets. They send them back to the present, along with payment in form of silver bars
strapped to their backs. Hired assassins called loopers kill these mob hits
from the future and dispose of their bodies in the present, so no bodies can be
found. Occasionally, the person sent back is the future self of the looper.
When he kills him, known as closing the loop, he has 30 years left to enjoy the
gold bricks strapped to the hit’s back. If the looper doesn't kill his mark,
known as letting him run, Abe (Jeff Daniels) the present gang leader (from the
future) can exact his punishment many ways—the most gruesome being maiming the
present day looper, which we witness in one very grotesque sequence.
Joe (played behind high tech prosthetic makeup by
Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a present day punk looper, a junkie whose aimless life
consisting of killing loops, getting high, having sex and planning for a future
in France. One of his friends lets his own loop run and then seeks Joe’s
protection. Abe gives him a choice. Give up half of the fortune he has been
amassing or give up his friend. Joe chooses to give up the friend, and that
choice seals his future.
When the future "Old Joe" suddenly appears (in the form of Bruce Willis), Joe is so stunned that
he is unable stop him running. The film shows us both the life he will have,
and why future Joe is so intent on changing the present.
Ultimately, the film becomes
a thrilling chase where the mob wants to hit Joe and stop Old Joe.
Old Joe knows that the mob is run by a mysterious leader called The Rainbow Man
who is the one suddenly responsible for all the loops being closed. He intends
to find Rainbow Man who in the present is a child and kill him (a variation of
the Hitler Paradox). Cocky present-Joe wants to find past-Joe and kill him so
that he can live his life (a variation of the Grandfather paradox).
This is a film about
discovery, so don't let people tell you too much about it. Allow a great filmmaker to tell his story in his own way. Several
times in the film I delighted to hear the collective reaction of the audience
to the special effects and the story twists. They loved it. I loved it.
Six years after 8-1/2, Federico Fellini produced one of his
strangest films, Fellini's Satyricon. Losely based on the work by Petronius from the
time of the Caesars, the whole experience feels like watching the sexual revolution filtered through visions from a trip in a Roman museum.
Encolpio at the Roman Baths.
The film is intentionally disjointed and fragmented, the
same as Petronius work. Says the back cover of the printed script:
Freely adapted from Petronius Arbiter’s Roman classic of the
cruel and degenerate age of the Caesars, FELLINI’S SATYRICON is a vast fresco
of the pleasures and vices of the world, a disturbing and unflinching portrait
of amoral youth and sated elders—and a mirror of mankind that is as relevant
today as it was 2,000 years ago.
The film, peopled with hundreds of Felliniesque characters, the old, the
bizarre, cripples and circus freaks, exist in a world interpreted from the
ruined frescos of Rome’s past. Secondary characters are constantly staring and
confronting the viewer, much like those from the surviving frescos of Pompeii
and Herculaneum.
[Spoilers] We start the film in the urban world of Rome and gradually
move further and further into mountainous and forbidding wildernesses. In our trip, we follow the adventures of a young student
Encolpio (blonde Martin Potter) and his friend Ascilto (brunette Hiram Keller)
who have been fighting over a young lover Gitone (Max Born). Encolpio rescues Gitone from an actor, but when given the choice Gitone leaves Encolpio for
Ascilto.
Devastated, Encolpio visits an art gallery where poet Eumolpus (Salvo
Randone) takes him to the baths and then a feast given by Trimalcione (Mario
Romagnoli). Here we watch gluttony,
flirtations, boasting, a performance of Homer, and wild dancing. When Eumolpo declares
that Trimalcione’s poetry is stolen from another poet, he is sent off to the
oven. Trimalcione takes his guests to see his mausoleum where he lies in his
sarcoughus to be mourned and his guests ask for gifts.
A male prostitute tells
the story of the widow of Epheus whose refuses to leave her husband’s tomb. A
Roman guard of a hanged man comes and comforts her. He convinces her it is
better to remain alive. When he discovers the hanged man has been stolen by her
family, he threatens suicide, but she tells him to take her husband and hang
him instead, since “it is better to hang a dead husband than lose a living
lover."
