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Book: Avant-Garde To New Wave: Czechoslovak Cinema, Surrealism And The Sixties
Release date: 14th March 2011
Author: Jonathan L. Owen
Publisher: Berghahn
Although less famous than the French Nouvelle Vague, the cinema of the Czechoslovak New Wave boasts some of the most attractive and intelligent films produced anywhere in 1960s Europe. Jonathan L. Owen’s Avant-Garde To New Wave explores the influence of the avant-garde upon the Czechoslovak New Wave and the political implications of that influence.
Tracing the influence of the avant-garde in art and literature throughout the 20th century, Owen’s book examines the films of the Czechoslovak New Wave within the socio-political context of 1960s Czechoslovakia.
Divided into seven chapters, the first chapter provides an overview of the social and cultural context of the period, before taking a more in-depth analysis of some of the key films of the movement: Pavel Juráček’s Josef Kilián (1963) and A Case For The Young Hangman (1969), Jiří Menzel’s Closely Observed Trains (1966), Věra Chytilová’s Daisies (1966), Juraj Jakubisko’s The Deserter And The Nomads (1968) and Birds, Orphans And Fools (1969), Jaromil Jireš’s Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders (1970), and Jan Švankmajer’s short films…
It is difficult to make a generalisation about the Czechoslovak New Wave; there was no manifesto or theoretical writings underpinning the group - which was never ever a formal one in any case - and it’s hard to pin the movement down to a particular style. The main thing the Czechoslovak filmmakers of the ‘60s shared in common was that their films had been shaped by the cultural and political reforms the country had undergone since 1962. Known as ‘the Golden Age’ of Czechoslovak cinema, directors enjoyed state support of the film industry, a receptive audience both home and abroad (especially in the US, where two Czech films gained academy awards in 1966), and relative artistic freedom. The films of the Czechoslovak New Wave formed a movement, then, not because they shared stylistic concerns, but rather because they were a response to the historical and political reality of 1960s Czechoslovakia. The culmination of this period came during the Prague Spring of 1968 when Czechoslovakia’s leader Alexander Dubcek declared the emergence of “socialism with a human face.” By the summer of 1968, though, it was all over: the Soviets rolled into Prague, unseated Dubcek and imposed the most draconian social and political regulations since the Stalin era, effectively ending the Czechoslovak New Wave.
With the exception of Menzel’s film, Owen is less interested in more obviously political New Wave films - works which drew on real historical events such as the Holocaust in Elmar Klos and Ján Kádar's The Shop On Main Street (1965), or post-WWII Czech-German tension in František Vláčil’s Adelheid (1969) - and more concerned with those films which were politicised through their engagement with avant-garde traditions. Particular attention is given to the Surrealism movement, synonymous with the country ever since André Breton first identified the capital Prague as “the magical capital of old Europe” and “one of those cities that electively pin down poetic thought,” leading to the founding of a Czech Surrealist group.
Of the directors studied in the book, only Švankmajer actually belonged to the group, but Owen argues convincingly that all the directors were shaped by the same undercurrent of Surrealist/avant-garde tradition. Some of the most interesting chapters cover the influence of Kafka on Juráček’s Josef Kilián, the blending of avant-garde with folk tradition in the films of Jakubisko, and the relationship between Jireš’s Valerie and Her Week Of Wonders and the bohemian surrealism of Vitězslav Nezval’s source novel.
The more abstract films associated with the movement were accused by (mainly Western) critics and filmmakers of being mystifying, exemplified in Jean-Luc Godard's censure of Vera Chytilova's Daisies as apolitical and cartoonish, even bourgeois. Yet, to imply that the films are apolitical is to fail to take into account the context of the Czechoslovak state and socialist realist aesthetics. Socialist realism was predominantly a Stalin-era aesthetic that employed a highly figurative method of realist depiction, and had been adopted as a prevalent aesthetic in Czechoslovakia following World War II. Czechoslovakia had basically been rendered a Soviet satellite state following the war and would remain so until the relinquishing of Soviet control and an impulse toward self-determination in the early 1960s.
In the 1960s, Czechoslovak art, film, and literature were working against this tradition, while also emerging from the same notion that propelled socialist realism: the notion that art was immediate and political. This context meant that art appearing to be devoid of political content (in the West) only appeared so because, unlike in the West, art itself was intrinsically politicised in its Eastern European context. It is difficult for Western audiences to fully grasp this element and the book’s main achievement is in placing the works in a comprehensible social and cultural background, describing the milieu and ideas which helped shape the works. Owen also convincingly argues that the avant-garde was in itself political, in that it offered a different viewpoint and interpretation of reality in opposition to state-defined realism. Thus, the feminism of Chytilova’s Daisies, the Otherness of Jakubisko’s films, the deviant sexuality of Jireš’s Valerie and Her Week Of Wonders all offered alternative interpretations of reality at odds with that put forward by the powers that be.
If there are some shortcomings in Owen’s book, it would be that there isn’t much sense of how the films feel. The Czechoslovak New Wave could be surprisingly moving and involving on a more visceral and emotional level, and Owen’s focus on the intellectual import of the films might give the impression Czechoslovakian cinema was more head than heart. Neither can the book be recommended to those looking for a way into the Czechoslovak New Wave; its focus being specifically on those films Owen feels best illustrate his main thesis. The overall tone - not to mention the £50 price tag - suggests Avant-Garde To New Wave isn’t really intended for a general readership, and it’s probably aimed at dedicated students of film. Many of these films have only recently been reissued through BFI or Second Run (whose design coincidently or otherwise is mirrored in this book’s cover), and, to be frank, you could probably buy most of the films covered here for the price of the book itself. That said, Avant-Garde To New Wave is a welcome addition to a far from overcrowded field of study.
