God of Carnage

Zack Snyder (with some assistance from Christopher Nolan) does some interesting things with one of the most archetypally America superheroes, Superman, in Man of Steel. While movies have traditionally presented Superman as the icon of Truth, Justice and the American Way, Man of Steel gives us a questioning hero, a drifter who has not yet defined himself in relation to his environment even if he has an idea of inevitability.

The film opens with an extended segment set on Krypton, home planet of Jor-El (Russell Crowe) and his wife Lara Lor-Van (Ayelet Zurer). Unfortunately, Krypton is also home to the militant General Zod (Michael Shannon), and in the time honoured fashion of clearly differentiating the good guys from the bad, Jor-El speaks in an English accent while Zod is unmistakeably American. We soon find out that Krypton is doomed, but Jor-El’s baby boy Kal-El is saved from planetary destruction and sent into space to eventually land on earth.

Grown-up Kal-El, going by the name of Clark Kent (Henry Cavill), occupies himself with odd jobs whilehe tries to figure out Who He’s Meant to Be. Much of the film is about Clark’s road to awareness as told in flashback, which is where we meet the Kents as played by Kevin Costner and Diane Lane. Early on, the themes of sacrificing for the greater good and the recognition of accountability are outlined, and I was surprised – and impressed – by how much time Snyder and screenwriter David S. Goyer were willing to spend solely on investing in their main character.

Along the way, the film introduces a spirited Lois Lane (Amy Adams) and weaves her into Kal-El’s search for himself (it sounds cornier than it is). Many critics have commented that there’s little spark or chemistry between Cavill and Adams as romantic leads, but honestly, the film doesn’t pitch these characters as possible lovers as much as colleagues. The film is so Kal-El centered that romantic subplots are briefly spun off at best. By the time Zod and his cronies make it to earth, having all survived the destruction of their home planet, Kal-El is ready to do what needs to be done.

In completely rebooting the Superman story, Man of Steel gets a few things right, and many things wrong. There are character moments strong enough to make me want to revisit the film on Blu-Ray, and say what you will of Snyder’s work, but he’s a fantastic visualist. In 300 he demonstrated his ability to craft impeccable big-screen carnage, and in Watchmen he took on one of the most daunting directorial challenges of the past twenty years and, in my view, pulled it off. In addition, Nolan’s involvement favours a ‘realistic’ approach to the character, with even the red underpants falling away.

Yet for a film so intent on presenting some sort of realistic take on the superhero, Krypton is strangely fantastical, complete with flying creatures. And for someone who’s excelled at clear, convincing combat in some of his earlier the films, Snyder prefers the fashionable accelerated aesthetics for most of the fight scenes, especially those early in the film. As a result, it’s hard to see who’s doing what to whom, and the 3D only makes it worse. The repeated punch-ins on objects lose their novelty quickly.

Much has been made of the messiah-like character of Kal-El, as if it’s some sort of revelation. The Christ-like character of the hero is nothing new, but Snyder handles it as if the audience won’t get it unless it’s hammered, repeatedly, into their heads. That is Snyder’s approach in general, for most of the film: why show someone getting punched if you can show them getting punched, bounced, and dribbled? Why have a villain verbally express his anger if you can rather show him pick up a car and throw it through someone’s house?

Like it or hate it, Snyder’s visuality, often focusing on movement and using filmic techniques that emulate movement , gets results. In this case, Man of Steel showcases quite possibly the most jaw-dropping action in any superhero movie. For Snyder, less is simply less. The destruction and debris filled finale makes The Avengers seem cute, and I had to wonder about the actual death toll such a battle would have. Overall the film is also a strangely humourless affair, possibly in a misguided attempt to keep things realistic and serious.

Less is less for the characters too, unfortunately. Cavill certainly looks the part of the hero, but he delivers dialogue like a low-rent Michael Fassbender at best. It doesn’t help that the dialogue is seldom imaginative and often overly familiar. Much of what Cavill has to say are clunkers, and would come across as such regardless of who says it. On the other side of the spectrum, Shannon follows the Pacino approach to villainy: shout, and if in doubt, squint and shout some more.  

Man of Steel delivers spectacle in spades, even if it lacks the deep thought that made Watchmen so compelling, even if it skims over the moral quandaries that made the Dark Knight so interesting. While Man of Steel is far flashier, bigger and meaner, it doesn’t have the heart that Superman Returns had (and that’s a sentence I never thought I’d type).