From the feast, Encolpio ends up with his friend Eumolpo.
They sleep and when they awake, Encolpio is in chains, having been captured
along with Ascilto and Gitone to be playthings for Caesar. Lica (Alain Cuny) , the one-eyed owner
of the ship wrestles a man to the death. When he wrestles Encolpio, he falls in
love with him, claims Encolpio as his, and the two are married, with Trifena (Capucine) officiating and Lica as the blushing bride.
When Caesar is killed by his soldiers, three war ships attack Lica’s vessel and
he is beheaded.
Next comes the most touching scene of the movie in the Villa of the
Suicides. Called only the Suicide (Joseph Wheeler), the owner of the villa sets his slaves free, sends his children off
and tells his wife he wishes she would chose to live. He slits his wrists as they drink wine together. After his death, she kill herself. Encolpio and Ascilto happen on the villa
and discover an Oriental slave hiding. The three of them play and joyously make
love, reinforcing the theme that it is better to be alive and enjoying
living than to die.
The two friends end up at the Temple of the Hemaphrodite,
where Fellini develops his commentary on religion. The two along with another man kill
the Hermaphrodite’s protectors and steal the demi-god. Without water the
demi-god dies.
In an walled arena in Southern Italy, Encolpio fights a Minotaur. When he throws
himself on the mercy of the Minotaur saying he is “only a student,” the
Minotaur grants him his life. It turns out the whole thing was the beginning of
a Festival of Mirth. Encolpio is to make love to Ariadne, but finds he cannot
perform. Eumolpo reappears, wealthy now, and
takes him to an African town and the Garden of Delights where the women
celebrate the Lupercalia. Even this fails to help Encolpio. A dwarf directs
Encolpio to see Oenothea, a witch, which he does and succeeds.
[End Spoilers]
Unfortunately Ascilto has been attacked and wounded. As they start to leave, he
dies. Encolpio joins Eumolpo’s ship, but he has died also. His
will states that to inherit his wealth, his heirs have to eat his body.
Encolpio
leaves with the sailors. As he turns and laughs, the frame freezes and
dissolves into a Pompeiian fresco with all the main characters of the story on
fragments of walls by the sea-side.
The film, running 2 hours 9 minutes is R-rated for good
reason, but when I finished it, the experience is memorable, unique, and ultimately satisfying.
Fellini's Satyricon (1969) ***** (Netlfix streaming, with subtitles)
According toimdb.com, Innocent Lies is based on an Agatha Christie novel, Towards
Zero, but when Christie's daughter read the finished script, she demanded that her
mother’s name go uncredited and the characters names changed because of
a theme of incest in the film. There is a very tiny mention of Christie in
the credits.
The film begins in 1938 with the suicide of a British
detective in a small French town along the coast. The victim’s colleague,
Inspector Alan Cross (Adrian Dunbar) and his young daughter arrive soon after. Cross believes
the suicide was actually murder.
The suicide was investigating the eccentric
family of Lady Helena Graves (played by Joanna Lumley of Absolutely Fabulous
fame) who live in a 1920’s modern mansion on the coast. Lady Helena and her two
children become suspects. Celia (Gabrielle Anwar) has just returned from
America with her fiancé and Jeremy (Stephen Dorff) has returned with his bride.
All the family guard secrets—Jeremy is believed to have killed his twin brother
in a bow-and-arrow accident as children, Celia’s previous fiancé died in a car
accident just days before they were to be married, Jeremy’s new wife is paying
off what appears to be blackmail to a stranger, and Mother Helena has ties
with the Nazis.
Cross quickly becomes embroiled in the family’s secrets, and
when Helena is murdered, the whole case comes to a head.
Inspector Cross becomes somewhat unique in terms of having
his daughter with him and allowing himself to get personally involved in the
case. Detachment doesn’t seem to be one of his qualities.
Although the film is set in 1938, with talk of Jews and
Nazis, there doesn’t appear to be much attempt at using period. The film plays
like it had been a made-for-television with adult situations, a rather safe
mystery with many red-herrings and juicy secrets that need solving. The scene
where Cross sorts things out turns out to be a definite twist.