Meticulously researched and filled with interesting insights, Avant-Garde To New Wave is an impressive work of film scholarship. The definitive book on the subject, for the time being, remains Peter Hames’s The Czechoslovak New Wave; but if you already have an interest in this corner of world cinema and wish to delve deeper into the fascinating world of Czechoslovak film then Owen’s book comes recommended. GJK
Book: Directory Of World Cinema - Japan
Release date: 15th February 2011
Publisher: Intellect
Following the Directory Of World Cinema’s Russian and American Underground issues, and with forthcoming books dealing with Italy, Iran, Australia and New Zealand in the pipeline, the series turns to Japan. Edited by John Berra, Volume 1 covers a number of significant genres within Japanese cinema, and examines the films within the national and social contexts which shaped them.
The directory divides the movies into various genres: Alternative Japan; Anime; Chambara (Samurai); Contemporary Blockbusters; Jidaigeki and Gendaigeki (Period & Contemporary Drama); J-Horror; Kaiju Eiga (Monster Movies); Nuberu Bagu (Japanese New Wave); Pinku Eiga (Pink Film); and Yakuza (Gangster). In each case, a general overview of a specific genre is followed by individual critiques of films that exist within that generic framework.
With in-depth analyses of Takeshi Kitano, Satoshi Kon and Akira Kurosawa, the book also includes chapters on the Nippon Connection Film Festival, the influential Arts Theatre Guild, an interesting take on the cultural crossover between art and film, and an extended review of Kitano’s Achilles And The Tortoise as the directory’s chosen film of the year.
With individual articles and critiques by contributors from the fields of academia and film journalism, the work seeks to offer an insight into ‘Japaneseness’ as seen through the medium of film...
That all this is crammed into barely 300 pages might suggest the directory is merely skimming the surface, but this illuminating book manages to cover a great deal of ground. This is only the first in a projected two volumes dealing solely with Japan. Anticipating that any attempt at a comprehensive overview of all of Japanese cinema is doomed to failure, it’s intended as informative rather than exhaustive. A generally egalitarian approach ensures B-movies like Mothra are given just as much respect and attention as more critically-acclaimed works, with analyses largely concerned more with cultural significance than simply listing the ‘best’ Japanese movies.
Arguably the most fertile and varied industry in world cinema, approaching Japanese cinema can be a daunting task. Even within the directory’s limited remit, it contains more films than any sane person could hope to watch in a lifetime. Cultural differences can also be a barrier, and the book acknowledges the difficulty for non-Japanese audiences in fully understanding genres such as Japanese New Wave, which may contain very cultural specific meanings. Still, the ‘alien’ is an aspect which always seems to get played up more with the Japanese than anywhere else. One of the book’s achievements is debunking Western assumptions of what Japanese cinema is, and lazy attempts to categorise it as weird and outlandish.
Berra, in his editor’s introduction, attributes much of the West’s association of Japanese cinema with strangeness and extremity, largely due to the J-Horror boom, which somewhat obscured both the burgeoning independent sector of contemporary Japanese cinema and its legacy. It illustrates the way in which the character of a country’s cinema can be condensed or plain misrepresented by market forces, culminating in recent fare like Machine Girl or Tokyo Gore Police. These are movies aimed primarily at international audiences, having little impact in their native country, and yet generally viewed in the West as somehow typical or representative of Japanese cinema.
Ironically, the chapters dealing with the more exotic corners of Japanese cinema are some of the most interesting, especially the chapter which covers Pinku Eigu, or Pink Cinema. Essentially sexploitation, these were films which were strictly forbidden by the censors from showing pubic hair or genitalia but often included actual penetrative sex between the performers. The most well-known Pinku Eigu in this country is Nagisa Oshima’s In The Realm Of The Senses, although its explicitness and deliberate provocation of the Japanese moral film code means it’s not generally representative of the genre. In fact, it’s difficult to make generalisations about Pink Eigu as a whole, a genre that could be both shockingly misogynistic and also used as a vehicle for subverting patriarchal attitudes. It’s a fascinating chapter which includes such luridly evocative titles as Entrails Of A Virgin and Violated Angels, as well as a cameo from notorious cannibal-murderer turned celebrity restaurant reviewer Issei Sagawa (yes, really).
The writing throughout is of a consistently high standard, incorporating a range of analytical approaches (be it social-political, aesthetic, or genre-based) according to the writers’ preferences. By focussing mainly on the cultural import of films within specific genres, the directory presents a very catholic selection. Admirably un-snobbish in its treatment of all the covered films, the articles are always marked by the sense that those writing are genuine fans. That said, quality will always rise to the top and the major directors (specifically Takeshi Kitano, Takashi Miike, Nagasi Oshima and Yasujiro Ozu) have the most films critiqued (although strangely only one Shohei Imamura film, despite his importance being acknowledged throughout).
But it is the films of Akira Kurosawa which inevitably dominate, just as the great director towers over the landscape of Japanese cinema. His influence on Sergio Leone and George Lucas has been well documented, but less acknowledged is his influence on his close friend Francis Ford Coppola. The book highlights the debt owed by the American director to Kurosawa’s The Bad Sleep Well, particularly the first thirty minutes which Coppola used as a template for the opening sequences in all three of his Godfather films. When one article examines the recurring motif of opening and closing doors in High And Low, you don’t need to be told that all those doors constantly shutting in the faces of female characters in Coppola’s trilogy are also distinctly Kurosawa-inspired.