A feature-length film about love

Michael Haneke is one of the greatest living filmmakers. I’m not going to add “arguably” to that statement. Consider the Austrian’s oeuvre: the cruel experiment of Funny Games (via Jim Emerson); the sexual masochism of The Piano Teacher; the black-and-white collective psychosis of The White Ribbon; repressed guilt and accountability in Cache. With his latest film Amour, which garnered Haneke a second Palme d’Or in Cannes (2012), the director enters a much more personal territory than before with a film that has been considered (rightly so) as his most humane.

An elderly couple, George and Anne (Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva), live out their retirement in a Parisian apartment. They go to musical performances and appreciate good literature. They seem perfectly contented to spend time with one another, revisiting memories and doing the chores around the house - all part of a comfortable, sustaining routine. Then one morning, Anne has a stroke. The scene is spellbinding; Georges does not realise what’s is happening to Anne, but when he seems to begin to understand that something is wrong, he takes rational action. Haneke’s use of image and sound is perfect; visually, he alternates two-shots and close-ups, while the sound of water running off-screen adds to the tension.

The stroke causes paralysis in half of Anne’s body. George, her husband of decades, her lover, her companion, becomes her caretaker. She makes him promise that regardless of what happens, he will not have her hospitalised (an arrangement reflecting the real-life pact between Haneke and his wife). As Anne’s condition worsens, George must address not only his responsibilities towards his wife, but also deal with a daughter (the beautiful Isabelle Huppert) concerned for her mother’s well-being and uncertain as to whether her father can take care of her.

What an audacious move to call your film Love – and Haneke gets away with it. While the elements of suffering are there – ageing; disease; incapacitation; the certainty of death – Haneke chooses to foreground love. In its sombre and stark way, the film shows how love is a barrier against the suffering which is irrevocably part of life. In embodying the power of love, Trintignant and Riva deliver superb performances. Riva realises every phase of Anne’s mental and physical degeneration, while Trintignant’s grief and perseverance in the face of his wife’s condition is inspiring without being indulgent or celebratory. A husband is simply doing what one does when a loved one is in need. George and Anne come to vivid life in the carefully constructed apartment, which is not just a home anymore, but a space for love and care to manifest in considerable capacity. Haneke never sugar-coats the severity of the couple’s situation, but makes the devotion that George has for Anne palpable. Haneke does not deal with an ideal of love, but with the act of love. While many films deal with love as abstraction, Amour shows love as a performed part of daily existence.

There are so few truly great films about love, yet there are so many lifeless attempts at showing and understanding love in soulless films that either focus on youthful exuberance or prefer to idealise human relationships as a series of happy events. Love often has little to do with happiness, as Haneke understands, and much with commitment, devotion and determination. Amour deservedly won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film and was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Director. It is a flawless film, full of life, with a master filmmaker delivering some of the best work of a decades-long career.

Family First

Paul Eilers’ Verraaiers is a long film. At two hours, it feels like three. This Bosbok Ses production is overall a more merit worthy experience than Roepman, their previous film I liked but a film I found to be too whimsical and spiritually thin for its own good. Verraaiers is, for better and for worse, a more grounded experience, an exploration of loyalty and betrayal against the backdrop of the South African War (Anglo-Boer War).

At the centre of events is Jacobus van Aswegen (a strong Gys de Villiers), who with his sons – including Vilje Maritz – fight the British until he starts to question the wisdom of their involvement in the conflict. With the implementation of Kitchener’s scorched earth policy, whereby farms were burned down and women and children taken to concentration camps, Van Aswegen decides to rather stay at home with his wife (Rika Sennett) and daughters (including Roepman’s Beate Olwagen) so that he can be there to protect them if necessary. This decision is seen as betrayal by some of the Boer authorities and before long Jacobus and his kin (and some friends) are arrested and set to stand trial on charges of treason.

The first part of the film is the narrative and thematic set-up and provides a clear idea of why some Boers decided to personally withdraw from the war even if they supported the effort as a whole. The second part of the film concerns the trial, and is a complete slog to sit through. When the trial-part of the film begins, the film has nothing else to focus on, no B-storyline to alternate with the trial-storyline. So, for nearly an hour we see the men worry, talk to the Boer authorities, question themselves and so on. There are some cutaways to the women all alone at the homestead, but those quickly become pointless due to a specifically bizarre scene which suggests something completely unconvincing about the Boer women in question, particularly the mother.

