The film has gotten all kinds of flak and praise over the same quandary that many audiences will silently ask themselves: what, exactly, does the creation of the universe, single-celled organisms, and dinosaurs have to do with an averagely dysfunctional family rearing children in the 50s or Sean Penn gloomily staring out the windows of high-rise office buildings and glass elevators?  And that’s the crux of the film, really.  What do all those things have to do with each other?  The short and simple answer is this: they’re the jumbled mass of what Malick’s incoherently tried to tell a story with—the story in question being an exploration into whatever Malick considers to be the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.

Given the grand scale of such a story, it’s hard to blame Malick for using such a nonlinear and disjointed method; in fact, that kind of method could expedite the story into something digestible and comprehensible, even if it doesn’t seem immediately relevant.  The problem with such narratives is that it can be difficult to tie everything together into a cohesive package, which is something Malick fails to do.  He presents his audience with concepts and imagery that can only be called “gigantic” or “fantastic,” but doesn’t unify them with much significance.  The audience gets to watch dinosaurs and microbes and space dust whiz about for minutes on end, and gets to feast on images of deep space during divisionary sections, but these segments are literally dropped into the middle of an already jumpy story.  Whispered voice-over narrations dwelling on vague ambiguities or ruminations on grace and materialism are about all that tie the two aspects of the film together.  It’s no surprise that Tree of Life’s reception is mixed.

But I see—or, I think I see—what Malick’s intent was with Tree of Life.  Its stream of images—from the pseudo-biographical elements of a not-so-fictional family, to the dawning of cosmos and life on Earth, to the dream segments interspersed throughout—points to an attempt to transcend the menial confines of narrative storytelling.  In that regard, its success would bank on a number of extremely subjective factors—not unlike the method used extensively (and successfully) by Andrei Tarkovsky decades ago.  The images themselves are gorgeous, beautiful, evocative, fill-in-the-blank-with-whatever-words-of-praise-you-will, but that’s about all they are.  Their relation to the film’s characters and, more importantly, their relation to the film’s audience remains detached, distant, and—at best—crudely manipulative.  A wanton reliance upon handheld camera work is probably my biggest complaint with this department, since its attempt at giving the audience a closer, “inside-view” to the family depicted is so hokey and nauseating that it succeeds only in alienating its audience even further.

But that isn’t necessarily what prevents Tree of Life from transcending narrative confines.  If it had gone the route of, say, Zerkalo, and instead reveled in its nonlinear and precise stream of images without regard to specific character or narrative developments, Tree of Life would have been a more commendable effort.  But instead of aiming for a direct and visceral relation to its audience, it stops halfway there; its nonlinearity and its continuous jump-cutting from one scene to the next does a remarkable job at mimicking snapshots of a family’s life, but the method isn’t pervading.  Malick still holds onto an organized narrative, even if he’s done his best to obscure any kind of structure.  It’s as if he gets into the groove of such a method for a few segments and then suddenly abandons it when he feels it’s time to actually try developing the characters—and in surprisingly tame, traditional, and fairly uncreative ways, no less.  The result is a hodgepodge of a film that on one hand, strives to be a transcendent experience, but on the other hand, holds so dearly to traditional narrative techniques that it’s difficult to see it as anything more than some kind of aimless, confused Frankenstein of a story.  Its stream of images isn’t complete, its method isn’t holistic or inclusive, and its approach to editing becomes too predictable for its own good.

A common complaint out there seems to be that Tree of Life has no plot, and is essentially a two-some hour masturbatory spiel about, essentially, loose ends or unresolved issues.  I’d agree with the second half of that, to some extent.  For the kind of “storytelling” Malick seemed to be going for here, I’d argue that Tree of Life had too much plot, too much certainty, too much concreteness—too much obviousness, even.  It’s not just about loose ends, it’s about a relatively normal family and the conflicts and problems that childrearing, death, and general dissatisfaction bring—and one filmmaker’s account of the purpose for it all.  Given how the film plays out, that can only lead me to believe that Malick is among the countless people around who are under the impression that human beings are nothing but machinations of angst who, despite retaining a capacity for understanding and what the film labels “grace,” never reach for it, and are content to remain ugly, angry, adolescent bundles of conflict and despair for most of their lives.  Try to rein in the optimism there, Malick.

But maybe I’m diving too deeply.  Maybe I’m projecting some sort of personal conflict against a mirror.  At least, that’d be the likely criticism of my argument.  Unfortunately, Tree of Life isn’t so abstract as warrant the kind of pseudo-psychological Rorschach-like speculations of audience reciprocity—unlike, say, the aforementioned Zerkalo, or Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, to say nothing of Lynch’s epic Inland Empire, each of which arguably cover similar themes or utilize similar techniques.  The degree to which Tree of Life demands personal reflection in order to function is limited in comparison specifically because of its inability to be either a functional narrative structure or an abstract flow of expressionistic images.  The halfway point it stops at may work as a stepping-stone of compromise for audiences to keep up with Malick’s vision, but it ultimately serves to sabotage the more poignant, sublime, and penetrating sense of meaning that he was trying to convey.  It’s hard to say whether this was Malick’s intention or not, given his track record.

This said, most of the performances were fantastic.  If Malick was truly trying to portray an unresponsive and angst-ridden youth in the 50s-60s, he managed to get young actor Hunter McCracken to nail it perfectly—likewise with Brad Pitt’s conflicted, hard, and vaguely regretful father figure and his counterbalance in Jessica Chastain’s “mother/wife of ineffectual grace.”  Sean Penn’s performance wasn’t great, but then, he didn’t have a terribly large role in the film, either.  In fact, I’m not even sure what he was doing there, other than to showcase some interesting architecture and some obscure dream sequences.  Maybe I just don’t “get it.”

Similarly, Malick’s grandiose cinematographic eye takes center stage, as it tends to in his works.  The special effects were absolutely mesmerizing, and anyone with an ounce of patience or an interest in CGI won’t even feel how long the somewhat infamous ‘creation’ scenes actually are.  In fact, they’re more interesting than a large part of the drama surrounding the family that forms the bulk of the story.

As I stated earlier, the film’s success banks largely on the subjective relation the audience can form with Malicks’ imagery and drama.  It’s approach to bridging that relation is uneven and inconsistent, which is the prime reason that such an approach typically fails.  In spite of his marginal failure in delivering this, the film remains a visual feast with strong cast performances, so any fans of Malick will likely be pleased.

Cold Fish

Released in 2010, only a year after Love Exposure, Sion Sono continues his provocative yet intriguing style of film making in Cold Fish. It is centered on a dysfunctional family that runs a humble tropical fish shop. The mild-mannered has remarried, which has left the rebellious daughter disappointed. One faithful night, they meet an energetic and generious man who offers his seemingly innocent help – only to involve the entire family in a seedy business; the consequences of which are ultimately tragic.

Like Sono’s other recent films, Cold Fish has its own set of allusions to Christianity and antagonists with traumatic upbringing, but he manages to bring a fresh approach to the similar elements. The father’s descent is portrayed in a very dedicated, moving manner and the result is very disturbing. The major turning point of the film will surely divide audiences, but I’m sure everyone agrees that the development up to that point is solid. The characters are well-rounded, but thematically the film is a bit of a mystery. While the main point of the film is quite obvious, the ambiguous last scene leaves me puzzled even after the second time. It’s almost as if Sono was aiming for something a lot more ambitious, but didn’t know how to express it.

Formally it’s a regular Sono film. It runs wild and it’s messy on the surface, but in the long run it works incredibly well. Sono has his own way of sneaking under the audience’s skin and, visually, Cold Fish is even less restrained than his earlier films. There’s a distinct rawness to the action, which might be a result of the lack of comic relief. While there are a few funny moments dropped in here and there, the film is quite brooding in general. A significant part of the atmosphere stems from the phenomenal acting, especially from Mitsuru Fukikoshi’s and Denden’s lead performances.

By sheer luck, Cold Fish was my opening film for the festival and I don’t think there would have been any better choice. I had seen it before so I was ready for the shock and it made it possible for me to react reasonably to whatever the other films would have in store for me.

Robot

The most expensive Indian film ever made, S. Shankar’s Robot, became a sort of a cult hit in the West when trailers and sneak peeks showed up on the Internet. Ridiculously weird but badass action, glorious special effects and random musical sequences sparked interest. I can guarantee you that Robot is loved and praised in India for a good reason: because it’s damn entertaining in its own right. The premise doesn’t sound that special: a scientist builds an impressive robot, gives it human emotions and chaos ensues. With goofy side characters, a love interest (for both the scientist and the robot),and a smug antagonist; Robot mostly treads the ground that dozens of other films have – but none of them have done it with the same vigor and creativity.