The directory is particularly fine at finding new angles like these within well-trodden ground concerning Japanese cinema’s relationship with Western models. Be it Jean-Pierre Melville’s American film noir influenced films refracted via a European sensibility into a Japanese one in certain yakuza movies. Or even anime, that most quintessentially Japanese genre, having its roots in American early animation, which in turn had much in common with early Japanese woodcuts. It makes for a far more interesting and nuanced take on the cinematic exchange between Japan and the West than Hollywood’s recent predilection for rehashing films like The Ring might suggest. What this latter tendency also demonstrates is that the exchange is becoming increasingly one-sided, something that says as much about the ongoing vitality of Japanese cinema as it does about the moribundity of Hollywood.
The general consensus is that the Japanese film industry consciously modelled itself on Hollywood, with the formation of major studios and a reliance on particular genres and narrative forms, such as Yakuza and monster movies, and the development of ‘star’ identities. But, as Berra points out, this also coincided in the post-war period with the rise of the auteur-director, who was able to mould their particular artistic vision both within and on the edges of the mainstream. The only comparison to be drawn with US cinema would be the ‘70s heyday of the auteur, a short-lived period of relative freedom that came to an end following the huge financial failure of Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate. Japan also had these spectacular box office failures (Imamura’s Profound Desires Of The Gods springs to mind), and though it may have curtailed a particular director’s career, the industry never seemed to react in quite the same way as its American counterpart. No doubt this has a great deal to do with the high number of independents which make up the Japanese film industry, creating a milieu in which the mainstream and the innovative are not mutually exclusive - an industry quite unique in its willingness to take risks and thereby allowing its artists to do likewise.
While acknowledging the position of Japanese film within worldwide cinema, what emerges most is the singularity as well as the breadth and scope of Japanese cinema as a whole. The book’s main strength is in placing that nation’s cinematic output in a context that is accessible and comprehensible for Western audiences. With mainstream cinema in the West increasingly dogged by endless prequel-sequels and pointless remakes, the continuing rude health of Japanese cinema remains a cause for celebration.
As well as providing an insight into Japanese cultural life and history as expressed through the medium of film, this directory works equally well as a conventional film guide. Containing a mixture of the well known and obscure, there’s much to recommended for newcomers as well as those already well versed in the many delights of Japanese cinema. A worthwhile read and highly recommended. GJK
Film: Baaría
Release date: 10th January 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 144 mins
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
Starring: Gaetano Aronica, Francesco Scianna, Margareth Madè, Raoul Bova, Giorgio Faletti, Leo Gullotta
Genre: Drama/Comedy/History/War
Studio: E1
Format: DVD
Country: Italy/France
As the opening feature of the 2009 Venice Film Festival and Italy’s official submission to the 82nd Academy Awards, hopes were high that Baaría would provide a much needed shot in the arm for the beleaguered Italian film industry. More than twenty years after Cinema Paradiso first charmed audiences throughout the world, Giuseppe Tornatore has made another film of sun-kissed nostalgia, this time armed with a star-filled cast and a £20 million budget.
Tomatore’s semi-autobiographical story is set in his hometown of Bagheria (known by the locals as Baaría), and depicts the lives of three generations of a family and the development of an entire city.
From the 1930s (Mussolini’s black shirts, financial hardship), the war years (bombers in shadow, liberating American soldiers), and the 1950s (communism, the mafia) up to the 1980s (shopping arcades, traffic everywhere), it follows the lives of Cicco, the shepherd, Peppino, his son the communist activist, and Pietro, his photographer grandson.
Focussing mainly on the charismatic Peppino, from his first romantic entanglements, his connection with the Communist Party and involvement in Italian politics, we see a young man growing old as the city changes. And the city, Tornatore suggests, is as much alive as the main character….
Tornatore's models are clearly Amarcord, Fellini's autobiographical masterwork about his boyhood in pre-war Rimini, Bertolucci's five-hour 1900, and Francesco Rosi's portrait of post-war Italy, and Three Brothers, posters of which dominate the scene in the early 1980s when Pietro leaves home to go to college on the mainland. Everything in Tornatore’s film aspires to the same epic grandeur. The camera pulls back to pan out and soar above the expensively constructed sets, Morricone’s score rises up with it, famous faces from Italian cinema pop up in cameo and lead roles amongst the vast cast of extras - everything is designed to tell us that we are watching a big film. The cumulative effect is more reductive than anything. It looks like a masterpiece, but it’s a superficial resemblance. Disjointed and promising much more than it actually delivers, Baaría feels like a two-and-a-half hour trailer for a movie which never truly comes into view.
In the end, Baaría received the Pasinetti Award from Venice, but missed out on the Golden Lion (usually reserved for more serious, innovative cinema) and came away empty-handed from the same American awards where Cinema Paradiso had won an Oscar in 1989. In trying to please the notoriously auteur-favouring Venice, while maintaining his crowd-pleasing brand of sentimentality, Baaría feels conflicted. There’s a cautionary tale there in trying to be all things to all men, for somewhere along the line Tornatore’s vision may have become lost.
It is a shame as there is much in Baaría that is good. Tornatore has unearthed two stars in the making in his two good looking leads, Francesco Scianna and Margareth Madè. Beautiful photography from cinematographer Enrico Lucidi is complemented by the lovely art direction and production design of Maurizo Sabatini and Cosimo Gomez. There are some nice images, some inventive set-pieces; but, crucially, nothing that really stays with us afterwards. Ultimately, by charting the history of a family and a city, the film feels overstretched. There’s too much history, too many characters, and too many complications.