Sharp viewers might recognize Keira Knightley as the young
Celia. The role of Lady Helena had been offered to Julie Christie who turned
down the role.
I have always felt that Stanley Tucci is one of our great and undervalued
American actors. In Joe Gould’s Secret (2000), which he also directed, Tucci
plays Joe Mitchell, a writer for The New Yorker, who becomes fascinated with
the story behind Joe Gould, Professor Sea Gull, (Ian Holm) a Greenwich Village street
person, who claims to have written the
Oral History of the World, a1,200,000 words long book
filled with the conversations he has overheard on the streets of New York.
The film becomes a kind of love story of two very different
writers.
As Mitchell introduces us to his New York, he says:
In my home town, I never felt at
home. In New York, New York City, in Greenwich Village, down among the cranks,
and the misfits, and the one runners, and the has-beens, and the
might-have-beens, and the would-bes, and the never-wills, and the God-knows-whats,
I have always felt at home. (imdb.com)
Set in the early 1940s, the film is rich with period details. Tucci peoples his film with some of my favorite
character actors—Susan Sarandon, Hope Davis, Patricia Clarkson, Celia Weston, Alice
Drummond, Nell Campbell, and Steve Martin—some names you will recognize, all you
should know.
As the story begins, the owner of Jefferson’s Coffee Shop defends
the smelly, disheveled, homeless Gould when a cop says he’s a freak. “We’re all
freaks, Mike, truth be known. We’re all freaks together.”
Gould says of himself,
“Please don’t think I’m stupid just because I’m unclean.”
As Mitchell interviews and in some ways woos
Gould, he learns of his extensive past—a Harvard grad, author, famed among the
New York intellectuals. He even meets artist Alice Neel who painted Gould’s
nude portrait complete with three penises. Gould attends parties and holds
court in spite of his antisocial tendencies.
When Mitchell’s writing about Gould is published in The New
Yorker, homeless Joe becomes a celebrity and begins getting money from admirers. A patroness even
surfaces who pays for his room and board. Mitchell is warned by The New Yorker
receptionist that “the story doesn’t end just because the writer has finished writing.”
At first wanting Gould’s companionship to write about, Mitchell
finds Gould latching onto him as over-frequent companion. The rest of
the story involves Gould, his disappointments, the search for the Oral History
and the resolution of the two-Joe’s history. Gould’s secret changes all of the
characters.
In one of Joe Gould’s writings he muses:
The insane person is a victim of
self-deception. Yet in a measure, we all have this virtue. One is his own
imaginary creation of himself. If we could see ourselves for what we really are
life would be insupportable. Hence, I would judge the sanest man to be him who
most firmly realizes the tragic isolation of humanity, and pursues his
essential purpose calmly. (imdb.com)
Joe Gould’s Secret teaches us about the need to relate and the
power of those connections—and ultimately the responsibility necessary to
sustain those connections. Ian Holm and Stanley Tucci are both worth watching.
Joe Gould’s Secret (2000) **** (on Netflix streaming)
Italian director
Frederico Fellini was 43 when he filmed 8 ½ in 1963. I was only 20 when I saw
it almost 48 years ago, and I'm delighted that the film has held up surprisingly well.
As trends
have ebbed over the years, society has embraced enough of 1960s pop culture,
that the film almost looks modern. Certainly many of the director’s issues—the role
of the church our lives, the challenge of maintaining a marriage, the trap of
success, the relationships between men and women, the challenge of artistic creation—all
are still relevant today.
[Spoiler
Alert] The film begins with Fellini’s alter ego, Guido Anselmi--also 43--
(played with wit and charm by Marcello Mastroianni) finds himself trapped in a traffic
jam. We realize quickly we move in a world between realism and dream, when
Guido’s car fills with smoke. After struggling to escape, the director rises from
his car and above the traffic and flies away. When he is pulled down to earth
by a rope tether, he is at a health spa trying to come to terms with a new film
he is working on.
