15 - No (2012)

In 1988, after 15 years of Chiliean dictator General Augusto Pinochet's rule,  the people called for a national plebiscite (referendum) to legitamize  his power.  If he received majority of "yes" votes, he would stay in office. If he received a majority of "no" votes, he would be ousted. The film "No" is based on an unfinished play  El Plebiscito, written by Antonio Skármeta. Mexican actor Gael García Bernal plays René Saavedra, an ad man who is chosen to help the opposition defeat Pinochet.

The first thing someone will notice is that the entire film was filmed on a 3/4-inch Sony U-matic magnetic tape which gives the same look as the television news footage in Chile of that time. The film has a distorted color register which when enlarged gives slight halos to figures, but certainly throws us back into that time period.

The late eighties offered a marked contrast of life for Chile. As many as 3,200 people were killed, 80,000 were locked up and at least 30,000 were tortured, including women and children. Living conditions for the poor were difficult, while for many of the young people it proved an exciting time of great technical advancements where change could come about from many sources. René, for example, buys a microwave and is fascinated by the new technology. He delights in making a cheese-sandwich in seconds for his son.

René, who seems rather apolitical, is approached to help the opposition oust Pinochet using the techniques of his world to create 15 minute ad campaigns which will play on television each day for a week before the referendum. The intense opposition wants to catalog the horrors of the Pinochet regime. René feels the way to sell the “No” vote is the positive techniques of happy, attractive people, slogans, jingles, fast cuts.

René's team picks as its visual image a rainbow. There is a long discussion as to whether it will be confused as a gay symbol or something else. The argument eventually stresses that it means the diversity of everyone in Chile and is based on one of the native Indian flags, not the gay flag.

Can the world be changed by advertising? That is the premise of the film. As an audience, we are shown both René's teams and the opposition headed finally by René's boss, contrasted against the threatening world of Pinochet's army which tries to strong-arm and intimidate René's compatriots.

Bernal is commands the attention of the viewer. He has large intelligent eyes which seem to analyze fully the world around him. He is a perfect choice for an intelligent protagonist. His ex-wife is an activist who is beat up twice by the police during the film, and we watch René's political awareness grow with each confrontation. As a single parent protecting his son, he conveys to us the fear of loss that so many of Pinochet's victim's families felt.

For those who saw and like Argo, there is a lot of similarity between the two films: the attempt to recreate the time period; the theme of personal involvement  above personal safety; strong nationalism. Just as audiences felt like cheering at the conclusion, audiences here have something to cheer about.

I laughed out loud at an elderly gentleman a few seats down to turned to his wife when the film finished and said, “I guess this was a real event.”

No was justifiably nominated for Best Picture in this year’s Academy Awards.

No (2012) ****

14 - Beyond the Hills (2012)

[Spoiler alert] 

In February 2007, a Romanian Orthodox Church priest was sentenced to 14 years in prison for his part in the June 2005 death of a young nun during an exorcism ritual. The novice had died in June 2005 at a remote Holy Trinity convent in the northeast Romanian village of Tanacu. She had been tied up for several days without food or water and chained to a cross. Four nuns who also participated were also sentenced, one nun receiving 8 years and the other three five years.

Inspired by Tatiana Nichulescu Bran's non-fiction novels based on the incident, director/screenwriter Cristian Mungiu created his fictional version of the actual events with a script that ended up being much longer than the completed film. Director Mungiu filmed and edited simultaneously in chronological order. 

Knowing that he could not film in a real convent, Mungiu created his own convent, consisting of a series of separate buildings consisting of a small rough-finished church and the several buildings where the nuns live and eat. The compound suggests more of a cult's headquarters than our traditional view of a religious convent. Setting the film in winter, whether intentional or just a fortuitous event, helps enhance the sense of isolation one finds "beyond the hills."

Mungiu's script focuses on Voichita and Alina, who were raised together in an orphanage and had pledged their love to each other as children. Their lesbian relationship was undoubtedly physical, but when they grew too old for the orphanage, they separated with Voichita going off to be a barmaid in Germany while Alina turned to the church and became a nun. As the film begins, Voichita comes to the convent planning to convince Alina that it is time for the two to run off to a new life together. Unfortunately, Alina cannot since she has found a love for God which makes her want to reject the physical love Voichita proposes. Voichita, who doesn't believe in God or the Church's solutions, finds herself cast adrift. 

In the world of Mungiu's convent, the Priest "Father's" authority is supreme. Functioning much like a cult-leader, whatever he says is taken as God's law. He determines when they eat, when they sleep, when they pray. Although he is aided by Mother who gives him advice, he remains the controller. 