Though charming and often funny, Baaría is more than anything marked by superficiality. Tornatore attempts to disguise it by alluding to great themes with heavy artistic moments (dreamlike sequences, sweeping shots over vista landscapes, slow motion), but inevitably the superficiality shows up. That Tornatore is a sentimentalist is well known, but here we get sentimental without sentiment. The movie touches upon a number of weighty issues (love and marriage, family, poverty and exploitation, the conflict between communism and Catholicism, the weight of tradition, and slowness of social change) but is content merely to touch the surface; its ideas never brought to fruition, nothing to make us think. It’s filled with paradoxes like this, in the discrepancy between what the film promises and what it delivers. A supposedly personal piece about the director’s hometown which feels like the work of a foreigner, a product catering to a foreigner’s idea of Sicily gleaned second-hand from other movies. The work of an auteur, but curiously commercial and conventional in its execution. A film designed to become lost within, but afterwards difficult to recall anything memorable.
Part of the reason Baaría fails to connect is due to its episodic nature. It’s composed of a series of short vignettes that fade to black, like memories. This is a key theme in the movie, but because this aspect only becomes clear towards the very end of the film, and because the narrative mainly follows a linear chronological path, it just comes across as poorly edited. Alain Resnais and Chris Marker explored similar themes concerning time and memory, but Tornatore lacks their intellectual rigour. The film’s main message seems to be things change over time (cars replace cows on the streets, dusty open roads give way to tarmac and shopping centres); there is no discernible deeper meaning. Despite the lengthy running time, we get little in the way of character development. We watch his characters and Baaría change in physical ways (hair turns grey, old buildings are torn down), but nothing more. Just as the fragmented narrative interrupts the flow, the countless cameos offer another distraction. Monica Bellucci seems particularly poorly served when she appears for about ten seconds in a role where she is required to do little more than get her breasts out as she is pawed by an amorous lover.
The biggest disappointment may be the Morricone score. An Il Maestro soundtrack can often be enough to elevate even lesser works, but something about working with Tornatore brings out his worst tendencies. Lachrymose and almost ever-present, there is not one moment when that score isn’t used to tell us exactly what to feel. It’s symptomatic of the film as a whole. Truly great films change with us, offering up new perspectives and insights as we mature. There is little chance of this in Tornatore’s movie where everything is so clearly signposted and designed to elicit only the emotions its director intends us to feel.
Baaría almost redeems itself in the last fifteen minutes; a wonderful slice of magical realism combined with post-modernism, which shouldn’t work but does, hinting at just what this film could have achieved had it been slightly more focussed. Past and present intersect as the figure of Pietro, as a boy, races past Peppino, transported back to the same age as his son, running in the opposite direction down the streets of modern Bagheria; both coming to find something from their past which they thought had been lost. Seeking to equate a lifetime of memories with a split-second afterthought, Tornatore highlights the fact that time passes too quickly for us to appreciate each moment on its own, of which the medium of cinema can only suggest but not replicate. It’s the closest Baaría comes to presenting an actual idea, to articulating any sort of ideology behind its succession of beautiful images. But by then, it’s a case of too little, too late, and Baaría leaves us feeling let down.
Baaría is not a bad film, and much of it is enjoyable. However, Tornatore was clearly aiming for greatness, and Baaría falls significantly short of being a great film. Like looking at someone’s holiday snaps - it’s all very pretty, but it just doesn’t connect. GJK
Film: Men On The Bridge
Release date: 28th January 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 87 mins
Director: Asli Özge
Starring: Fikret Portakal, Murat Tokgöz, Umut İlker, Cemile İlker
Genre: Drama
Studio: Verve
Format: Cinema
Country: Germany/Turkey/Netherlands
After winning Best Film awards at the Istanbul and Adana festivals, Men On The Bridge has been granted a limited cinema release in the UK. Asli Özge’s first ‘fiction’ feature loosely interweaves the lives of three Istanbul residents – a taxi-driver, a traffic cop and a young guy illegally selling roses – who every day use the bridge that spans the Bosporus.
Cabbie Umut is struggling to make ends meet and satisfy his young wife, whose ambitions for a bigger apartment are way beyond their income and puts a strain on their marriage. Lonesome cop Murat tries to find a girlfriend on the internet. Teenage Fikret searches for a real job, but is continually thwarted by his lack of education and impoverished background.
Blurring the line between fiction and documentary, Özge’s brisk narrative covers a range of issues - unemployment, immigration, poverty, urbanisation, globalisation, sex, religion, tradition, modernisation – as it depicts the lives of three men from the poorer suburbs of the Turkish capital…
Originally conceived as a documentary, Men On The Bridge often plays out as such through its lack of narrative drive, but resembles a full-blown feature thanks to some impressive camerawork from award-winning cinematographer Emre Erkmen. Technically, it’s a very accomplished picture, especially in its editing - Özge demonstrating an intuitive ability to cut or switch narratives at just the right point before her audience grows bored. For a film in which nothing overly dramatic occurs, it’s quite an achievement that our attention rarely wavers. The lack of conventional storyline may alienate some, though that may be par for the course in a film where alienation is a key theme
Istanbul, and specifically the bridge which crosses the Bosporus, famously stands as the gateway between Europe and Asia. While aspects of this inform her picture, Özge is much more interested in the notoriously congested bridge as a symbol of division. Her film presents not only an Istanbul divided socially and politically, but also a nation – indicated by news reports of fighting in the southeast between the Turkish army and a Kurdish separatist group.
Bridges may also symbolise communication, but in Özge’s film, this symbol is again defined negatively. Just as the film occupies a no-man’s land between documentary and movie, the bridge represents a spatial nowhere. It’s a space marked by journeying without arrival, a kind of sustained stasis for the three men amidst the continual passage of the other travellers. For Umut, Murat and Fikret, the bridge goes nowhere. These are characters in the process of being left behind by the promises, economic or otherwise, of modern Istanbul.