Going to
take the waters—with a classic line of old Fellini character types and
religious figures played against Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries—Guido first sees
Claudia Cardinale in white as a virginal figure offering him is cure. Guido
takes a meeting with Daumier, his writer, who criticizes the script of his new
film as a series of unrelated episodes of his own life, “utterly lacking in
poetical imagination.” Guido runs into
an old friend Mario Mezzabotta (Mario Pisu) who is at the spa with his mistress,
Gloria Morin (Barbara Steele), having left his wife of many years. In the
following scene Guido meets his mistress Carla (Sandra Milo), a surprisingly
coarse flirt dressed in a black velvet dress with mink hat. Carla has come to
visit Guido, but he has put her up in a different hotel so that others won’t
see her. They role-play in the bedroom, where he asks her to play a prostitute
after painting her face with dark eyebrows.
In the
middle of the bedroom scene Guido’s mother suddenly appears and we find
ourselves at his father’s tomb. His producer arrives and says, “It’s sad for a
man to realize how miserably he’s failed.” The producer and cronies dress Guido
as a priest. Guido and his father continue to talk as he climbs back into a
grave. His mother kisses him and she becomes his wife Luisa (Anouk Aimée).
Back at his
hotel, Guido rides the elevator with a cardinal and three priests. In the
lobby, he is surrounded by people who all want a piece of him. At the open air café
that evening, old people dance and his friend and mistress dance. “This is a
mad world,” observes the writer. A magician does a mind reading act. When he
speaks with Guido, who he seems to know, we are suddenly at Guido’s family home
with his grandmother and aunts. A cousin tells him to say the magic saying
which will bring them treasure, “Asa nisi masa.”
Back at the
spa hotel lobby, an actress who wears her eyebrows subtly like the whore, asks
what her part will be. Guido escapes her and visits the production office where
he imagines Claudia again in a white slip--his muse.
Carla has
become ill from the water.
Guido meets
with the cardinal and reveals he was educated in a Catholic school. The
cardinal says that “Film has the responsibility to teach.” Guido fantasizes
being back at school where he and five other boys run off to watch La Saraghina
(Eddra Gale), a prostitute with heavy eyebrows who lives by the ocean. She
rumbas for them for money. Guido dances with her. Two priests come, chase him
and drag him back to school where he is publically reprimanded and teased. The
priests condemn him, his mother cries in shame, and he is forced to wear a
dunce cap. “Don’t you know Saraghina is the devil?” he is asked. He goes back
to watch her again.
He asks the
writer what it means and the writer says they are only “harmless little
memories.” “You attempt to condemn but end up being part of them.”
As Guido
moves to the mud baths, a discussion of Seutonius leads to another fantastic
line reminiscent of the damned moving down into hell. He see a sophisticated
lady whom he has noticed before whose makeup suggests a variation of the whore’s.
While the
cardinal has a steam bath, he has a brief interview with Guido. “Why should you
be happy? That is not why we are on earth… Outside the church, none will be
saved…. That which is outside the City of God is the City of the Devil.” (And here
Fellini cuts to the spa again.)
People in
white and black suits wander around the outdoor café while “Blue Moon” is
played.
Guido meets
up with Luisa, her friend Rossella, Luisa’s sister and a friend. The producer,
his entourage, Luisa and group, and Guido, all drive to a large outdoor rocket ship
launch pad, a set for the new movie.
“It’s pompous
and stupid, just like the director,” says Luisa’s sister.
Guido
reveals to Rossella that he is unsure about his relationship with Luisa and
unsure of the film. “I thought I had everything figured out. I wanted to make a
honest film, no lies, no compromises. I thought I had something so simple to
say. A film that would be helpful to everybody… that would finally bury
everything that’s dead within us. … Where did I go wrong?”
Luisa joins
him in his hotel room and they fight. The next morning, as Guido, Luisa and Rossella sit alone in
the open air café, Carla comes in her black dress and white fur hat. Luisa
berates Guido for lying and he begins a long fantasy sequence where he first imagines
Luisa and Carla dancing together in harmony. Next he sees himself with all of his women living in his childhood home together,
with Luisa looking after all of them. An old showgirl with running makeup begs
not to be sent upstairs where all the women go when they are too old. A new
character, an African girl, also joins them. All the women finally revolt
against him.