First of all, the action scenes are simply unbelievable. The huge budget is used for CGI that actually matters: the choreography is insane with the robot delivering epic moves one after another at a tireless pace. Since the film is over 3 hours long and a majority of it is action it’s obvious that it doesn’t get much better for action buffs. The final fight is long but very imaginative and never boring at all – you need to see it to understand that it’s one of the best setpieces blockbusters have offered in a decade or two. Along with the action, a great deal of the film is filled up with humor that seems silly at first, but the comic timing is simply impeccable. I found myself laughing throughout the film. Rajinikanth’s double performance (as the robot and the scientist) is simply stunning: his line delivery is always spot-on and he shows considerable skill in switching between very different characters. Moreover, he proves himself to be a good dancer in the wild musical numbers that often come out of nowhere, but fit to the overall mood of the film.

However, I do have a few quips against the film: its form is a bit all over the place. In individual scenes it’s a mess, but it somehow works out in the bigger pictures. Well, it would if the film wasn’t so long. Near the end I started to wonder just how it will last – even though the action scenes had me pumped up I was irritated by the baffling visual treatment of the story. A. R. Rahman’s s futuristic soundtrack worked very well although I can’t remember anything of it afterwards and I certainly wouldn’t listen to it on its own.

My Neighbours the Yamadas

As a fan of Studio Ghibli’s work, I always take every chance I get to see their films on the big screen. The organizers of the festival seem to be in good terms with the studio as there’s always at least one Ghibli film included in the schedule. This year there were two of them and the first one I saw was Isao Takahata’s, My Neighbours the Yamadas, one of the very few Ghibli films I had not seen before.

The film consists of unconnected sketch-like scenes of a typical Japanese family. Each character is crafted with care even though they are quite caricatureesque. For a film that lasts only for 90 minutes this sort of story structure works although I have to admit that during the last 15 minutes the movie felt a little too long. However, the climactic wedding scene was so hilarious that I managed to forget that for a while. Above all, the film leaves you in a good mood and it’s certainly a film that you can watch at any given time – it’s a film that endures repetition.

Unlike the studio’s other films, the art design isn’t quite complicated or breathtaking, but the animation is nevertheless quite fluid when it’s needed to be. The simple design works only in a film like this because it enhances the film’s ”free” and experimental atmosphere. Akiko Yano’s charming soundtrack is perfect for a film as carefree as this.

Even though I saw it in an unpleasant outdoor cinema My Neighbours the Yamadas was a refreshing experience. It might not be Ghibli at its best, but it’s very good in any case.

I Saw the Devil

Having read great things about Kim Jee-woon’s I Saw the Devil, I had high expectations for the film. It was compared to the likes of Park’s Vengeance trilogy (which I’m a fan of) although considered even more violent. Universally praised during its festival run. However, it turned to be the biggest disappointment of the festival this year. I admit that I saw it under bad circumstances: the screening started as late as 11 PM, I was a bit sleepy and my feet were tired from walking and the theater was my least favorite in Helsinki. Nevertheless, the movie was terrible no matter how I’ve looked at it in hindsight.

First of all, the film is sold as a gripping and clever revenge story. A cop’s pregnant wife is raped and murdered in a disturbing way. Cop wants revenge and sets out on a brainless and bloody journey to get his revenge. The film is torture porn from beginning to end. Whatever it tried to do with blurring the line between good and evil is utterly lost. It repeats the same dull point over and over again without much development. The gross imagery is so overdone that I had to consider walking out of the film midway through the film. In the end I didn’t, but I wouldn’t have missed much if I had done so.

Apart from a few intense action scenes I found it to be disappointing as a thriller: the cheap jumpers and overtly grotesque scenes of torture are mind-numbing after the first shock. While some of the calmer shots looked pretty the film was formally incomprehensible at times. The music was corny as hell, too.

Almost as if the film wasn’t irritating enough, the very final sequence went even beyond. A needlessly prolonged scene of senseless violence with an ending that was incredibly childish. As a result many walked out during that scene even though they knew it was the climax. It was just unbearable. Korean film makers should know that violence for violence’s sake is a terrible idea. Lee tried to lighten up the mood by bits of pitch black humor, but it was rarely funny. I can only remember laughing at one single moment which really isn’t enough in a film as grim as I Saw the Devil.

The Borrower Arrietty

It’s always fascinating to see Ghibli films not directed by Takahata or Miyazaki because they are bound to be at least a little different. Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s The Borrower Arrietty was even more so because it hugely determines the future of the studio: can it keep going on without the old masters? The answer is a resounding ”yes”.

Adapted from Mary Norton’s novels, The Borrower Arrietty is about small people, ”borrowers”, who make they living by ”borrowing” things from human beings (or human beans, as the borrowers say). The film is set into motion once the daughter of one borrower family, Arrietty, meets a young boy and puts her entire family in danger. As can be expected from a Ghibli film, the characterizations are strong and there’s a sense of adventure even though its scope is quite small. There’s also a surprisingly gloomy tone in thefilm because it gives an uncertain prediction of the future of the borrowers as a race.

Visually it’s stunning just like any other Ghibli film. The borrowers’ small size is tangible thanks to the clever framing, the animation is fluid and the background art is so rich and detailed. The film’s sound design is quite simple, but very effective.

Even though it’s clear that a lot of effort was put into the film and that the staff is the same as usual, the film leaves you wanting more. It’s less polished than Miyazaki’s masterpieces, but I’m looking forward to seeing more films directed by Yonebayashi. The Borrower Arrietty is a great debut which makes me believethat Yonebayashi can take Miyazaki’s place once he stops making films.

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame

I picked Tsui Hark’s Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame on a whim even though I hadn’t seen anything else from the director before. I was in for a pleasant – albeit confusing – surprise. Just as the first female Empress is about to advance to the throne a string of mysterious deaths occur and the nation’s best (yet distrustred) detective is asked to investigate the case. In midst of this twist-filled epic you’ll find gorgeous imagery, talking stags and great action sequences.

As the grand story goes on, more and more characters are added and at some point I found it difficult to understand the relationships between all the characters and, on one occasion, who was who. However, the film remains quite entertaining throughout the film thanks to the actors who pump life into the messy screenplay. Who needs coherence when you have an awesome scene in which Andy Lau fights against rampaging deer? And the aforementioned deer sound like sheep, for some reason.

Visually the film is a blast. Hark has spent a lot of cash on the impressive scenery shots, incredible CGI and the exquisitely stylized clothing. The film might operate like a regular blockbuster, but it has more elegance than any other big budget film I can even think of. There is one problem though: the quality is hugely inconsistent. The editing stumbles in a few key action scenes, the CGI looks awkward once in a while and I would have left a few over-stylized shots out of the film.

Even though I can equally criticize and praise the film, the superb climax redeems the film to a degree. It’s a huge and complicated setpiece and Hark pulls it off nigh perfectly – if the final conclusion wasn’t such a cop out I would be kinder to Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame.

Guilty of Romance

The film I was looking forward to the most was Sion Sono’s brand new Guilty of Romance. I had managed to avoid all the hype and spoilers about the film and knew only that it was Sono’s film and that the festival reports of it were mixed. I would watch anything Sono directed, but I was even more fascinated by how perplexing the film seemed to be even for the director’s loyal fans.

Guilty of Romance is led by three women. A housewife looking for a change to her monotonous life, A professor leading a secret life as a prostitute during the night, and a detective investigating the bizarre murder that happened after the other two characters met each other.

I saw the international cut of the film which apparently lacks quite many scenes from the detective’s storyline and her part is indeed quite useless: she’s just there stating a few facts without getting her own character development and she has no meaning for the thematics either. In other words, her role should have been completely left out of the film, but I would like to see the original cut in case it would explain why Sono included her in the film in the first place.

However, the other two characters are hugely interesting because Sono is not afraid to use them for his creepy vision. He develops an idyllic, comfortable routine with the housewife’s daily chores that start to fall apart one by one, before all hell is gradually set loose. Sono’s journey through sex, power and love is grim and rewarding, but the problem is that he doesn’t have that much to say in the end. He’s bent on repeating a few motifs and one perspective over and over again. While the first half works very well despite its length the second half is awfully long-winded. The problem reaches its own climax in the final sequence that feels almost completely redundant apart from one twist that takes the film’s themes to its natural, even if slightly unexpected, conclusion. It would have worked a lot better if the film was only about half of its current length, with a re-written and stronger ending. That way it would have the desired impact that Sono clearly intended.