Early on, Father says that Voichita needs to confess her sins for God's forgiveness if she wants to stay. When she is unable to confess to his satisfaction (Does he suspect the root of the relationship between the two and want her to admit it?), he gives the nuns a book of 400-some sins and tells Voichita to write down the ones she has committed. In a scene that could easily fit into the pacing and look of Bergman's Virgin Spring, a small group of the nuns sit with Voichita and Alina and read out the sins in order while Voichita is expected to write down her sins. She seems too proud, too lost, or too stubborn to understand.

When Father and Mother determine that it is better for Voichita to leave and return to the foster family that had taken her in as their hired help, Voichita rebels and eventually returns to the convent vowing to become a nun. She tries to starve herself to make herself appear worthy, but Father is outraged that she would decide to do this on her own. As with a cult leader, he must be in complete control. The nuns, often looking like a chorus of blackbirds, are almost medievally superstitutious and easily ruled by the two. 

When one of the nuns cuts wood and finds a black cross in the grains of the wood, the group decides that Voichita is indeed possessed of the devil and out to bring them harm. Eventually, Father has her locked up; in response she tries to burn the building down. The group decides Voichita is indeed possessed and they set about to perform an exorcism. As Voichita struggles and screams, they tie her and then chain her to a makeshift cross and eventually gag her. In the process of the exorcism, which takes several days, she dies. The police come and arrest Father, Mother and three other nuns, including Alina, and take them off to an uncertain future.

Mungiu's work has been compared by an NPR American critic to the work of early Igmar Bergman, and he does have that same sparse feeling. He attempts throughout to use natural light and non-electricity. In several frames, he composes the picture with the most important person at center with their back to the audience. The nuns or other actors surround the center figure. As the nuns of the convent all appear in black, they suggest a menacing Greek chorus in many scenes. When interviewed, Mungiu talked about how he composed in layers like a painter. The dialog feels sparse as the lonely landscape of the compound.

Mungiu's film seems to transform itself into the Medieval mindset as the snow covers the landscape. Throughout I had to keep reminding myself this was present day, not centuries ago. As the guilty are taken off to face modern justice, Mugiu considers "Who is to blame for Voichita's death?" Ignorance? Superstition? Arrogance? The Church? Homophobia? Voichita herself? Ultimately the answer fails to come but the questions stay with us long after the viewing ends.

The film was deservedly nominated as one of best foreign films at the 2012 Academy Awards.

Beyond the Hills (2012) ****

13 - Russian Ark (2002)

The premise is intriguing. Film a 99-minute movie which deals with 300 years of Russian culture “in one breath,” that is, in one of the longest traveling shots ever attempted, using the real Hermitage Museum as its background. People the film with over 800 actors and over 1200 extras in costumes created just for the film. Pull together a total of 4,500 people to work on the film. And film it in one night because the Hermitage could only be closed for a day.

Russian Ark succeeds.

Recounts the sole cameraman who operated the Steadicam adopted especially for the film, Tilman Büttner, “We agreed that if something went wrong in the first 20 minutes we would start again. Otherwise we couldn’t stop.” It took four takes to make the finished product.

There are some previous attempts: Hitchcock’s Rope was done in the length of takes that the camera of the day could do (10 minutes) and the pieces were spliced together. Gustavo Hernandez’s recent The Silent House (see here) was one long 79-minute take. Modern digital video allows for longer takes. Other films using the long take include Timecode, PVC-1, La casa muda.

Director Alexander Sokurov attempts to show the Hermitage as an ark for Russian culture which sails on and endures. A first-person narrator (Sokurov) accompanies “the European” through 36 rooms and various glimpses into Russian history located in the Hermitage’s palaces: we see Catherine the Great watching one of her plays in the palace theatre, Peter the Great berating one of his generals, Catherine II walking out through the  snow, Tsar Nicholas I accepting the Shah of Iran’s apology for the murder of his ambassador in a massive court presentation, a Stalinist Leningrader making his own coffin during the siege of the city in World War II, and Tsar Nicholas having an intimate breakfast with his family. Along the way we are shown some of the major artworks housed in the museum. The end of the upper class culminates in a grand ball in costume which ends with the staircases filled with extras as film ends. (The ball recreates the 1913 final ball given in Csarist Russia in the exact ballroom where the original was held.)

One of the problems with one-take films is discussed by film critic Ron Holloway. Most film critics, he feels, wait for the cuts, so at the beginning as you adjust to the film you feel almost claustrophobic, waiting for another point of view to relieve one. I would agree. The first part of the film I became very aware of the camera and its limits, but by the time we reached the later sequences that concern disappeared.