Back in
reality, everyone goes to view the screen tests for the new movie of the
mistress and the wife, both obviously based on the real women. He imagines
hanging the writer. Claudia, as Claudia the movie star, finally arrives and the
two go off. “You dress like an old man,” she tells him. He feels that he has
nothing new to say and imagines shooting himself. “Why piece together the
tatters of your life,” he is asked.
They all go
to a party at the launch pad. “Life is a holiday,” he tells Luisa, “let us live
it together. Accept me as I am if you can.”
Suddenly all
the people of his life are there, dressed in white. He is in black. Looking at
them, he is suddenly willing to start the film he has been avoiding. A grand
finale ensues where all the people of the film come down the wide staircase of
the launch structure. In a symbolic ending, they all dance around the circus
ring as it turns to night. Finally Fellini’s child alter ego in white ends the
show, symbolically bringing all his issues to resolution.
One of the
things my 20 year-old self missed was Fellini's fine sense of humor.
Part of his reputation was built on quirky people and strange situations. The
whole film is much less ponderous than I thought in 1963. Fellini’s eye for
images is powerful. In many of his long shots or establishing shorts, he sets
the horizon line below the center point of the picture which gives an immense
sense of space. One might expect a film about one’s own life might be
pretentious or “precious.” Fellini always looks with a self-deprecating and objective eye.
I totally enjoyed seeing the film again after all these years.
In Liberal Arts, Jesse Fisher (Josh Radnor) always has his head in a book, escaping
the life in which he feels trapped. When he takes his laundry to a laundromat,
it is stolen. Returning home with new clothes, his girlfriend leaves him.
Jesse’s life needs a change; and when one of his favorite teachers from his alma
mater, Kenyon College, invites him to return for his retirement dinner, Jesse
agrees to go. In the euphoria of returning to school, he meets Zibby (Elizabeth
Olsen), a student who seems older than her 19 years. The two connect with ideas, college life, books, music, and Jesse finds himself falling love.
When he
returns back home to New York, the two correspond with real pen on paper. She
teaches him to love the music she loves, and he begins looking at the world around
him. Before long, they are in love; and when she invites him back, he must
confront the age difference which he sees as a major barrier.
The couple are totally likeable, and we end up caring what
happens to them, wanting for them a happy ending. Radnor, one of the fine ensemble actors on How I Met Your Mother, has learned the subtle nuances of the close-up. In an embrace with Olsen, he conveys volumes with just closing his eyes. It's great fun watching him embracing the life around him.
Writer Radnor has also peopled the film with wonderful
secondary characters. Jesse’s two favorite professors offer views of post-college
life from those still in it. Prof. Peter Hoberg (Richard Jennings) is retiring,
but he fears leaving the womb of the college. Prof. Judith Fairfield, played
with flair by Allison Janney, may not remember Jesse from class, but still
teaches him some lessons. A chance encounter with a neurotic college reader,
Dan (John Magaro), also changes Jesse’s life. Finally, in a fun cameo, Nat (Zac
Efron at his most personable) offers an outsider’s wisdom, wearing a bobble
hat.
I loved the characters, actors and insights of the film. If
you liked 500 Days of Summer, you’ll like this.
...about a movie where the acting is
exceptional, and in the case of Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffmann,
brilliant?
...about a film filmed
in 65mm format using Panavision’s System
65mm camera. The process can be projected in 70mm and is stunning, giving some
of the most glorious film images of recent years?
...about both Phoenix and Hoffman portraying men you can
alternately love and hate. I find it difficult to identify with morally bankrupt characters.
...about the protagonist hallucinating at a party and seeing all the women in the
room—of a variety of ages up their 70s or 80s—nude and bouncy?
...about Amy Adams, of Doubt and Julia & Julie, playing the
pregnant wife of Philip Seymour Hoffman and giving him a hand-job in his bathroom?