Formally the first half of the film is surprisingly clean and ”warm” for Sono, but his usual trademarks begin to show up later on in the film. While it’s consistently good there’s hardly anything remarkable about it. Sono recycles music and visual motifs from his earlier films in a slightly lazy manner, but they work nevertheless. Probably the best thing about the entire film is the acting from the leading ladies: Megumi Kagurazaka’s pitch-perfect performance isn’t outshined by Makoto Togashi’s ravaging, all-over-the-place tour de force.

In overall, Guilty of Romance is a bit disappointing for me. As a fan of Sono’s work I was expecting more from it. For those not familiar with the director it might be better to steer away from the film at least until you have seen Love Exposure.

Milocrorze A Love Story

Out of all the impulsive choices I’ve regretted, this one has to be the worst. I decided to include Yoshimasa Ishibashi’s Milocrorze A Love Story in my festival schedule just because it was a Japanese film being screened at the right time. Before I move onto my actual rant, I’ll provide you with a short plot synopsis. The film is split into 3 different stories all of which revolve around weird characters and the theme of impossible love. A kid falls in love with a grown-up woman. An eccentric man gives even more eccentric love advice to troubled young men. A man falls in love with a lady whose boyfriend is a gangster and who is eventually sold as a slave and so forth.

The first story (which is told in two parts at the beginning and end of the film) is entirely narrated by a corny female voice. Moreover, the narrator is obsessed with oddities, such as the ridiculously long and uncommon names (Ovreneli Vreneligare) which are repeated over and over again. The sets try to mimic the wild anime aesthetic with painted backgrounds and awkward costumes and colorful hair. The hyperactive pacing and schmaltzy musical score make it even worse. At first it’s funny, but when you have to endure it for the first 20 minutes it’s totally unbearable. The second story is treated with even less sensibility, although it’s actually funny at times.

No matter how problematic the film was up to this point I was still somewhat satisfied with it. What really irritated me was the third story that took up most of the runtime. It might have an awesome lead actor who played one of the assassins in Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins, but he can’t do anything about the poor comedy that is thrown in pretty much every scene even though the end of the story tries to be as genuinely sentimental as possible. The story simply goes on and on, trying to portray the pain of the lead character on his long journey, but it holds no rewards for the viewer. There’s one epic fight scene shot in one take – except it’s completely in slow-motion so that the audience can laugh at the ”funny” faces they make while fighting.

I laud the director for his courage to bring his vision to the big screen without holding back at all. As an effort it is impressive, but the result is completely muddled. It’s funny at times and often quite sympathetic due to its naivety, but it’s a waste of time no matter how you approach it.

Poetry

After a string of rapidly paced films Poetry’s tranquil and slowly burning meditation on life offered a refreshing change of pace. Directed by the Korean auteur Lee Chang-dong, Poetry is about an elderly woman, named Mija, dealing with her recently diagnosed Alzheimer’s dsease, a no-good grandchild, a distant daughter, a part-time cleaning job and a passion for poetry.

The movie proceeds at the main character’s calm pace, with everything being introduced in a carefully nuanced way. Despite being slightly guilt-ridden by the conflicts Mija faces, she moves forward with confidence – all the while trying to write her own poem. I’d like to keep my take on the screenplay short so that I won’t spoil anything. Poetry’s magic is in its curiously understated yet hard-hitting writing that explores guilt, morality and the simple act of enjoying life. The characters are very down-to-earth, each one holding his or her own set of issues which they avoid in a humane way. Around the 2-hour mark I started to wonder if the understatement was a little overdone, but in the end I realized that Lee was holding it all back until the very final sequence. It will forever be etched in my memory because it’s so haunting and gorgeous on top of being fittingly ambiguous and mysterious.

Lee’s form is beautiful although it doesn’t shine in every single scene. The vivid colors provide an interesting background for the peacefully floating camera. Lee’s direction is minimal, but not in an exaggerated or lifeless manner. Every scene is full of life and optimism due to the tranquil atmosphere. Yun Jeong-hie’s lead performance is a delight. Somehow she manages to deliver a combination of both world-weariness and childlike innocence.

Without the magnificent ending Poetry would be easily forgettable, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. I can’t pinpoint its faults, but it doesn’t deliver a ”wow” moment big enough to turn itself into a modern classic.

13 Assassins

I was terribly lucky to be able to watch Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins as the last film at the festival. Its big scope and adrenaline pumping action would have made it impossible to watch any other film with a clear mind. I’m a big fan of Miike’s work and I constantly look for more of his films. Whether it’s surprisingly meditative like The Bird People in China or outrageous and provocative like Visitor Q, Miike usually delivers. He has made many great films, but I’ve been wondering when his big masterpiece would come along and when 13 Assassins was announced I felt like it was the time for Miike’s magnum opus. While 13 Assassins didn’t turn out to be his magnum opus it might be the most impressive film he has ever made.

It is obvious from the get-go that Miike is really confident with this project even though it might be the largest production he has worked with so far. The characters are introduced in a brilliant way: the richness of the first impressions save the film from becoming a confusing mess later – since some of the characters remain quite insignificant and thinly characterized to the end it’s easy to remember most of them since the build-up is so brilliant.

Having not seen the original film I don’t know how much Miike has changed the plot elements. I’m pretty sure the antagonist is all Miike: he’s both comic relief and a perfect villain at the same time. His sadism and thirst for excitement make him unforgettable. The ridiculously long battle scene is pretty much the most awesome action sequence filmed in a long time. While it sometimes may seem a bit repetitive there’s a fierce and surprisingly sentimental tone that elevates it high above other blockbusters. Miike subdues his trademark violence to great effect: 13 Assassins feels tangibly real although in a slightly exaggerated way. The very final duel is great and proves why Kaji Yokusho is by far the best actor to have worked in Japan in the past 20 years. His strong fighting spirit and utter dedication to his character are simply stunning and his line delivery is earth-shattering where it matters the most.

Even though I don’t know how well 13 Assassins fares when I’m going to see it for the second time I can confidently say that Miike has made a momentous film that ranks among the finest that he will ever make.

While the explicitly stated reason for Diouna’s silence is her complete inability to speak French, the rather large amount of the time she had been shown to have spent among the French as well as her ability to understand French suggests that there is much more to this repression than a mere, dismissible pragmatism. Indeed, for her employers, Diouna is little more than a humanoid tool, and it might be considered too uncanny for a humanoid tool to speak.   In examining the two ways in which Diouna’s employers attempt to make actual her situation as a tool—first through Madame and then through Monsieur—Sembène demonstrates his remarkable depth in revealing the nuances of neocolonialism’s evils.

1.

Where Monsieur conceals his own guilt by patronizingly positing Diouna as a kind of complex commodity, Madame viciously refuses even these allowances, opting instead to completely objectify Diouna into a means for her own, confused pleasure. Madame simply does not perceive the kind of autonomy in Diouna that would constitute her as a subject. This is, of course, a picture of the French attitude to Senegal as a whole. Indeed, Sembène was certainly one of the first to see how, even when the Senegalese had been given a true political voice—either  through their independence or through the medium of film—it was always, in one way or another, spoken for them by their former colonizers and, even worse still, often perpetuated a colonial agenda. Of course, this international affect is not merely analogous. It is very much a double articulation in that it has its roots in the same kinds of individual perceptions that reduce Diouna to a mere instrument for enjoyment. What can be a more telling example of this dangerous conception than Europe’s turn of the century “Scramble for Africa” where countless human beings were traded and partitioned like some kind of abstract, geographic game board?

Through La Noire de… Sembène protests this particularly blatant mode of objectification in two ways. First, he deprives Diouna of an empirical, politically viable voice in favor of an action-based, symbolic style of resistance. Second, he relentlessly floods the screen and soundtrack with the richness of Diouna’s inner life so that we, the audience, may never forget—indeed, almost become overwhelmed with—the truly infinite depth of subjectivity. In this way, it is all that much more devastating when we are forced to experience the haunting silence Sembène imposes upon us after Diouna’s suicide: the haunting silence of an object.

It could even be said that Diouna’s silence is, while on one hand an imposed adversity, also in itself a means of resistance by which she defiantly refuses to participate within the very discourse of her oppressors, effectively undermining the legitimacy of their language. This is most notably depicted in the scene in which Diouna purposefully over-literalizes Madame’s command to remove her heels; Diouna leaves them in the middle of the floor. The latter tactic is not unlike how anti-colonial filmmakers like Sembène himself radically refused to submit to the dominant European filmmaking discourse which always sought to interpose some aspect of creative control over its funded projects. For Sembène there was no such option as he demanded either complete power over all aspects of the production process or none at all.