The story, as such, is more a didactic look at the Russian and the European views of the culture Russia espouses. Basically this becomes a film which simply wants you to experience the various time periods in an episodic manner without giving you more than one bridge character, the erasable European who looks down on the Russian society but doesn't want to leave at the end.

The settings and props are sumptuous and the costumes are often breathtaking even on the extras. If you see the DVD, watch In One Breath: Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark, a 44 minute documentary on the filming.

I find the film unique enough in presentation that it becomes a must see for anyone who is a film fan.

Russian Ark (2002) ****

Here is the last four minutes  of the film. Revel in the numbers of people.

12 - Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)

James Franco’s Oz: “I’m just not the man you wanted me to be.” It’s the one line that rings true.

Nor is the film the film I wanted it to be.

I came to this movie with perhaps too great an expectation. After all, Disney interpreting the pre-Dorothy world of Oz seemed like it would be fun. I like the work of leads James Franco, Michelle Williams, Rachel Weisz, Mila Kunis and director Sam Raimi. Unfortunately, like the Scarecrow, the film struggles to find a heart (something you’d think was a no-brainer for a Disney film) and never succeeds to illicit more than a smile.

Most of the blame for the problems lies with a fairly mediocre script which rehashs the Dorothy quest to return home while dealing with the squabbles between the three witch sisters. Into the mix is added  two new characters (for the modern audience), a CGI china doll and a talking monkey.  While the new characters are cute, they fail to support Oz the Magician like Dorothy Gale’s Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the cowardly lion (who is referenced once early on as a real lion that threatens and then is scared off). While there are lots of Easter eggs (See here ), the film is surprisingly one dimensional.

The copyright issues with L. Frank Baum’s material obviously created interesting problems. All of Baum’s books (hence the plots and characters) entered into public domain in 1956; some Oz books by later writers retain their copyright. Samuel Goldwyn purchased the film rights for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1933, but he subsequently sold them to MGM studio in 1938. In 1954, Walt Disney bought the film rights to Baum’s other 13 Oz books, which led to Return to Oz (1985). 

So what things are under copyright and which aren’t? Things in the book should be in public domain; things from the 1939 film, such as the ruby slippers and the look of the yellow-brick road were copyright protected.

I liked the opening part of the traveling circus (Baum Brothers Circus) done in black and white as was MGM’s film. Playing with the 3D, occasionally the director breaks the surrounding frame by having objects actually fly out of the picture.

After a tornado, we end up in Oz, a land of color. But for the next section of the film, we seem to have been transported to a trailer for Disney’s new theme park ride, The Land of Oz. The sequence offers little in terms of plot and appears to be purely intended to test out ride ideas in glorious 3D CGI. By the time we make it back to the real story, the momentum and interest has lagged. At times, I felt the film was attempting to make sure that no opportunity remains for a film version of Wicked.

The most surprising thing I found about the film is the total lack of charisma conveyed by the four leads. Together they seem unable create a believability in the reality of the film and their line readings become just that.

Oz should be a place of wonder, not boring. I was surprised that I found Jack the Giant Slayer more fun.

Oz the Great and Powerful (2013) ***

11 - Jack the Giant Slayer - 3D (2013)

Some movies appear to have been made just to let the audience have fun. I went to see Jack the Giant Slayer without many expectations and found it an enjoyable experience.

Set in a nebulous fairytale land, Isabelle, the princess (Eleanor Tomlinson) and Jack (Nicholas Hoult) both have been raised on similar stories of the war between the giants and humans. As an adult, Isabelle wants more to her life than she finds locked up in court, so she steals off to find adventure. She ends up at Jack’s cottage seeking shelter from a storm. Jack has traded his horse for some magic beans and they sprout during the storm. The cottage is carried up on the  stalks up into the sky-world land of the giants. The film becomes a quest adventure trying to save Isabelle and later save humans from the giants.

Jack joins a team of several knights, including Sir Elmont (Ewan McGregor) and villain Roderick (a very funny Stanley Tucci) who has stolen the magical crown which makes the giants subservient to him. By the time they finally locate Isabelle, several of the team have been killed by the giants and or Roderick. Elmont ends up rolled in a puff pastry along with several pigs (pigs in a blanket, get it?). Jack finds his courage and ends up saving Isabelle.

When they try to return to earth, the giants realize the bridge to the human world is open and they set out to conquer the human world. The last part of the film is the battle between the two worlds.

The giants are a motley group of Brian Froud-type characters, funny, gross, menacing, but not really child-scary. The leader has two heads (one which looks a relative of Gollum). How Jack and the humans defeat them is a fun part of the film. The CG effects in 3D were well done.

The film was a surprisingly fun movie for me.

Jack the Giant Slayer (2013) ****