All three men are linked by disenchantment within their jobs, as well as by a shared inability to communicate and connect; symptomatic of their sense of apartness, of something missing from their lives. When 24-year old Murat isn’t displaying his immaturity by punctuating his online chats with childish animations, oblivious to the unimpressed reactions on the other end of the videocam, he’s embarking on some of the most toe-curlingly awkward dates since Robert De Niro took Cybill Shepherd to a porn cinema in Taxi Driver. Fikret’s impoverished background and general ignorance leads to his being sacked on the first day of his new restaurant job - he doesn’t get off to the best start in having no idea what cutlery means. Umut and his wife Cemile struggle to communicate meaningfully with each other, their exchanges often descending into sulking and reproachful silences. When they do manage to get across what they want or expect from life, the other seems unable or unwilling to listen. Fitting, then, that Umut is fined for using his mobile phone while driving across the bridge.
Men On The Bridge has one thing in common with a number of recent Turkish films, and especially with Pelin Esmer’s 10 To 11 - transition and a yearning for the Western way of life. The characters strive for a piece of the life advertised by soap operas and Hollywood films. This aspect is immediately signposted in the opening scene where Umut watches Tim Burton’s Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, and there is a further link between that movie’s golden ticket and the recurring motif of lottery tickets in Özge’s film. The Western way of life is represented primarily by images of consumerism and capitalism: the Dolce & Gabbana shopping bags carried by the two women Cemile follows down the street; the gaming consoles and mobile phones in the department store where Fikret and his friend spend the afternoon before they are thrown out as suspected shoplifters; Murat’s credit card debts... They represent a lifestyle which lies beyond their reach. Characters frequently say things like, “Everything depends on money,” or “If you have money, you can do anything.” By far the least likeable character, though, is Umut’s boss and landlord, Bülent; who has ‘made it’, and advises Umut to hit his wife if she complains too much. Umut tells Cemile money is this Muslim hadji’s true god. They both criticise Bülent for worshipping money, even as they secretly envy him.
Within a world marked by constant longing and denial, love and commerce become intertwined. Murat must pay membership fees for all those dating websites, searching for a love which he never finds. “I want the same things you want,” Umut tells his wife, but the distance between what each wants and what each expects means day by day they fall further out of love. Fikret has neither love nor money, and endeavours to find a proper job so he can pay a prostitute to relieve him of his virginity. It reveals how little he has come to expect from life that the prospect of finding a girl he doesn’t have to pay for sex seems as remote as escaping his job selling flowers on the bridge.
Though the film never prioritises one story over another, Umut and Cecile’s narrative has the most impact; mainly because in its examination of a marriage in crisis, it seems to suggest love alone may not be enough. It would be easy to brush off Umut’s attitude as simply depression, but the film encourages us to address the social conditions which have shaped his outlook. That pessimism seems more realistic than his wife’s dreams of a huge flat screen television to place on the wall of an apartment neither can afford. In this, the film’s themes carry universal resonance. Özge seems to identify the false promises of capitalism, the dissatisfaction that rampant consumerism (the ‘aspirational lifestyle’) breeds and constantly feeds back off. Özge never takes sides, though, and her film is more concerned with asking questions than providing answers. Umut seems more resigned to his lot than content, and at least Cemile has some life left in her, and still retains the capacity to dream and hope for better.
The film is performed by non-professional actors, essentially playing themselves (with the exception of Murat, who as a policeman was not allowed to appear in the film). It’s the most obvious example of the film’s blurring between documentary and movie, and it adds an extra authenticity to proceedings. You wonder how close to the bone much of this is for the real people, and to what extent their actual lives resemble those onscreen. A final exchange between Umut and Cemile is especially powerful. Both are clearly descending into a state of depression (if not already there), and the pain is tangible upon their faces and in their body language. This is more than acting, and it can be almost unbearably intimate in places.
The film closes with its only moment of genuine connection. Murat, the archetypal country boy lost in the big city, sits by the shoreline and calls his mother to say he misses her and his little village. Significantly, he does not cross the river via the bridge, instead he takes the ferry. A conclusion which seems to confirm Özge’s position that the modern world may be no place for those with a heart.
It’s debatable whether the world really needs another piece of social realism portraying modern alienation, but it would be a shame if Men On The Bridge slips under the radar. It could do with a little more light to balance out the pessimism, which sometimes threatens to overwhelm, but, for the most part, Özge’s film is an assured, thought-provoking debut. It will be interesting to see where she goes from here. GJK
Film: Der Rosenkavalier
Release date: 29th November 2010
Certificate: E
Running time: 192 mins
Director: Paul Czninner
Starring: Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Otto Edelmann, Sena Jurinac, Anneliese Rothenberger, Erich Kunz
Genre: Comedy/Romance/Musical
Studio: Park Circus
Format: Blu-ray
Country: UK
Following its 1911 premiere, Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier caused such a sensation that train operators ran additional trains from German-speaking Europe to take unprecedented opera-goers to Dresden. Modern opera fans won’t have to go to such extreme measures thanks to this Blu-ray release of a classic 1962 performance filmed by Paul Czinner.
The Marschallin is deeply in love with her young lover Octavian, but knows that she's getting older, and one day he'll tire of her.
Her fears are realised sooner than she anticipated when a chain of events are set in motion after her uncouth, philandering cousin Baron Ochs sets his sights on Sophie von Faninal, the beautiful daughter of a rich Viennese bourgeois. Having arranged with the young woman’s father to combine his noble rank with Faninal’s money by marrying Sophie, Ochs asks the Marschallin to recommend an appropriate young man to be his Knight of the Rose. The Marschallin duly recommends her young lover to present the silver rose to Sophie on the Baron’s behalf as a traditional symbol of courtship.