2.

Again, it is much too easy to attribute all of Diouna’s inhumane treatment to the social mapping of her occupation alone or, for that matter, to even view her as a proper member of working class French. Perhaps it could even be the case that Sembène initially wants us to believe the fantasy, if only for a very brief moment and with the utmost irony. For one does find in the beginning of the film something inexpressibly more sinister about the shots of the ocean liner and Diouna’s submissive courtesy at Monsieur’s banal questions when viewing the film for a second time.

It is not the fact that Monsieur initially treats Diouna badly that is repulsive. Rather it is very much the opposite: Monsieur actually attempts to treats Diouna in an almost understanding way, and it is through his failures that his supreme hypocrisy can be witnessed. In projecting the pretense of humane treatment, Monsieur rewrites the story of La Noire de… with himself as the tragic hero: the kind man who desperate tried to save the troubled girl from herself. It is as Oscar Wilde wrote: “the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it.” In other words, the only true kindness of a slave-owner would be, of course, to renounce his own position as a slave-owner. Similarly, it is Monsieur’s tactic of pseudo-sympathetically inquiring whether or not Diouna was “ill” along with his ultimate solution of throwing her money as a cure which forms the climactic moment where Monsieur’s true malevolence is finally shown to be what it is. If he does care about Diouna, it is only as a repairman cares about a broken machine. Monsieur’s hypocrisy is precisely in pretending that he understands more of Diouna than he does. He has no right to console her as if she is human when he neither treats her or considers her human.

Diouna is no worker; she is a slave, and her sleek, white ocean liner is her slave ship. Throughout the film, Diouna exists in a kind of social netherworld, a world in which she is simultaneously present and non-represented. Madame’s manipulations of Diouna’s occupational demands—first claiming Diouna as a nanny and later as a full housemaid—place Diouna in an impossible Catch-22. Diouna is essentially forced to do whatever her French employers demand but finds herself entirely helpless within France, since she has no protective authority and cannot even contact her mother without passing her thoughts through her employers’ textual screen.

3.

Immediately, one grasps Sembène’s staging of the mask motif and its parallel lives as metonymous for the internal dichotomies of Senegal itself. Tradition, Sembène says, is less important than its presentation: its particular social use. And, as the film shows us, an artifact can find its employment in liberation In this way, Diouna herself can be seen as both the greatest victim of neocolonialism and neocolonialism’s most ineradicable resource.

Now, of course it would be the case that neocolonialism should find its assets through some form of victimization—this is the entire logic of colonization in the first place—but Sembène clearly recognizes that there is much more at work here than can be explain by merely casting the Europeans as the ultimate villains. In fact, it is almost demeaning to assume that a post-colonial Senegal could be so utterly incapable of any autonomous existence as to appear to seamlessly continue colonial rule by their bidding alone. Rather, Sembène is critiquing what he understand to be the fault of the Senegalese themselves.

This fault can be exactly symbolized by Diouna’s purchase of the small boy’s mask for the sole purpose of impressing her European employers. It is precisely at this point that the mask begins its double duty as a Marxian character mask. The same movement holds for the black diplomat and policeman in Sembène’s Borom Sarret and how easily they were able to conform to the very same roles, effectively redressing themselves as their former oppressors. These are the native Senegalese who, despite their newfound opportunity to make a life free from Europe, inexplicably gravitate towards it with an unsettling passion. Do not forget that it was Diouna who first trod on the independence memorial; in essence, trodding on her very own independence.

If this is true, then the small boy is none other than a young, newly-independent Senegal just trying to make its way in the world; just toying with the idea of revitalizing a  lost tradition only to find this tradition commoditized and resold back to those from whom it has just achieved independence.

The tragic tale that Sembène tells is how these Europeanized blacks, who seek to make a name for themselves with their prior oppressors, are themselves oppressed as if they were no different than if they did not adopt European customs. Indeed, this speaks to both the great evil of colonization and the great shame of these blacks who continue the oppression of their own people. In a sense, Monsieur  may have been right in phrasing Diouna’s condition as an “illness”, for Europeanized blacks are, according to Sembène, neocolonialism’s greatest symptom. And like Diouna, they always realize their mistake too late at which point the form of their rebellion takes on a necessarily violent form. Where the small boy need only to dawn the already-present pride of his people to drive out the invaders, Diouna realized that she was the one who needed to leave. Where the small boy only needed to follow the invader—scaring him away solely with a rarefied image of his people—Diouna had to resort to violence. If Frantz Fanon was right about violence being an act of rebirth, then we can clearly the necessity of Diouna’s action, and whether it was out of shame of return or an attempt to protest the forces that subjugated her ultimately does not matter.

Sembène ends his film with an image of a triumphant Senegal, but we cannot ignore the tears in the boy’s eyes as he removes the mask.

2011, 110 minutes, Action, U.S.; Directed by Zack Snyder; Produced by Deborah Snyder, Zack Snyder; Legendary Pictures, Cruel and Unusual Films; Dist. by Warner Brothers

Usually good and solid films, even ones that are considered “intelligent” or “intellectual” in nature, are presented in the fashion that even someone with the I. Q. level of a third grader can understand what’s going on. I’m not discussing a third grader’s level of experience, as there are a lot of situations presented in some films that a third grader would have never had the opportunity to know about. But a third grader could understand the way it’s being presented.

For example, if a film shows a shot of the outside of a large mansion, then cuts to another shot of a large group of people sitting at a long dinner table, it’s suggested that the large group of people sitting at the table are also inside of the large mansion. This technique has become a common tongue in the language of film is used naturally all of the time in modern filmmaking to present all sorts of situation in a fashion where everyone would be able to understand what’s going on.

For better or for worse, Zack Snyder attempts to push those boundaries of editorial story-telling in his film Sucker Punch, a film about a girl trying to escape from the confines of a mental institute where other perfectly sane girls are commonly given in the care of and lobotomized in order keep them out of the way of those who don’t mean well in society.

The film starts with an odd visual cue. It opens up with the opening studio logos printed on two stage curtains lifting up to reveal a 20-year-old platinum blonde girl sitting on her bed. One would naturally assume that this means what follows is merely a stage production and not the actual film. But seeing as how when the girl runs off stage she only seems to go into the rest of the set, I could only assume that this is actually the rest of the film, and that the curtains were simply a clever way to bring the audience into the film. (Hey, if the film wants to break the fourth wall in the first 30 seconds, that’s fine with me.)

The movie goes on to tell the story of how the girl’s mother was killed by the step-father in order to get the inheritance. But when the two daughters are given the inheritance instead, the step-father proceeds to kill off the younger brunette girl. The older blonde sister is able to point a gun at the him in time for the police to come in and completely misread the situation. The girl is placed in a mental institute for going mad and killing her younger sister and attempting to kill the step-father. (A set-up typical for Hitchcock’s beginning films, but is actually a step up from Snyder’s earlier film 300.)

Babydoll (Emily Browning, center left) and the theater director Madame Vera Gorski (Carla Gugino, center right) in the gentleman's club world.

From here the story gets complicated. There’s a small stage theater that’s in the institute that the staff psychiatrist believes would help the girls learn to cope with society. As the blonde girl goes in for her lobotomy the film seems to jump to an alternate reality starting from the institute’s stage, where the butler is a catholic priest, the head of the institute is a theater producer, the psychiatrist is a theater director, the blonde girl is named “Babydoll”, and the girls seem to be in this strange gentleman’s club concentration camp. At least, a gentleman’s club concentration camp is what it seems to be. The film really never actually explains what this place is in the alternate reality, except that guys with money like to come in and watch the women dance, and if the girls try to escape they’re shot on site. It’s not necessarily a sex slave business, as most of the clients are just there to look. It just seems like a gentleman’s club concentration camp.

The film makes it easy for the viewer to pick up that this alternate reality is really the dramatized thought process of the blonde girl just before her lobotomy, as if thinking in this fashion was supposed to help her cope with what she was about to do, and this is how most of the film is presented. It is now this Babydoll’s goal to escape from this gentleman’s club concentration camp before she’s picked up by a rich client as a sex slave. This is the only sex slave trade this place seems to make, as the rest of all just implied dancing.

It’s implied that Babydoll shows extreme talent in her dance, but this is where the film tries to get even more complicated. Every time Babydoll dances, another alternate reality is shown where Babydoll is fighting various battles and monsters. This is suggested by the filmmakers to be the representation of how Babydoll is feeling as she dances. Babydoll devises a plan with the other women in the Nazi gentleman’s club to steal small objects as she dances so they could escape before she’s sold off as a sex slave.