...about the same Amy Adams reading pornography directly to the
camera?
Many people will feel strongly one way or another about this
film. I only know when I saw one of the 80 year old parishioners from church
walking out of the film, I didn’t want to meet her eye.
Uncertainty (directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel) begins with Kate (Lynn Collins) and Bobby (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) on Brooklyn Bridge debating which way they should go. After flipping a coin, they run opposite ways and two separate stories begin and are intertwined: Yellow and Green.
In Yellow, the couple takes a cab and finds a cellphone. Rather than giving it to the cab driver, the Bobby decides to call numbers on the phone trying to find the owner. After agreeing to give the phone to the man he assumes owns the phone, the couple watch him being gunned down. Quickly the story becomes a chase, with “them” tracking the couple as they try to escape in New York. When they decide to sell the phone back to the person claiming to be the real owner, the stakes get even deadlier.
In Green, filled with green elements, the couple are going to a 4th of July celebration at her parents’ house. As they drive there in their green van, they find a dog which they stop and rescue. While we learn about their relationship and her family, they create and post signs for the lost dog’s owner. Kate is newly pregnant and the two discuss what direction their relationship must take, all the time taking care of their new responsibility, the dog. There are secrets Kate keeps that I won’t reveal, but they certainly complicate the couple’s dilemma.
The two stories mirror each other and sometimes make reference to each other. An obvious example in Yellow occurs when they emerge from a movie which has a sign announcing “Stray Dog,” “Rashomon” and “High and Low.” Later, they run through a crowd of students on a field trip who all wear green tee--shirts.
Both works feel highly improvised, and according to imdb, the original script contained no dialog. It was all created by the actors as they rehearsed with the director. Lynn Collins and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are both personable actors who respond well to each other and who we end up caring about. The pacing on the two stories differs. Green is very slow and introspective and yellow matches the chase.
Parallel Life
(2010), originally called Pyeong-haeng-i-ron,
a thriller from South Korea, focuses at the beginning to the parallels between
the lives and deaths of Lincoln and Kennedy. Professor Sohn Ki-chul, a mathematical
genius conficted of killing his wife by poison, maintains that his life follows
that of another. He has even written a book about the mathematical impossibility
of coincidence. He ends up dying on a parallel day of the other mathematician.
Young judge Kim
Suk-hyun (Jin-hee Ji) who becomes Korea’s youngest appointed criminal court
head judge is told that his life parallels a judge who died 30 years before. That
judge’s family were murdered on the same day as the judge, after the earlier
murder of the man’s wife. When the judge’s wife is suddenly found murdered, the
Kim Suk-hyun begins to trace the parallels with the earlier judge in an attempt
to save his child and himself from murder.
Is life fated to follow a specific path or can it be
changed? That is the question of the film.
Handsome Jin-hee Ji makes an appealing hero, and although
the plot becomes somewhat predictable, the twists at the ending held my
interest.
Parallel Life (2010) *** (on Netflix streaming, with subtitles)
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is one of the busiest and most
personable Indie actors working today. Lately, I've been checking out some of his varied work. In 2005, he scored big as Brendan in Rian
Johnson’s Brick.
The film could be called high school film noir, centering on
a high school loner trying to solve the murder of his ex-girlfriend.
The movie follows the classic film noir characteristics: a mood of alienation and corruption,
isolation of characters in an urban setting, a murder to solve, a conflicted male
protagonist facing a peril he may not understand, a woman who can’t be trusted,
a twist ending, harsh lighting with strong shadows, sparse of unintelligible dialog,
concentration on distorted objects in a frame.
Added to these is the
concentration on the high school students—only three adult characters appear in
the film. Brendan’s home and parents are nonexistent. The only mother-figure in
the film constantly is seen serving juice to her drug-dealer son (Lukas
Haas) and his minions. The law figure is a high school assistant vice-principal who serves
the function of the police, and to whom Brendan tells his secrets.
Brendan at one point instructs Laura (Nora Zehetner) to give him a distinct car honk—long, short, long, short. It’s the same instructions that Sam
Spade gives Brigid O’Shaughnessy in The
Maltese Falcon.
