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.

Iranian tour de force

In a behind-the-scenes interview on the Artificial Eye DVD, Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi says that the camera sees not only the face, but also what goes on behind it, inside the mind. Farhadi’s tense drama A Separation, winner of this year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Film, shows and reveals what it has to in its characters' faces while keeping the viewer in the dark as to what route events will take. This is a film without grand gestures and rousing speeches about the importance of truth, yet the entire film asks exactly what the nature of truth is.

Nader (Peyman Mooadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami) agree to separate in the film’s opening scene. From there we see them make arrangements for living separately, she at her mother’s while he remains in his apartment where he takes care of his Alzheimer’s afflicted father. Their 11-year old daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi) stays with Nader for the time being, hoping that Simin will return sooner rather than later. Soon we are introduced to another mother, Razieh (Sareh Bayat), who will act as caretaker of Nader’s father while the son’s at work. Simin permits Razieh to bring her young daughter to the apartment when she’s there; maybe the two young girls will keep each other company.

That is the basic set-up. What ensues is both expected and surprising, and occurs in scenes of quiet, restraint and anger. When I refer to the film as a tense drama, do not make the mistake of anticipating plot twists and character reversals. The film is so tense because the odds are so high and the characters equally compromised. The actors, adults and children, are superb. As Simin, Hatami has a stunning beauty and dramatic weight reminiscent of Juliette Binoche. The verbal face-offs between her and Mooadi are vivid, compelling, discomforting. For all the cultural differences, they could be my neighbours.

I mentioned that the film is about truth. Simin makes certain accusations of Nader. He does not take her seriously. Who is right, and, more importantly, in what way are they right? When a marriage begins disintegrating after 14 years, who is responsible for what, and can the initial point of deterioration be pinpointed?

Then something sad happens. Who is to blame? None of the characters here are inherently bad. Life isn’t easy, and all of them are desperate in different ways. How did one individual cause something to happen to someone else? How does one go about proving that such causality was deliberate or not? Privileging the female position, Simin and Termeh, as well as the viewers, attempt to piece together what may pass as truth, some sort of distillation of versions of a single event. 

In this regard, A Separation recalls not only Rashomon but also John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt. In that film, Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep) observes that simply being certain of something is a sure indicator of truth. That is the way of danger. In A Separation, there is not a scene or shot that does not serve the whole. The film does eventually arrive at a point of truth, but by then we are far more concerned with the complex dynamic that has been established between the characters than with a causal chain. In a controlled manner, the last two scenes are devastating. Only considered, deliberate filmmaking can seem so natural and effortless.

La Terra Trema

Lars von Trier's cinema of the apocalypse adds a vivid, exhilarating title to its list of films with Melancholia. Here is a film about two sisters who experience life and its disasters in different ways, and it's difficult at times to argue who's better equipped or prepared for not only the mundane, but also apocalyptic disaster. The film's opening sequence, a stunningly filmed series of enacted paintings-as-images, shows us exactly what to expect: a planet named Melancholia crashes into Earth and destroys it. In the film that follows, we see characters busying themselves with future-oriented events while we know that everyone will die. 

It is Justine's (Kirsten Dunst, Cannes-winner for Best Actress) wedding day. She's getting married to the kind-looking Michael (Alexander Skarsgard). Her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourgh) and her husband John (Kiefer Sutherland) have made their mansion available to the couple for their nuptials. Also attending are the sisters' estranged and destructive parents: father Dexter (John Hurt), who seems to have lost some of his mental clarity, and mother Gaby (Charlotte Rampling), who is a hardened beast. The most despicable character there, though, is surely Jack (Stellan Skarsgard), who is Justine's boss and does not let a single opportunity pass to mine her for work related information. For a moment, as we engage with these characters, the planet's destruction takes a back seat to a series of cosmically smaller but nonetheless significant events that occur as empty marriage rituals play out.