To be fair, these action scenes the film uses to interpret the dances are amazing. I still don’t consider Zack Snyder to be a “visionary” in the slightest, as he’s only been using the same “bullet-time” cinematic techniques introduced in the late 90′s in films like Lost in Space and The Matrix in extremely gaudy ways that only succeeded to confuse or bore the viewer in his earlier works like 300. In Sucker Punch, Snyder seems to finally harness this technique as he dazzles the viewer with the pacing of the cinematography and also manages to keep the viewer oriented in the battle scenes themselves.

But, also to be fair, I really doubt this is what goes in the head of many women as they dance. In fact, it seems more like what the mind of a 18 – 35 year old male imagines when he’s forced by his mother, girlfriend, or wife to sit through “The Nutcracker” every year. (Coincidentally, the film was marketed mainly to males 18 – 35 years of age.) The action scenes themselves only serve to objectivize the women as sexy action figures in a rather male-oriented fashion and don’t do well to symbolize Babydoll’s desire to run away from being sexually objectified by other men. The essence of these action scenes would actually work better as the imagination of the male clients as they watch Babydoll dance, as it fits perfectly with most men’s idolization of women. But instead the filmmaker tries to force these concepts down the mind of Babydoll simply because she’s supposed to be the film’s protagonist.

And while Zack Snyder managed to use his “bullet-time” fetish in the action scenes in a way that actually supplements the film rather than distracts from it, the cinematography depicting the gentleman’s club is oddly disorienting, despite the cinematography being relatively simple compared to the “bullet-time” techniques in the action scenes. Even though the camera is right there next to the characters during a scene where the angry theater producer is pointing a gun at the women plotting to escape, it’s nearly impossible to discern who he has or hasn’t shot and whether or not they’re still alive afterward.

At the end of the film, the story-telling returns to the original reality involving the mental institute introduced at the beginning of the movie to see how or if the blonde girl achieved her goals. I’ll admit, this is one of those movies where its ending should probably be left open to artistically existential interpretation. The stage curtains don’t fall as they opened in the beginning of the film, probably because the credits usually break the fourth wall enough to let the audience know that the movie is over.

I was oddly the most emotionally affected by the reality that open and closed the film, even though it would be a stretch to suggest that it was lingered upon for even 20 minutes. The rest of the movie is simply a confusing mess of alternate realities, one of which isn’t explored to its fullest, and the other simply appears to be a dazzling array of Japanese animation inspired live-action films the director would rather be making. As a result, most of the film loses its sense of focus within terms of the story, as the story itself keeps being seen through a different interpretation about every 15 minutes.

Sucker Punch would have done better to pick a story and a universe, and stick with it. Trying to thread these dramatic and action realities with a half-baked intermediate involving an odd gentleman’s club that’s never completely realized really doesn’t do anything to make the film appear more intelligent. And if the filmmakers still wanted to thread the mental institute with the action universes, the intermediate universe could have easily been cut out in favor of developing both worlds, rather than interrupting both worlds that desperately needed development with an intermediate world that doesn’t even begin to make sense. I wouldn’t consider this such a big deal, except it takes up most of the movie, and the real head of the mental institute looks like he might be a much more interesting character than what he was painted to be as the theater producer.

A scene from "Sucker Punch" depicts a WWII bomber that seems to come from "Flyboys" attacking a set that seems to come from "Return of the King" in one of the film's many action universes.

2009, 111 minutes, Comedy, U.S.; Directed by Drew Barrymore; Produced by Barry Mendel, Drew Barrymore; Fox Searchlight, Mandate Pictures, Vincent Pictures, Flower Films, Rye Road

I’m not sure if this is a weakness I’m finally revealing to everyone who might read my reviews. This might be the one thing I take interest in that would make you roll your eyes and not take any of my opinions seriously. (Like my use of color wheels in that ginormous 2.22 Review & Analysis wouldn’t have done that to a few of you guys already.) Though seriously, this might prove to be a weakness in any film in which this element is used. And that element is, of course, the use of Ellen Page.

Her “normal” and even “alternative” look appears to be a very natural beauty, something that I miss in light of the slew of Victoria’s Secret lingerie models that have begun to plague our screens.  (Even though we all know that Ellen Page is like every other performer in that she requires the customary touch-up for the camera, and is starting to be selected by studios to attract the “alternative” crowd half of the time anyway.) And her performances aren’t bad, either. In much of what I’ve seen her in, she has the same basic approach to her work. She usually plays whatever character in a somewhat timid fashion, which kinda figures since most of the cast in whatever movie she’s in towers over her.  It would be nice to see her break out into something more tough and rebellious, but she doesn’t appear fake or shallow in her roles as timid people either. So I can’t complain. I’m not saying she’s the Actress Goddess Extraordinaire, but she can hold her own in a film and even add to it quite often.

In Whip It, the low-budget Fox Searchlight “indy” film directed by first-time director Drew Barrymore, this talent seems rather typecasted into a role that the viewer is assumed to simply fall for anyway. And let’s face it, it’s hard not to fall for a lead when she looks like a wet puppy who wants to come in from the rain. But aside from the “puppy eyes”, this film only has some minor quirky charms to offer.

The film follows a young girl named Bliss Cavendar, who’s immediately depicted at failing at meeting her mother’s expectations in a local Texas beauty pageant. The manner in which Bliss descends from glory seems to be trying to play for laughs, but anyone listening to the dialogue between Bliss and her best friend Pash (played by Alia Shawkat) is already several steps ahead of the film’s punchline. This odd, pseudo-comedic form of presenting the story’s development really doesn’t to much favors to the film.

While shopping at a store that Bliss’ mother (played by Marcia Gay Harden) finds insulting, Bliss comes across for fliers to to a skating derby. She sneaks one into her bag so as not to alert her mother and exits the store. While sneaking out to her first derby, again with her friend Pash, she develops a strong liking to the sport of girl’s skating derby and, for some reason, becomes a fan of a member of the loosing team, Maggie “Mayhem” (Kristen Wiig) from the “Hurl Scouts”,  and is influenced by her to join the team. The minimum age is 21, and 17-year-old Bliss lies about her age in order to come to team practice.

Pash (Alia Shawkat, left) helps Bliss (Ellen Page, right) out with her training during the montage.

The film goes on for a good stretch of time without any negative consequences to any of this. In fact, most of the film goes on without obstacles or goals of any kind. The Hurl Scouts team themselves don’t mind loosing, and much of their practices end in just playful banter with the coach desperately trying to still care about the situation. That’s right. The coach’s efforts don’t appear to be a result of determination or anything like that, but merely an effort to still care about something his team isn’t interested in. While this can be seen as the coach himself loosing interest, it again doesn’t do any favors to the story’s progression, and doesn’t merit his sudden change at the end of the film. The off-beat comedy explored through this situation results in very forgettable moments throughout the film. The only memorable moment from the coach is when the he uses one of his own plays against his own team, making them realize the importance of aiming to win, and mainly because he did this because he was finally really pissed at them.

There isn’t any negative consequences to Bliss lying to her parents either until over an hour into the movie, and the methods Bliss goes about covering her tracks are non-existent in the film’s story-telling. Through a series of only slightly unfortunate events, Bliss is found out by her parents and is pressured to reveal to the team her actual age. The space between the start of the film and the long-awaited conflict is full of a list of archetypal requirements for any “alternative” coming-of-age story, a romantic relationship with an indy-band singer that is inevitably broken apart, the best friend hated the lead character, the child running away from home only to have her former idol look after her and give her sound advice, and then finally apologizing to her parents. (That last archetype is, admittedly, less of an archetype since it was often over-looked by many Disney films from the 1980′s onward.)

The end of the film tries to give a different perspective on the team revisiting a recurring situation from a different point of view, but like most of its comedy, the viewer always seems to be a couple of steps ahead of the film’s conclusion.

But despite the film’s many short-comings,  I was really able to get into the somewhat action-oriented pacing of the games themselves. I mean, it’s girls on roller-skates beating the snot out of each-other, and one of them is played by Ellen Page. It’s pretty hard to go wrong with such a premise. And the way it’s portrayed makes it worth sitting through the awkward comedy to get there and, as a result, one finally does start to care about the Hurl Scouts once they finally get their head into the games. It just take a while to get there.  And the fact that Jimmy Fallon plays the live sports announcer does finally bring some much-needed proper handling of the film’s off-color comedy. And while much of the film lacks obstacles needed to progress characters, it does have some charming moments in the film that do make one smile occasionally.