As Octavian presents the ceremonial rose to Sophie, the two fall instantly in love with one another. They must then work out a way to prevent Baron Ochs from marrying Sophie, assisted by the good-hearted Marschallin in Strauss’ 18th century-set comedy of manners…
Richard Strauss, not to be confused with the Waltz King Johann, was responsible for two of the most arcane and discordant operas of the 20th century, Elektra and Salome. Hungarian émigré Paul Czinner was a more or less openly gay man in a time when it wasn’t just frowned upon, it was a crime (in the Nazi era especially, from which Czinner was fortunate to escape). It’s odd then that these two most unconventional of men should be brought together in a curiously old fashioned romantic comedy of an opera. It should be noted that this opera would have appeared old fashioned even in Strauss’ own day, something which may have caught his audience, used to by then to his enfant terrible reputation, completely off guard. A modern equivalent would be Matthew Barney deciding to make a slapstick comedy, or Gaspar Noé embarking on a rom com. But all that seems a bit beside the point in 2010, and opera newcomers anticipating sturm und drang and high theatrics will be disappointed here. They might also struggle to condone a supposedly sophisticated work which features the part of a servant played by a child in black-face.
Aside from the casual racism of the production, one of the biggest stumbling points is the humour. It’s simply not funny. An operatic comedy of errors and manners is, to put it mildly, an acquired taste; but even so, much of the humour does seem to consist of in-jokes for the opera crowd, part of an elitist, self-congratulatory world that puts most off. Opera by its very nature is marked by heightened emotion and hyperbole, which is fine for stories about myth and legend, the extremities of life and death, but when applied to comedy, it seems misplaced. Ochs, in particular, is a real pain. A boorish buffoon and intentionally grotesque, he fulfils a function in counterbalancing much of the preciousness going on around him, but he’s rarely amusing. The only thing that might raise a smile is the initial oddness of opera’s highly stylised nature - the way characters will announce an event as banal as someone arriving at the door in huge soaring tones. Though after three hours, the fun to be had in this does become limited.
Another issue is the feeling that opera inevitably loses something when taken out of the confines of the theatre. There’s clearly a market for opera on the small-screen, and it offers a chance for opera fanatics to catch classic or older performances they might otherwise never see, but as an introduction to the world of opera, it can’t be recommended. There’s a ritualistic aspect in going to a theatre to watch an opera; and though the camera essentially gives you the best seat in the house, it can’t really compare to being there, just as no sound system can equal the acoustics of a theatre and the sensory overload of being sat in the audience. With this caveat in mind, the film does as good a job as it possibly can. The restoration is excellent (there’s a comparison as one of the extras), transforming the beige, washed-out hues of the original print into glorious Technicolour. The ornate set design and costumes really stand out in this lavish production, all ably captured by Czinner’s fine camerawork.
The most important aspect is, of course, the music; and much of Der Rosenkavalier is undeniably beautiful. There can be a preponderance for note-spinning, and the music that comes on when we’re being shown that something comic is going on is tiresome, but, for the most part, we are witnessing opera singers at the very peak of their powers. The final duet between Octavian and Sophie is particularly breathtakingly gorgeous. It is at such moments that you begin to appreciate the almost super-human talents of opera singers, their abilities to command their vocals to perform feats that seem beyond the limits of the human voice. None more so than Elisabeth Schwarzkopf as the Marschallin in the role many have said she was born to play.
However, the conducting of Herbert Von Karajan is perhaps the weak link in this staging of Der Rosenkavalier, in that you really have to work to get to the work’s subtext. It has been said that the music in Der Rosenkavalier isn’t all that different from Elektra. If you listen very carefully, you can hear moments of dissonance at work, the avant-garde undercutting the seemingly conventional and working in much the same way as Brecht’s alienation techniques to make us question just what exactly is being presented to us. But this Karajan recording almost completely obscures this technique behind flowery flourishes and sickly sweet orchestration. As a result, it’s easy to overlook the crucial darker undertones of the work. This is a society on the brink, the twilight of an era, and Strauss’ piece subtly undermines the notion of the ‘golden era’, which underpins a great deal of the opera canon. This is a world in which women are still seen as property, traded in for newer models when their looks began to fade, and marriage used as a vehicle towards status or money. Der Rosenkavalier depicts a social milieu in which love is essentially bought and sold for cash, the hard, coarse reality beneath the veneer of polite society. But all the bluntness implied is elegantly dressed in coiffured wigs and crinolines, so that the utter heartbreak at the centre of the story occurs offstage - the Marschallin retires to weep her heart out in the wings, as Sophie and Octavian (who is, of course, merely Och's younger reincarnation, as Sophie is the Marschallin's) canoodle in private. But you have to really read behind the lines to get any of this in a production, which makes Strauss’ opera appear much more conventional than it actually is.
Czinner’s film has been in and out of print on VHS and DVD over the years, establishing itself as one of the ‘must have’ cult items for a certain segment of the opera loving public. But this review is aimed at international cinema fans and as such it’s hard to recommend Der Rosenkavalier. No doubt it will be seized upon and treasured by those in the know. The rest of us may well be left wondering what all the fuss is about. GJK
Film: La Cienaga
Release date: 6th December 2010
Certificate: 12
Running time: 103 mins
Director: Lucrecia Martel
Starring: Mercedes Morán, Graciela Borges, Martín Adjemián, Leonora Balcarce, Silvia Baylé
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Studio: ICA
Format: DVD
Country: Argentina/France/Spain
La Cienaga, or The Swamp, is the debut film from Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martel. Originally released in 2001, the film announced the arrival of a unique new voice within international cinema. Finally granted a DVD release in the UK, it shows that the director of The Holy Girl and The Headless Woman had emerged with her distinctive and uncompromising vision of cinema already fully formed.