The film is divided in two parts, each associated with a sister and the privileging that particular perspective. While the first part focuses on Justine, the second follows Claire. Some time has passed between parts one and two, and there are clear differences in how the sisters act toward one another. It makes sense that Justine would be in the ad industry; she works in a world of fleeting significance and money-for-time-measured patriarchal significance. In De Sade's tale, the character Justine is a victimised female trying to make her way in a world that seems to thwart and threaten her at every turn regardless of her goodwill and good intentions. De Sade would later write another book, this time detailing the plight of Justine's sister Juliette. Discussing De Sade in conversation with von Trier falls beyond the scope of this review, but there's certainly something to be said about the Danish filmmaker's tale of two sisters that face not only a life that seems ill at home to inhabit, but the greater destruction of the entire world and its inhabitants. There is no divine judgment or cause for this destruction: it is simply a cosmological inevitability.

If Melancholia speaks to Sadean notions of pain, suffering and existence, there is something of the contemplative Tarkovsky in the film as well. The Russian master is well known for a couple of influential three-hour epics including the stark Stalker, but von Trier seems to invoke the resonance of the religious yet grounded potency of Andrei Rublev while consciously pointing us towards Tarkovsky's psychological masterwork, Solaris (later remade by Steven Soderbergh and starring George Clooney). In Solaris, a planet seems to engage with characters' consciousness to conjure up figures form their past, memory figments that look and feel real but are entirely the co-creations of the space station inhabitants (unwittingly) and the planet (deliberately), which seems to be a pulsing orb of consciousness. It is strongly suggested that the earth's destruction - a place Justine describes as full of evil - is brought on by her own depression. 

Yet there is another text that illuminates Melancholia in a different way: the first Dogme film, Thomas Vinterberg's devastating family drama Festen in which a birthday party at an exclusive lodge becomes a battleground between father and son as they stake their claims for the truth of the past. Melancholia moves between Dogme-like "realistic" shots to formalised, poetic imagery with ease, and like Festen has a (less overt) class dimension to it. 

And in all the destruction and psychological disintegration (and, for some, solidification), Melancholia is an exhilarating, positive film. Instead of anchoring the viewer to despair it shows the end of existence as first and foremost a psychological reality that is not without its positive points. Accompanied by a gorgeous soundtrack ("Tristan & Isolde") to complement its images and less invasive than Antichrist, Melancholia has greater resonance and is more spectacular than anything Roland Emmerich has ever done. No wonder it was completely ignored by the Academy Awards. 

(Special kudos to Kiefer Sutherland, who for the first time in more than a decade is not simply re-rendering Jack Bauer.)

Concrete Jungle

Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive is a brilliant film. It is self-aware, highly cinematic and strangely involving for a film that downplays emotion in favour of aesthetics. The Driver (Ryan Gosling), we are told, just walked into a Los Angeles auto repair shop one day and started working there. He has no history, and the character is more mythological and iconic than he is recognisably human – except when it comes down to basic drives such as survival and vengeance. The Driver roams the street of Los Angeles like he’s charting a known labyrinth that only he knows in a world defined by concrete, lights and cheap diners.

He is a part-time stuntman, auto repair worker and part-time criminal cohort. People contact him to pick them up at certain places and drop them off at others; he is the central force in the thinking person’s The Transporter. His boss at the repair shop is Shannon (Bryan Cranston), who acts as a liaison of sorts between his favourite (only?) employee and Rose (Albert Brooks), a seriously shady figure whose partner, Nino (Ron Perlman), is more overt about his underground activities.

There’s also Irene (Carey Mulligan), who lives with her son Benicio (Kaden Leos) in the same apartment complex as the Driver. The three of them warm up towards one another, but when Irene’s husband is released from prison, events and characters take a dark turn – but not necessarily as one might expect.

As can be seen above, Drive boasts a strong cast, Brooks in particular. There’s brief but striking appearance by Christina Hendricks. Gosling’s hero figure is soft spoken and restrained, at least at first, a modern day Man With No Name who listens in on police radio transmissions when doing his job.

The film is violent, and the brutality and gore catches you off guard. In that sense, it’s violent in the same way as A History of Violence, which also used explicit violence to root its content in some sort of reality or authenticity. The film has a stunning sound track, one that is functional and not simply audio window dressing. The music frames Drive as ominous from the start, and certain songs are cleverly used to comment on and emphasise certain events. Refn’s choice of music is as premeditated as his images. Because most of all, Drive is a richly visual film that reminded me a bit of De Palma’s work. The film has a 1980s feel about it, though it’s clearly set in contemporary times. The look, the appearance of the characters – the Driver almost always wears the same white jacket with a yellow scorpion on its back, even when it gets dirty or bloody – the music, limited dialogue and editing speak to a visual sensibility one does not see often.