I guess the short of it is that Whip It, while it does have its charm, has a hard time finding and emphasizing upon that charm, and abandons the concept of obstacles until after is awkwardly trudges through its charm for a solid hour. The roller-skate derby games make this film worth a sit through, though, as the cinematography places the viewer right there with the roller-skaters getting hit in the face and shoved off the track.

Bliss races in her roller derby game. The cinematography really puts the viewer there in the race with the characters.

"I just woke up from the strangest movie..." said Gillian Chung, as she grasped her neck.

Back when Forced Perspective was still in its teething phase, I gave Dante Lam’s 2003 film The Twins Effect a glowing recommendation – albeit, a recommendation as a guilty pleasure. In hindsight, I still feel Lam’s film is more of a “silly” film than a “bad” film for many of the same reasons I’d stated earlier: despite the subpar plot and acting, it’s technically well-crafted and doesn’t take itself too seriously. I’d even forgotten to mention how entertaining Anthony Wong was.  The film was a financial success as well, so it is no surprise that less than a year later Emperor Motion Pictures sprung forth Twins Effect II, a sequel-in-name-only directed by Corey Yuen and Patrick Leung. Like the original, it combines a carefree silliness with a sense of technical skill. The big difference between the two films is that Twins Effect II genuinely sucks.

TE2 takes place in the past (ooh! Historical fiction!), a time when women ruled the world and men were their slaves. Taller Twin Charlene Choi plays a slave trader, and the opening scene is her auctioning off a slave. She’s improved much as an actress from the first film, but I have no clue what her character is named. Keep in mind that I just finished watching this less than an hour ago. I barely remember any of the characters’ names, for that matter, and for the sake of giving you the true movie experience, I will only refer to the characters by their respective actors’ names unless I actually do remember the character’s name. Shorter Twin Gillian Chung comes by a minute later and ruins the party (not sure how), and before we know it, the Twins are fighting!

Yes! This is what I watched this movie for! Except this fight scene kind of sucks. The choreography is good enough (I mean, this film was co-directed by Corey Yuen, why wouldn’t it be?), but there is way too much slow motion, and after a while the wirework and CG becomes grating. At some point I swear that there was a shot of Gillian Chung flying in a circle obviously superimposed over a shot of lava or something. This film managed to do something I previously thought impossible: I was bored during a one-on-one fight scene involving the Twins.

The plot here is much more difficult to follow than the original. There’s some sort of sacred slab of rock that has a tile-based puzzle embedded in it which leads to the palace of the evil empress (Qu Ying). The evil empress is married to Daniel Wu, who I do know actually had a name in this film but I don’t remember what it was. The sacred slab is obtained by Edison “Yo Dawg” Chen, who seems to be working for Donnie Yen, who is named, I kid you not, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Somehow the slab ends up in the hands of Jaycee Fong (Jackie Chan’s untalented son) and Wilson Chen. Jaycee’s character is named “Charcoal Head,” which is something I’m somewhat glad I remembered, because it’s an awful name. I’m pretty sure that was the point in the first place, but it’s still awful. So eventually Charcoal Head falls in love with Gillian Chung and Wilson Chen falls for Charlene Choi.

I’m going to stop trying to describe the plot right there because most of it is a mishmash of completely arbitrary scenes that somehow manage to move the plot forward while seeming like they came out of nowhere at the same time. My words really cannot do this attribute of the film justice. It’s not that the movie is simply being unpredictable, because we know where this is eventually going to end up, but that it’s getting there in a completely scatter-shot fashion. It really needs to be seen to be believed. If you are interested in neither Hong Kong cinema nor the Twins you probably won’t see it and your life is probably better than mine for it.

Twins Effect II is a bad film. It is not a painful film to sit through, however, and can be mildly enjoyable to at times. Still, it’s nowhere near enjoyable enough to truly earn the distinction of being a “guilty pleasure.” Fan Bing Bing and Jackie Chan pop up in there somewhere. That may seem like an unrelated thought after the previous sentence, but Twins Effect II is all about strings of unrelated thoughts that somehow manage to lump themselves into a cheesy Lunar New Year film that is somewhat comprehensible. Somewhat.

Hikari Mitsushima is one hell of an actress. I haven’t looked too much into her past, but from what I gather she is a gravure idol-turned-actress, who started out with small bit parts in feature films, notably the live-action Death Note series. I have not seen these films, so this means next to nothing to me. She first really made waves in circles of Japanese Cinema fans in Shion Sono’s masterpiece, Love Exposure, as the protagonist’s obsessive love interest, who put him through hell. Though she was one of the major characters in Love Exposure, it is in Yûya Ishii’s Sawako Decides which she truly shines. After having only seen two of her films, she has already put herself in contention to be one of my favorite young actresses working today.

I normally don’t focus so much on acting while reviewing films, mind you, but Mitsushima’s performance is perhaps the foremost factor in elevating Sawako Decides from an above-average drama to a very good and memorable film. She is the eponymous Sawako, a timid young woman drifting through life in her fifth year, fifth job, and fifth boyfriend in Tokyo. She is defined primarily by her overwhelmingly defeatist attitude. Early in the film, two of her coworkers discuss a television program they had watched on global warming, describing how the world is headed for a catastrophe in fifty years. Sawako’s response? “Can’t help it.” They begin to ask her about her life with her divorcée boyfriend Kenichi (Masashi Endo) and his daughter Kayako (Kira Aihara). Sawako admits to being somewhat irritated with her boyfriend, who seems to be in a bit of ignorant bliss himself, and the daughter doesn’t seem to very fond of her either. Her coworkers encourage her to break up with him. Sawako’s response? “Can’t help it.”

As you can tell, “can’t help it” is her general catchphrase to describe pretty much everything. Sawako doesn’t think highly of herself.  She describes herself as “lower-middle,” and is complacent to settle for what she has because she feels it’s all she deserves. The plot is set in motion when her uncle Nobuo (Ryo Iwamatsu) informs her that her father Tadao (Kotaro Shiga), whom she hasn’t seen in five years, is terminally ill. She is reluctant to leave, but after Kenichi quits his job (or is rumored to be fired thanks to designing an unpopular children’s toy), he is able to talk her into moving back to her home to see her dying father and to raise Kayoko in “the wilderness.” Said “wilderness” is eco-friendly, you see. He also desires to help resuscitate Sawako’s father’s failing business.

This plot is all peripheral, you see. The story is not about the revival of a business, or the mourning of an ill father, but is about Sawako’s attitude about life.  She does not respect herself, and in turn is not well respected by others. Sawako’s struggle is learning to take grasp of her own defeatist tendencies.

Director Ishii is well respected in Japan for his “existential comedies,” as the press has labeled his films. In particular, Sawako Decides reminds me of the works of Bong Joon-Ho, one of my favorite currently working directors, in its mood and general handling of the characters. Unlike Bong, I don’t know if I see a future Official Master of Cinema in Ishii, but I do look forward to seeing more of his films. What separates the two is Bong’s stylistic flair, which judging by this film is something that Ishii hasn’t fully developed yet. The style isn’t particularly plain, but it isn’t anything to write about, either.

Thankfully, Hikari Mitsushima steps up to bat in making Sawako Decides more than a merely worthwhile film. So pleased was Ishii with her performance that he married her, and who could blame him? Hopefully this means that we’ll see more of her in his future films.

Update: After extra thought, I decided to bump the film up to 4.5. I also would like to say that I simply did not give enough credit to the film’s script.

David Lynch’s Wild at Heart is the slowest, cruelest kind of train wreck. It runs off the rails and plunges through a carnival freak show, throwing up bits of colorful fabric, garish lights and the viscera of the lamentably and comically deformed, before grinding to a stuttering halt in a near-by ravine, saturated with the stench of human offal and the screams of the dying. Calling the film excessive, or indulgent, is a grotesque understatement. This is, without a doubt, Lynch at his most tonally schizophrenic, as even Inland Empire kept up a mostly persistent mood of dread throughout its enigmatic overkill (random dance numbers aside). Thoroughly obscene and laughably revolting, the film constantly whips through a gamut of tones, from forced romantic tripe, to hokey, anorexic noir, to Dadaist nausea. Then it has the balls to go back and do it again, and again. All the while, it’s punctuated with bizarre non-sequiturs that give the audience nothing, but maybe the occasional aching jaw, or bleeding scalp. This isn’t just a train wreck, it’s vomit that coalesced into a train wreck! It is a savage, unpleasant, and overdone torrent of acidic, steel nastiness, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it stripped the enamel off Mr. Lynch’s teeth on the way out, and left nothing but scorched nerves.

I loved practically every second of it.