The movie tells the story of two families' summer holiday, spent in a decaying estate in the mountains, as a record hot spell grips Argentina, and the neighbouring town of Cienaga is riveted by the appearance of the Virgin Mary on a water tower.
Tali is minding four small children with little help from her husband, who is preoccupied with the opening of hunting season. Her cousin, Mecha, is a borderline alcoholic living in a dilapidated country retreat with her husband Gregorio and her teen children. During one heavy drinking session, she slips and cuts herself on broken glass, instigating a visit from her son Jose, alongside Tali and her brood, as Mecha recuperates in bed.
What follows is not so much a family reaching crisis point, as one stuck in the deepest of ruts. These are characters that dimly sense something has gone wrong at some point in their lives, even if they do not know at what point, or where to lay the blame.
In the course of a season, two accidents bring the two families together, but together is a loaded term in Martel’s film of decay, dislocation and estrangement…
A group of middle-aged drinkers lounge around a putrid swimming-pool as the camera lingers on exposed flabby and worn-out flesh. The day is hot but not sunny, and thunder rumbles around the surrounding mountains. The incessant clicking of cicadas mixes with the clinking of ice cubes within wineglasses and the scraping of chairs across the patio floor in a combination all the more nerve wracking for never reaching a crescendo, like the sound of a tap dripping in the middle of the night. The children are out hunting in the mountains, where they come across a cow trapped in the treacherous swamp lands. Their semi-feral hunting dogs bark and snap at the visibly distressed animal as it sinks further into the mire. It’s an opening that is horribly effective in creating a mood of unease and tension, one which never quite leaves you, even as much of what follows seems banal and tediously uneventful.
For a while, the only way for British audiences to experience Martel’s latest film, The Headless Woman (La Mujer Sin Cabeza), was at the Tate Modern. In a way, this makes perfect sense for the art gallery seems more of a spiritual home to Martel than the cinema. Her films do away with basic film grammar (establishing shots, traditional film transitions), resulting in work more akin to video installation. The Headless Woman, when first shown at Cannes, was variously jeered at for being a boring muddle, or hailed as compelling and inspired, and it is likely Martel’s debut film will meet with similarly polarised opinion. The overt and more easily comprehensible sexiness of Martel’s international breakthrough film, The Holy Girl (La Niña Santa), feels like an anomaly in this light. Like The Headless Woman, La Cienaga is art-house with a capital A, unapologetically eschewing narrative and easily identifiable character motivation in favour of mood, atmosphere and a subjective approach to our interpretation of what the films means.
Reaching an understanding of La Cienaga’s underlying message is no easy task. At once oblique and blankly opaque, it could mean just about anything. It's filled with ideas and images that are never quite clear, that deliberately remain unreachable, like the image of the Virgin Mary that appears close to a water tank that we hear about but never get to see. Martel’s characters seem to have a life outside of the film; they begin before the film begins and they continue after the film ends. Scenes and even the majority of shots begin ‘in media res’ from actions that are already taking place, and often requiring us, as viewers, to weave the events together ourselves so they acquire meaning.
The American critic Roger Ebert, in a tellingly ambivalent review of the film upon its 2001 release, likened it to the experience of attending a family reunion when it’s not your family and your hosts are too drunk to introduce you around. It’s a useful analogy which touches upon the strange sense of familiarity and apartness we, as viewers, experience as we watch events unfold. We feel within the film, and, at the same time, discomfited by our sense of being voyeurs as we watch a family in quiet turmoil going about their everyday lives. It’s a well worn subject but rarely has it been approached in such an un-movie-like manner. It is literally as if we have been granted a glimpse into the workings of a real family, with all the mundane banality of their everyday reality presented in relentless and painstakingly rendered detail.
Though nothing quite matches the overpowering vividness of the opening, Martel takes naturalism to a degree rarely seen in modern cinema. Her knack for establishing tactile hyper-reality can be overwhelmingly palpable; you can almost smell the sweat and unwashed hair, the dank bedrooms and festering swimming-pool. Heightening the uneasy mood is the movie's busy sound design, which itself is amplified by the absence of a musical score. While seemingly improvised, La Cienaga was actually carefully scripted. It is testament to Martel’s skill, as well as the naturalistic performances of the largely non-professional cast (particularly the younger members), that nothing appears on screen that does not feel completely intentional.
Tentative themes do emerge, like murk from the eponymous swamp. Many of the children carry wounds or are disfigured in some way – one has a scar instead of an eye; one young boy is mysteriously forever being cut; another breaks his nose in a fight. These wounds are indicative of hidden dangers which seem to lurk just off screen, as well as portents of a tragic accident which will befall one young child towards the end of the film. Close ups linger on the mouth of one boy whose mangled gums bear the trauma of adult teeth coming in, one tooth coming in through the roof of his mouth - a painful process of entering adulthood. The matriarch Mecha lies in her bed, the cuts on her chest slowly turning into scars. Every time the children look at the adults they seem to sense what lies in store for them. For all their self-involvement, these are characters that do not stop to think and are constantly at risk of repeating life based on the dysfunctional models lived by their parents. Mecha, in a rare moment of lucidity, wonders whether she will end up a bed-ridden alcoholic just like her mother before her. Tali, the most sympathetic adult character and seemingly most clear-sighted, justifies speaking about familial problems in front of the children by insisting they must know so as not to repeat the same mistakes. It is ironic that her negligence leads to that final accident involving her own child.