Drive is stylish, economic and unconventional filmmaking. It’s a violent thriller that knows itself (young Benicio at one stage talks about how easily one can identify a story’s villain) and plays with audience reactions as much as character reactions (see the elevator scene in particular, as well as when the Driver stumbles upon another character in dire straits in a parking garage).

Drive cements Refn’s reputation as another Danish filmmaker willing to pull a rabbit out of a hat now and again by refusing to strictly adhere to genre conventions. Yes, story wise the film paints in broad strokes, but the images are what sets the film apart, not the story. Refn’s previous film, the Viking neo-epic Valhalla Rising, achieved something similar, and here he’s told another story of a character who goes to hell.

On beauty

 

Francois (Deon Lotz) is a middle aged Afrikaner trapped in middle class domesticity. He runs a timber mill in Bloemfontein and shares a house with his wife and daughter, Anika. His relationships with both women are strained; he sees his daughter as disobedient and rebellious, while his wife is little more than an occasional sparring partner. Her occasional meanderings into throwaway political quips are few and depthless. It could be that Francois’s relationship with the missus is troubled by the possibility of her having an affair, and that he’s not getting along with Anika because she pursues her passions, which is in strong contrast to her father’s forceful stoicism. In this light, it seems as if Francois is the only one who does not get what he wants, and what he wants, is twenty-something Christian (Charlie Keegan).

“Skoonheid” is about the obsessive pursuit of desire as an older man lusts after a younger one. Put differently, “Skoonheid” is about a crisis of desire, of a man so used to the mundane that the younger man’s youthful freedom is so consuming to Francois that it threatens to completely derail him. “Skoonheid” is about looking and waiting; the film’s impressive opening shot in fact establishes the film as Francois’s story because we see what he sees, and sometimes how he sees it as well. The camera pans slowly from right to left and comes to rest on a newly wedded couple receiving words of congratulation from a line of friends and family. Past the happy wedding guests in the background we meet Christian as the camera slowly, patiently zooms in on his face. He is visibly comfortable in his skin and in the situation, where he makes obligatory small talk. His being is far removed from Francois’s, to whom the film cuts once Christian has been established, and it is clear that Francois sees something he desperately wants and cannot have.

Writer-director Oliver Hermanus (“Shirley Adams”) approaches the material with solemnity, knowing that the story should not be rushed, that he is dealing with characters and not plot mechanisms. Often the film is distant and detached, and are we allowed to not only see Christian as Francois sees him, but to also watch Francois watching Christian. In this way, and not through overly manipulative music or dramatic dialogue, are we gradually pulled into the story.

“Skoonheid” is frank about sexuality, and there’s a particularly explicit, brutal scene late in the film. But “Skoonheid” is never indulgent or gratuitous; Hermanus is too sensitive and too intelligent for that. Francois never sees himself as gay; he simply wants to have sex with a man. Because Hermanus knows that style complements character, the sex is not eroticised, but is portrayed simply as fact, as something that must happen.

As a lingering character drama brave enough to tackle notions of repression in a traditional Afrikaner milieu in graphic detail, “Skoonheid” emerges as a mature, challenging drama. For most of its running time, I could see exactly why the film has been surrounded by so much positive buzz since its much publicised premiere at Cannes earlier this year. But then it ends, and it is here that the film lets the viewer down. Throughout, the film relies on a variety of ambiguities – of character, of situation – to add nuance to the story. The film doesn’t pander to its audience.

I understand the purpose and function of ambiguity, and I’m all for open-ended narratives. But after what “Skoonheid” shows us, I couldn’t help but feel that we – and Francois, and Christian – deserve more than what Hermanus leaves us with. I’m not asking for anything sensational or even concrete, just an ending that is as visually and thematically powerful as its opening scene. I was reminded of the ending to “Y Tu Mama Tambien”, where a brief café encounter set the characters straight without over explaining anything. And for all its flaws, “Brokeback Mountain” had an unforgettable final shot that quietly emphasised the tragedy of the story. “Skoonheid” lacks a similar final visual or thematic punch.