When Brendan talks with Assistant V.P. Trueman, he
refers to a teacher “Kasprzyk,” as being “tough but fair.” She is a real
English teacher who teaches at San Clemente High School where writer/director Johnson
attended and where the film was shot.
The film, according to The New Yorker review, was edited on
a home computer.
Lukas Haas’ caped costume and cane were based on Jonathan
Frid’s costume in the 1960s tv cult classic, Dark Shadows.
During the film, Brendan travels through the strata of high
school social life with the druggies, the drama kids, the drug pushers, the
geeks, acting in some ways as Dante and Virgil going through the levels of
hell. It ends up being a fun trip.
What a visual feast director Lech Majewski's The Mill and the Cross is.
Based totally
on the story behind Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Road to Calvary (pictured above) the film draws
the viewer into 1564 Flanders. All the images appear as if painted by Bruegel. His
backgrounds and the mill dominate the landscapes. It is a time period when the
mercenaries from Spain control the land through intimidation and fear.
Rutger
Hauer plays Bruegel and he becomes our narrator into the world he has painted.
Early on the film follows a young farmer and his wife begin
their day and take a calf to market. The farmer is run down by the mercenaries
in red, beaten, trust onto a wheel on top of a rough hewn tree/cross. Left for
the birds of prey to devour, he becomes a foreshadowing of the cross which
comes later. We see how bleak and hard the mill (his symbol for Life) grinds
the people down. The Spanish Inquisition affects many. Later we see a young
woman thrown into an open pit and buried alive.
The actual opening is stunning when the people assemble to
populate his painting, as if dressing for a medieval passion play. Main actors
are being dressed in clothing from Bruegel; others remain frozen in position
already; others wait for their parts to be focused. At another point, Bruegel
shows his patron the perspective of the painting he works on and how to “read”
it. Later the Duke (Michael York) says he wishes one could step back and find
perspective of what is happening in the land. Bruegel has his Miller (God) stop
the Mill—and everything stops--so he can explain what he is drawing. These
moments gives the film a formalism, a didactic presentational style. If you as
a viewer have the need for a strong story and plot, this is not the film for
you. But if you have ever listened to a great art lecture and found yourself
moved by what you are seeing, you will be rewarded. I found this crucifix, this
passion play, brought me to tears.
One of Bruegel’s ideas, found in such works as Landscape with the Fall ofIcarus is that during major events, all kinds of insignicant
side-stories draw the viewer's attention away from the main events. So it is true
here.
Life and the mill continue to grind on, and if we are lucky we can dance
and find some enjoyment in our lives.
The Mill and the Cross (2011) **** (on Netflix Streaming)
A very surreal retelling of Alice in Wonderland using puppets and stop-action is by Jan Svankmajer (Netherlands). The film takes place in a grotesque Victorian multiroomed decaying mansion filled with stairs, rotting walls, and all sorts of Victoriana props. We first see Alice sitting by a stream throwing rocks into it while her governess sleeps with a book open. Later in the house, Alice pitches more rocks into a teacup. Looking up, Alice sees the white rabbit in a display case and as he comes to live in stop-action, he pulls the nails which hold him down out of his feet and dresses himself in a red jacket and top hat. He is constantly trying to fill his gaping front fur with the sawdust that falls out. Alice begins her journey following him and shows herself to be willfull and unsympathetic. She breaks things and throws objects. When she shrinks in size she becomes a Victorian googly- eyed doll. All of the creatures she encounters are threatening looking. Several have animal skulls and menacing appearances. In the room of the caterpillar, for example, there are countless holes in the floor. Through them, and creating them, are moving socks. One sock eventually grabs a set of false teeth and an eye ball and transforms itself into a talking sock caterpillar. In the world of Queen of Hearts, when the Queen calls, "Off with their head," the white rabbit uses his giant scissors to cut off the card heads. The feel of the adventure is of someone being trapped in the surrealistic world of Joseph Cornell boxes. Alice, originally titled Neco z Alenky (1988) ***