While on a first glance, it might look Mr. Lynch lost what little semblance of sanity that he might have otherwise possessed, there’s a clear method to his madness. He is meticulous in his blurring of tones and emotions. With the film’s constant tangents and juxtapositions, it would have been a bloated disaster if in the hands of a lesser artist. But because of Lynch’s sharp filmmaking, it is instead one of the most beautifully over-the-top black comedies ever made. Fast and full of surprises, the film is so wonderfully caricatured, that through most of the first and second acts, I never had enough time for my smile to slink away, without it being bitch-slapped back into place.

The film opens with Sailor Ripley (played with suave detachment by Nicolas Cage) walking with this sweetheart, Lula Pace Fortune (Laura Dern) through the grand halls of the Cape Fear. Lula’s Mother, Marietta Fortune (played by Dern’s real life mother, Dianne Lad) slinks up behind a pillar with her cocktail, while Sailor is accosted by a man with a knife. In the first of many scenes so violent, they would make Alex DeLarge blush, Sailor Ripley bashes his assailant’s head into a wooden banister, until his white matter is visible, as sweet Lula screams in horror. Skipping ahead a few months, Sailor is released from prison, for manslaughter, and Lula, overjoyed to see him, hands him his trademark snakeskin jacket (the symbol of his “individuality and a belief in personal freedom”.) After beating up a guy in a club, and crooning an Elvis number, Sailor and Lula decide to break parole, and embark on a cross-country odyssey, to California.

Of course, this angers Lula’s overbearing mother, so she calls on both the sympathetic detective, Johnny Farragut (Henry Dean Stanton) and the brutally cool hit man Marcellus Santos (J. E. Freeman), to track down Lula, and murder Sailor. She reveals herself more than a bit mentally unstable, as she’s romantically involved with both men, and somehow expects to avoid anything terrible coming out of this wacky plan of hers.

Welcome to Cougar Town. Population: Crazy

The first two thirds are as delightful as they are deranged. Scenes of Sailor and Lula car-dancing on the open road are intercut with a descent into temporary insanity that paints Marietta as a kind of comically inept Lady Macbeth. For awhile, everything seems like such an anomaly for Lynch, as most of the film lacks the elegant visual lyricism as his more surreal pictures. But the light does break through in several scenes, illuminating familiar stylistic flourishes. (An eerie phone call chain beautifully foreshadows a similar scene in Mulholland Dr.) Cage and Dern have real chemistry, despite playing the caricatured nature of their performances. Getting past the frank sex talk, the scenes of Sailor and Lula in bed together are beautiful, crystalline icebergs of intimacy in a sea of wild detachment. Lynch stylishly intercuts these scenes with disturbing flashbacks, revealing that they’re both irrevocably wounded, and have hidden depths that they would prefer not to excavate.

I'd excavate those depths any day.

The films biggest flaw, though, is potentially it’s third act. My ambivalence to this last section deals mostly with the degree of tonal isolation it has from the first two thirds of the film. The wacky misadventures of Marietta and her hit man lover suddenly disappear for about a half-hour, and the realities of life seem to come crashing down on Sailor and Lula, threatening to asphyxiate their idealistic, rebellious nature.

On one hand, the final section is quite effective, both viscerally and emotionally. Without the quiet slide into bleak misanthropy, the sentimental ending wouldn’t be anywhere near as beautiful, or as effective. Ex-Marine Bobby Peru (played with maniacal glee by Willem Defoe) is a wonderful antagonist, simply because he’s so comically vulgar, you need to laugh as a reflex. (His slicked back hair, pencil mustache and tiny yellow teeth make him look like a fetal, redneck clone of John Waters.) Deserving of mention is a scene so tasteless, that it fits the character perfectly. I won’t spoil any specifics, but an interaction between Peru and Lula is simply painful to watch, and makes Hitchcock’s acts of simulated misogyny look feminist by comparison.

On the other hand, after the roller-coaster of the first two parts, this last part is just nowhere near as fun. In fact, part of it feels like we’ve suddenly switched reels, and are watching a different film. Bobby Peru works as a villain, but his presence renders the role of Marcellus Santos almost pointless. In fact, the disconnect of the third act’s resolution from the first act’s set-up, almost renders most of the story as extraneous. It doesn’t even feel like the plot actually begins until an hour in. In that regard, what does the continued presence of Marietta and her two lovers have to do with anything? They certainly don’t get anyone closer to Sailor and Lula. If that stuff wasn’t so fun by itself, the film would be a plodding disaster.

But getting back to my ambivalence, the cons I just listed seem to have even more pros attached to them. Lynch has always been far more concerned with atmosphere than story, and he constantly sacrifices plot for the exploration of characters and ideas. Even if those sections meander into strange places, we do learn a lot about our star-crossed protagonists. Still, some tangents are less fruitful than others. What does the story about Lula’s insane cousin Dell have to do with anything, other than making the audience uncomfortable? Is it an ill omen, like when Sailor and Lula come across a car crash on a nocturnal highway? Or is it just another of the film’s many sick jokes?

All in all, the closest film of Lynch’s that Wild at Heart compares to, is Blue Velvet. That is, if Blue Velvet ate a bunch of tacos, chugged a gallon of peyote, and then went to go vomit in the desert for a few days. As much as I like Blue Velvet, it never comes together as a satisfying whole, and relies on several brilliant moments to carry the film. This is primarily because it fluctuates between grim scenes of exploitative sexuality, and saccharine fifties nostalgia. Wild at Heart, operates on a similar dichotomy, only far more fractured, and less contained. It is a film that has been, and will continue to be savagely beaten in text, just as often as furiously fellated. The only thing can be agreed upon by all parties, is that the film provokes reactions. Whether you think the provocative nature is closer to a shameless attention whore, or to a calculated satirist, is really something you’ll have to decide for yourself.

Seriously, this came out of somebody's vagina. It's enough to turn me off of women forever.

When Gil Stratton’s character “Cookie” announces in the voiceover that opens Stalag 17 that “it always make me sore when I see those war pictures — all about flying leather-necks and submarine patrols and frogmen and guerillas in the Philippines… what gets me is that there never was a movie about P.O.W.s” he wouldn’t have been accurate, even in 1944 when the film was set; Renoir’s The Grand Illusion was released in 1938, but it’s French. What’s really happening there is Billy Wilder is already winking at the audience to think about what POW films have been made, and I’m guessing he was betting that his audience hadn’t seen The Grand Illusion, or British productions like 1947s The Captive Heart or 1950s The Wooden Horse.

Even taking into consideration those predecessors, the POW film was still a relatively untouched cinematic genre, and I can only imagine that an artist like Wilder approached it with a child-like “what can I do with this new toy?” glee. Today, almost 60 years later, even after landmark films in the sub-genre such as Bridge on the River Kwai and The Great Escape, Stalag 17 still feels like an utterly fresh and unique entry. Wilder was never one to play anything straight, and he’s probably one of the few that would have seen the broad comedic possibilities inherent in a film about German prison camps. But what’s remarkable about the film is its mix of comedy and drama, broadness and specificity, expansiveness and intimacy. It’s a balancing act that Wilder attempts (sometimes struggles, sometimes succeeds, sometimes fails) across every single element.

The film opens with one of the failed escape attempts by the American members of the titular prison camp, one that was taken from real life. After the failure, the group becomes suspicious that a spy from inside had told the Germans about their plans, despite how careful they were. The immediate suspect is Sefton (William Holden), who has taken to treating his imprisonment like a free market, using cigarettes as currency to trade for luxuries with the guards. This doesn’t sit well with Price (Peter Graves), Hoffy (Richard Erdman), Duke (Neville Brand), and others who begin singling him out. After a Lieutenant Dunbar (Don Taylor) is introduced to the camp and later tried for sabotage, the group has had enough of Sefton’s snitching, leaving it all up to him to hunt down the real culprit.

While the above is the overarching drama that holds the core of the film together, the real meat is in the comedy supplied by Robert Strauss (who was nominated for best supporting actor) as Animal and Harvey Lembeck as Harry Shapiro. Both had been integral parts of the original Broadway production of the film, and they make as golden a couple on-screen as off. Yet their presence mixes with the drama as if two of the Three Stooges had wandered onto the set of an otherwise straightforward drama. While Wilder never seems entirely sure how to mix them into the dramatic storyline, he nonetheless has tremendous fun utilizing their effervescent comedic talents. Much the same could be said for Otto Preminger’s iconically German Von Scherbach, the commander of Stalag 17, and Sig Ruman’s hilarious Sergeant Schulz, the “warden”, both of which steal every scene they’re in.