This should not deter one from seeing the film. Though it won’t have the box-office take of a “Liefling” or “Jakhalsdans”, it is “Skoonheid” that will remain far longer in the mind.

Conversations with God

How is that I know precisely what “The Tree of Life” is about, yet I cannot bring myself to explain it? I am not simply talking about the plot of the film, but about the thematic density the material presents. That is the wonder of Terrence Malick’s latest film: it covers the broad, the deep, the archetypal and the collective while exploring the intricacies of family life. That a film like “The Tree of Life” gets made at all in a time where marketing often determines a film’s fate and tired romances and adventures clutter the screen, is a miracle. That the film is as momentous as it is, another.

I had reason to doubt Malick. He returned to filmmaking after a long absence with the brilliant “The Thin Red Line” (1998), followed by the self-indulgent huffing and puffing of “The New World” (2002). Then there’s the matter of loaded expectations: “Tree” won the Palm d’Or earlier this year at Cannes, and after all, this is the legendary and reclusive auteur Malick we’re talking about. In the United States, where many patrons walked out of “Tree of Life” frustrated and annoyed (not necessarily waiting for it to finish), some theatre chains put up signs explaining that not all movies are the same.

Then the film happened to me, and surely Malick is a gift to the world.

He is a poet, philosopher, theologian, and one of the best filmmakers around. The film is breath-taking and visionary. “Tree of Life” is the organic successor to “Line”, taking its exploration of consciousness and one’s awareness of oneself in the world to dizzying heights that invoke the personal and the epic. It guides you to revisit and reconsider your life as Malick’s images of being lay a framework not only of his own inward living, but of the possibilities of such living for oneself. The film stars Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain as the parents of three young boys; she is a caring mother, while he is often hard on his sons, sometimes seeming to want an audience and not so much a family. Sean Penn, whose face gets more expressive with each film he does, co-stars as a pivotal character that has almost no dialogue. All the actors are superb, with the child actors deserving a special mention.

Do not be tempted to reduce this film to a family drama. Malick here revisits his own childhood, conflicts and challenges, but it is far removed from the kind of needy “emotional exorcism” that filmmakers often commit. Malick is both too intelligent and too sensitive and intuitive for that, and the story he tells is visually, thematically and spiritually complex without calling attention to itself. I am always amazed at how Malick manages to suggest perception and subjectivity in his films, especially this one; how incredible is it that he makes another’s thoughts and feelings seem so much like your own?

Here is a film about creation, fathers, mothers, sons, belief and the threat of succumbing to the world, and it is a masterpiece. How often do I have the opportunity to refer to a film as flawless? So often we are willing to settle for less, for movies that barely get the basics right but can’t be bothered with much of anything else. “Tree of Life” sours the taste of those films, their essential futility, with its perfection. It is one of the best films I have ever seen.

Guess who came to dinner?

At Cannes 2010, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” won the Palmde d’Or. The director, who instructed critics to simply call him Joe, gained acclaim earlier in his career for, amongst other titles, “Tropical Malady”. I haven’t seen Joe’s earlier work, but if it’s anything like “Boonmee”, at least I’ll be prepared for the Meaningfulness of it all. “Boonmee” is at times beautiful to behold, at others frustratingly tedious; overall, the film is so intent on presenting fascinating images and odd characters that it completely exhausted me. Seldom did I have to work so hard at interpreting what I think I’m seeing. 

Uncle Boonmee is dying. As part of the process of letting go of the earthly, he retires to rural Thailand to live out his last days in peace and quiet. While there, he is visited by figures from his past who become very much part of the present – a deceased wife; a long lost son – and the film has moments where it seems to leave its main plot (as much as there is a plot) to arrive at differences moments in time and space that somehow (we aren’t guided as to how, exactly) link to Boonmee. By the time the woman by the waterfall discussed fate and life with the talking fish, I’d abandoned hope that somewhere, Joe will make it all make sense. 

Maybe I seem unfair to “Uncle Boonmee”. I understand and agree that cinema can and should challenge viewers to engage with narrative models and structures that are vastly different to the Hollywood model. Often, it’s these films that are labelled “visionary” and “transcendental”. Consider David Lynch’s highly stimulating films on psyche and fantasy. His films differ greatly from how we’ve been trained to read movies, yet they’re quite accessible while remaining open to various interpretations. Lynch has had his failures – “Wild at Heart” – much like another visionary, Terrence Malick, who made “The Thin Red Line” into one of the best films I have ever seen, and who took the story of Pocahontas in “The New World” and made it into a self-indulgent bore. 