Then we’re back with the men who sit and toil and wonder their way to an unsurprising ending. Half the film is thus claustrophobic and constraining without visual reference to whatever else is happening while the protagonists are imprisoned – why are we not shown the scorched earth policy in practice? – and the film grinds to a halt. In films such as Der Untergang (Downfall) such characteristics – claustrophobia; constraint; a focus on a specific small group of characters – were beneficial in sustaining suspense and a sense of foreboding, but in Verraaiers their sum total is tedium. There’s something in the combination of shot selection, editing and the screenplay that severely undermines the film, something I hope will become clearer to me in a second or third viewing (which I’m not looking forward to, given how leaden half of the film is). 

Johan Baird and Stian Bam are solid in important supporting roles, but there are odd character moments that don’t convince, such as an early scene with Carel Trichardt as a judge wondering aloud (as if on stage) about loyalty and betrayal, somewhat clumsily foregrounding the film’s themes. Yet it’s the pacing that remains the biggest problem. I’ve seen war films that go on for three hours; I’ve seen hour upon hour of Tarr and Tarkovsky and am all the better for it. Those films, regardless of their running time, have a poetry to their images that is undeniable, and often, to me personally, unshakeable. Maybe that’s why Verraaiers felt so long and seemed so lifeless as it continued: it is so sincere, so focused on representing history in a functional and visually instrumental manner, that, to its detriment, it fundamentally lacks a sense of imagistic poetry. 

The best films of 2012

I'm not going into a long-winded explanation of "value" and "worth", or even of "eligibility"; simply, these are the films that made 2012 a very good movie year. I know that I've missed a few must-see's - I still cannot bring myself to rent The Artist - and I haven't gotten to some of the currently showing critics' darlings like Silver Linings Playbook. All lists exist as versions of themselves and I may well revisit this list down the line.

Honorable mention goes to The Grey's existential adventure; The Raid's superlative action; Kill List's last 30 minutes; The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo's Salander; and Lena Dunham's mumblecore family drama Tiny Furniture. 


Now for the top ten.

10. Wuthering Heights

Andrea Arnold's bold, animalistic retelling of the famous story of doomed love is unsettling and poetic, if not a perfect fit for adaptation purists.

9. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

This is a police procedural by way of detailed character study. In Nuri Bilge Ceylan's glacially paced (in a good way) drama, the frustrating search for a buried corpse over the course of a day brings masculinity and authority into sharp focus.

8. Cloud Atlas

This film appears on as many "Worst of 2012" lists as Top Tens. I found this Wachowski-Tykwer collaboration to be an emotionally engaging, visually breathtaking secular fantasy about human kindness. Ben Whishaw and Jim Broadbent are standouts in this time-traversing epic.

7. War Horse

 I know, I know: Spielberg is an unrepentant sentimalist who never saw a saccharine close-up he didn't like. And yet, what his critics forget is that Spielberg is also an informed lover of cinema, and War Horse is as much an ode to American film as it is an engrossing ensemble drama set against against the backdrop of  WWI.

6. Shame

Michael Fassbender stars as an alienated corporate male in Steve McQueen's intense character study. Driven by sexual imagery devoid of any erotic dimension, McQueen shows a man at the brink of implosion when his sister unexpectedly shows up at his apartment. Fassbender is mesmerising.

5. A Separation      

Asghar Farhadi delivers one of the most suspenseful films of the year in this story of truth and accountability. The film weaves perceptions of a central event until it becomes a tapestry of memory - and when is memory truth?

4. Melancholia

Danish provocateur Lars von Trier follows the apocalyptic Anti-christ with another apocalyptic drama in this tale of two sisters facing nothing less than the end of the world while at a country lodge. Kirsten Dunst is superb as the younger sister struggling with depression.

3. The Skin I Live In
Pedro Almadovar's mad scientist thriller blew me away the first time I saw it and I haven't been able to shake it from my mind. Featuring Elena Anaya as the object of Antonio Banderas's obession, it's one of the Spanish auteur's best. 

2. The Turin Horse

A hansom cab driver and his daughter try to make sense of increasingly strange events on their farm in Italy, 1889. Filmed in crisp black and white, Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr's hypnotic final film (or so he claims) is a deeply haunting apocalyptic vision of the world as place of habitual suffering. Like Werner Herzog, Tarr remains one of the most fascinating figures of world cinema.  

1. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

This British anti-Bond spy drama is the epitome of meticulous filmmaking. Director Thomas Alfredsson assembles a great cast headed by Gary Oldman as aging British intelligence worker George Smiley who is tasked with finding a mole in the agency. TTSS is more than just a genre film; it's a measured character study with beautifully underplayed moments of betrayal and revelation. Watching the film, it felt like I was unable to breathe for two hours.