While Strauss and Wilder lost their Oscars to others that year, Holden did win for his performance. There are at least two ironies to this, the first is that it wasn’t a role he liked (he found Sefton thoroughly unsympathetic), the second is that many felt it was a recompense on the part of the Academy for not giving it to him for the previous year’s Sunset Boulevard. Whatever the case, he still turns in a stellar and nuanced performance. Of all the characters, he seems the most 3-dimensional and believable, walking the line between selfish, opportunistic scumbag, and a sly, intelligent survivor. The latter may be an appropriate epithet for Holden himself: Gil Stratton tells a story on the DVD of Holden asking Wilder what lens he was using to shoot a scene. When Gil asked him why it mattered, Holden replied that Wilder’s choice of a 135mm meant the shot would be in nice and tight, so he should only act with his eyes.

Holden may have disliked the role, but Wilder had enough sympathy for both of them. It’s a common point that Wilder always felt like a Hollywood outsider, and that likely engendered his sympathy for cinematic outsiders and anti-heroes. This is all the more evident in light of one of the key changes made between play and film; in the former, Animal played the role of comic relief as well as spy, while in the film Wilder splits him into two characters, with the spy going to someone else. It’s probably no accident that Wilder allocated the spy-role to the most archetypal “good guy American hero” in a cast full of them, sending the perceptive and sardonic message that those whom we trust, allowing to destroy us from the inside out, are infinitely more dangerous than the obvious outsiders.

But of all Wilder’s post-50s films, Stalag 17 is the least perfect. Surprisingly, its flaws come more in the writing than in the direction. Perhaps it begins with the voiceover, a favorite device of Wilder’s that he used to perfection in films like Sunset Boulevard and Double Indemnity, but one that never integrates well in Stalag 17. The problem is that the narrator, Cookie, is little more than a passive observer in the film to the point he’s never able to make an urgent connection with the audience. Equally, Wilder seems to abandon it only to bring it back at awkward moments, allowing it to become a crutch he didn’t even need. There are also some pacing problems, primarily centered on the early reveal of the spy and the sloppy resolution of Sefton’s discovering him to the other prisoners. In a way, the reveal takes the wind out of the drama’s sails and it’s never quite able to recover.

But if Stalag 17 isn’t one of Wilder’s finest literary achievements, it is one of his finest pieces of direction. Right from the portentously fierce opening shot of the barbed wire gates (from a low angle strangely similar to a shot from Kubrick’s Paths of Glory), to the stunning an expansive establishing shot of the compound, Wilder directs with a forceful and incisive confidence that would’ve made Howard Hawks jealous. It’s also a treasure trove of the lost art of group compositions, with Wilder exploiting deep-focus foreground, mid-ground, and background action that aids in subtly developing the characters. Right from the get-go he shoots Sefton off-center, typically framed within frames, segregated from the rest of the group. Elsewhere there are some nuanced fades and dissolves that use elements like the hanging light bulb, which becomes a symbol of the spy who uses it to communicate to the Germans, and a horseshoe stake (paired with a telling line of dialogue) to visually single out who the real spy is.

Whatever its strengths and flaws, like the best of Wilder, Stalag 17 finds its personality in the small moments, moments that seem like direct extensions of Wilder’s own idiosyncrasies. One such scene involves Preminger’s Von Scherbach having his assistant put on boots just so he can call Berlin while being able to clap his boot heels together. The other moment involves the letters-from-home sequence. Particularly touching is the moment where the gregarious Animal reads a letter to Joey, the mute who went crazy after watching his friends get killed. He attempts to cheer him up by noting that when they write back they’ll say that Joey wants to become a musician, since he loves playing on his homemade ocarina. It’s a moment of rare pathos in the film, and a potent reminder that behind all of the fiction and comedy was the sad truth that countless men and women suffered through the German prison camps, many receiving much worse treatment than the Americans like those in this film.

It was probably inevitable that a film like Ajami would come along—an Israeli/Palestinian collaboration, directed by a Christian Israeli Arab (Scandar Copti) and a Jewish Israeli (Yaron Shani) about a group of Christians and Muslims in a small Arab neighborhood, the titular Ajami, in one of the oldest port cities in the world, Tel Aviv-Jaffa. Everything in the film itself, from the setting and characters to the plot, to all of the meta-aspects including the directors and production, feels like the cinematic culmination of the conflict that’s been raging in that part of the world for so long. It produces a melting pot of socio-cultural conflict that, in true artistic fashion, manages to boil everything down to the all-too-human people caught up in it all.

The story is as complex as the conflict itself. Following in the tradition of films like Rossellini’s Paisan or, more recently, films like Garrone’s Gomorrah, Ajami tells give distinct storylines. Unlike in those films, however, here they’re intricately connected, though told in a non-linear fashion. It begins when Nasri’s (Fouad Habesh) neighbor is killed in a drive-by, which is the consequence of his uncle shooting and killing a member of a powerful crime family. A judge settles the dispute by declaring that Nasri’s poor family must pay tens-of-thousands of dollars, that they don’t have, to make things right. This dilemma provokes the older son, Omar (Shahir Kabaha), to begin selling drugs.

Likewise, Malek is a young man working with Omar for Abu Elias in a restaurant who needs money to pay for his mother’s cancer surgery. Omar also happens to be in love with Abu Elias’ daughter, Hadir (Ranin Karim) which causes a problem considering Elias’ family is Christian and Omar’s a Muslim. Binj, played by co-direct Copti, is a cook in a restaurant is given drugs to hold by his brother after a dispute over noisy sheep results in a neighbor being stabbed to death. This opens the opportunity for Omar and Malek to sell the drugs to get the money they need. The final story involves a cop named Dando (Eran Naim) whose family is devastated after his brother goes missing. These storylines all intersect in the finale involving a drug deal that goes terribly wrong.

In spite of the film’s complex structure, the outstanding feature of the production is how down-to-earth and lucid the characters, relationship, and action is. Copti and Shani did a smart thing by demarcating the sections by “chapter” title cards, which explicitly signal the shift in perspective focus. The greatest strength of this approach, as with many films of this type, is the richly textured portrayal that it’s able to present. There is no way to simplistically reduce and explicate the Middle Eastern conflict, as factors of ethnicity, religion, culture, and nationality are too densely entangled. Therefore, it only makes sense that the perspective of those inside should be equally as dense and entangled. Yet the strident fluidity of the pacing and the genuineness drama underlying it all speaks to the universal language of fiction.

In truth, Ajami side-steps directly addressing the conflict itself. This was clearly a conscious decision on the part of Copti and Shani as on the DVD there’s a deleted scene of Binj, Omar, and others sitting around discussing the situation. That scene perhaps too directly laid out the core theme of the film that, at the end of the day, religion, ethnicity, nationality, and everything else takes a back seat to the basic needs and desires of humanity. Even the frequent misunderstandings, due to the mix of Hebrew and Arabic languages, seems to stand as a metonym for the idea that such things stand in as smokescreens that hide our commonalities. For the most part, Copti and Shani simply allow these elements to be part of the background texture without interfering in drama and characters.

In the tradition of neorealism—and films like this and Gomorrah may be said to mark the rebirth of that movement—Copti and Shani elected to cast amateur actors. On the DVD there’s a fascinating 20-minute documentary, almost as good as the film itself, that chronicles the acting class that was ultimately utilized as a casting pool. It reveals that, to many of them, the film wasn’t an exorcize in acting but in simply being. Many speak to how emotionally and physically draining many scenes were, and how they became so lost in the characters that the barrier between themselves and character completely dissolved. Given the spectacular results, as everyone in the cast is phenomenal, future directors could learn a thing or two from Copti and Shani’s methods.

If the film’s to be really faulted it lies in two arenas. One, the visuals and direction are, for the most part, rather bland and rooted in the modern “art” of shaky-cam, although it’s far less annoying here than in other films that use it much more haphazardly. At least here the drama warrants that aesthetic of uncertainty and instability. The editing, however, largely makes up for this, and given how easily how the film could’ve become a structural mess it could even be called virtuosic. The second flaw is rooted in the nature of the shocking ending. While it does genuinely provide a surprise, it ultimately comes across as cheap, manipulative, and insubstantial. While Copti and Shani may have been going for a message about the interconnectivity of our lives, it seems more like it insists that tragedy can easily come down to mere coincidence.

Ultimately, Ajami is very good but not quite great film that feels a bit like an underachievement. The film was, however, nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film and marked the third year in a row Israel had received a nomination. It’s probably not surprising that a country filled with such turmoil would start producing riveting art, but I can’t help but feel like we’re all still waiting for that masterpiece to come along that will encapsulate it all. Ajami has its moments, but perhaps pulls its punches at the wrong moments to genuinely lay claim to being that all-important masterpiece.