If Lynch and Malick’s best work make the directors seem like professors of their craft who base their work on solid philosophical ideas and cultural currents, “Boonmee” makes Joe look like the interesting humanities student who has something to say but cannot get his audience (me; I don’t speak for those who fell head over heels for this film) to decode his message in anything other than broad thematic strokes. So, “Boonmee” is about Life and the Meaning of it all. The characters (and their character) mean little. 

I may be being a bit deliberate, as I’m framing the film as self-conscious Art, and it is, but it is certainly not without merit. As Arty as it is, it provides some food for thought. Admittedly, most of that thought came from me, not from the movie. “Uncle Boonmee” is quite a sensory experience, even immersive at times. There are stunning scenes, such as in the latter part of the film when the fading protagonist and his family venture into a cave that becomes a galaxy. And at the beginning, there’s a moving, entirely convincing dinner conversation between the living, the dead and the animalistic. Towards the end, the film even manages to insert itself powerfully into Thai politics. It’s the overlong in-between that weighs the film down. 

All in all, I’m growing weary of art as the Great Metaphysical Indecipherable. 

And the fish? He eventually does something far more interesting than talk, I can tell you that. Just don’t ask me what it Means.

Border patrol

Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cedillo) is dead. His friend, partner and surrogate father, ranch operator Pete Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones), is devastated by Estrada's death. Perkins undertakes to find the killer, with or without the cooperation of Sheriff Belmont (Dwight Yoakam). Meanwhile, we see Mike Norton (Barry Pepper) and his wife (January Jones) ride into town. He's there to patrol the Texas-Mexico border, and the film is quick to show us how (in)effective he is at his job. These characters, as well as Rachel (Melissa Leo) who runs the local diner with her husband Bob, are all linked to each other in ways carefully designed gently revealed to us by Arriaga. Estrada's death is the event that brings these characters closer or drives them apart. Despite what the DVD back cover might say, "Three Burials" is not about Pete avenging Estrada's death. It is about what happens when Pete finds the killer, which makes for a more rewarding thematic experience.        

"The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" (2005), directed by and starring stone-faced Tommy Lee Jones, is clearly written by Guillermo Arriaga, he of other structural filmic adventures: "Amores Perros", "21 Grams", "Babel". The film's first two acts (or the "First Burial" and "Second Burial", as we are told) follow a disjointed plot that makes complete sense only once we're well into the film. Showing the events in this way, Jones and Arriaga add weight to the death of the titular character, making it more than just a plot development. The film is a Western set in the present day, and the genre, as seemingly unfashionable as it may be, is clear from the opening establishing shot of the uninhabited American landscape. The Western landscape instills awe and fear at the same time. We know that both death and salvation reside there.

"The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" belongs to the recent wave of revisionist, sometimes elegiac Westerns. Jones would appear in the monumental "No Country for Old Men" two years after this film, and Pepper would face Jeff Bridges in "True Grit" (2011). Thematically, "Brokeback Mountain" (2005) belongs to the same type of film. These new Westerns would not necessarily be set in the Old West but have similar character types and address similar themes. Where earlier Westerns commented on the fading of the "old ways" of the West due to industrialisation, for example, these new Westerns highlight the demise and reconstruction of the genre itself. "Estrada" contrasts the inviting and foreboding Western landscape with the mundane and equally deadly urbanity of Texas life, showing how one can kill physically while the other may murder the soul. A key theme underscoring the film is that of communication; there's a sex scene devoid of the usual audio-visual sexual cues that highlights physical intimacy as act of non-communication, while a blind man listens to a radio program he cannot understand since it's in Spanish.    

To discuss more would take us to deep into spoiler territory, since so much of the film covers the aftermath of Pete finding the killer and doing with this person what he must. What I can finally comment on is how the film takes a brave step towards its end, somewhat reframing Perkins while confirming what we might have expected all along. Subsequently, the film's last line resonates with sadness.

"The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" won Best Sceenplay and Best Actor at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.