Other themes touch upon problems within Argentine society in general. That Mecha’s family own a country house indicates this was a family that were once rich; but the building is run down, the pool fetid - the apparent downturn in their fortunes seems linked to the collapse of the Argentine economy. The casual racism practiced by both the adults and children towards the native servants offers a further glimpse of that society’s dysfunctional class dynamics and problematic race relations.
Martel’s major theme, though, is ennui; and it is her willingness to explore everyday ennui and treat it with the same dramatic presence as any other great subject which most characterises La Cienaga. It certainly won’t be to everyone’s taste, and even those who buy into Martel’s cinematic vision will undoubtedly find much of the film a gruelling and, it has to be said, often boring experience. In keeping with the extremity of Martel’s oblique method, the real drama is destined to occur only after her film is over. The young boy’s accident, which may be fatal, occurs out of sight of the other characters, and is left undiscovered as the film ends. It says something about the film’s murky ambivalence that the possibility of something good may come of this - at the very least, it might shock the characters out of their rut. Of course, that could just be grasping at straws, in a film that offers very little in the way of optimism.
Beneath the surface banality of La Cienaga lies a resonant and troubling picture, the work of a filmmaker with a considered and singular artistic vision. Even if Martel’s particular vision is likely to repel as many as it attracts, her film possesses a lingering, haunting power. Not especially enjoyable, but undeniably affecting. GJK
Film: The Devil's Backbone
Release date: 25th March 2002
Certificate: 15
Running time: 103 mins
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Starring: Marisa Paredes, Eduardo Noriega, Federico Luppi, Fernando Tielve, Íñigo Garcés
Genre: Fantasy/Horror/Mystery/Thriller
Studio: Optimum
Format: DVD
Country: Spain/Mexico
It may not have gathered as much critical acclaim as Pan’s Labyrinth, nor achieved the commercial success of Hellboy or Blade 2, but it was The Devil’s Backbone (2001) that Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro described as his most personal film.
With the Fascist forces in the ascendancy during the final days of the Spanish Civil War, young Carlos becomes the latest addition to the number of war orphans under the care of the kindly Dr. Casares and his devoted headmistress Carmen. In addition to the dozens of young boys, the orphanage also houses a cache of gold intended for the Republican cause – a treasure that’s constantly on the mind of the devious caretaker Jacinto.
On his arrival, Carlos immediately clashes with the class bully, and it’s not long before he’s on the receiving end of Jacinto’s violent, quick-temper. But this soon becomes the least of his worries, as he begins to hear rumours of a mysterious presence haunting the orphanage, referred to by the other boys as “the one who sighs.”
After earning his peers’ respect with a harrowing late-night journey into the school’s kitchen, Carlos begins to learn some more unsettling news: one of the young boys (whose bed Carlos has inherited) recently vanished. While several of the boys believe that Santi simply ran away, a few of the older boys suspect murder – and nearly all the boys believe that Santi is still around, albeit in ghostly form.
When Carlos confirms the boys’ fears, and encounters the ghost of Santi who tells him that “many will die,” it is a prediction that comes less as a threat than as a warning…
Foreshadowing many of the themes of The Devil’s Backbone and its companion piece Pan’s Labyrinth is a wonderful 1973 Spanish film called The Spirit Of The Beehive. Directed by Victor Erice, it relates the story of 6-year-old Ana who begins to associate a Republican solider hiding from Franco’s troops in her parents’ sheepfold with the monster from Frankenstein, after a touring film company projects the film upon a wall in her hometown. It’s neither a horror film nor a supernatural thriller, but, in many ways, it can be seen as the antecedent to a particularly Spanish sub-genre, where the painful reality of the Civil War and the Fascist ascent to power is seen through the eyes of a young child. Within this tradition, Del Toro has made a particular brand of the supernatural his own – one in which the horror contained in real life is so all-encompassing that his ghosts and monsters begin to elicit more sympathy than terror in relation to it. It’s such a central aspect of Del Toro’s art that his films become more overwhelmingly sad than frightening. His ghosts are as much haunted as they haunt, wracked figures of loneliness and hurt, seemingly born out of a child’s imagination, and in this film, as in the Del Toro produced The Orphanage, taking the form of a child.
The ghost of Santi appears very early in the film, and it is made clear from the off that he is, in fact, a ghost. Del Toro does not go in for any ambiguity here, never suggesting his apparition as a figment of the imagination so often seen in more conventional ghost stories. In terms of frights, the early encounters with the ghost are the most powerful. Del Toro’s use of sound is possibly the most effective aspect – a soundtrack of mysterious rustlings, footsteps and disembodied screams - the spooky voice of Santi more like a death-rattle than a sigh. When we see him fully, he’s a no less disconcerting and creepy presence - black eyes in a pale Goya-mask of a face, his outline shimmering in ripples like the stream of blood which floats upwards from his head, forever trapped in the moment of his watery death. As the film progresses, though, and we learn more about Santi the boy, our fear dissipates slightly, as we begin to sympathise with him as a victim of the same tragedies as the other orphans. For this reason, he never truly seems a threat to the boys, and when he warns of some future catastrophe destined to occur, sure enough, it comes not from Santi, nor from any other supernatural force, but from all-too-human actions inspired by greed and spite.
Just as in Pan’s Labyrinth, the true horror of the film emanates less from the realms of make-believe than from a world recognisably our own. The secluded orphanage is the most obvious symbol of a country torn apart by Civil War, home to the fatherless, and representing a Spain abandoned by the international community as the Fascist forces gain supremacy. The unexploded bomb that lies embedded in the courtyard highlights the fact that the orphanage’s seclusion does not make it any more of a haven from the surrounding troubles, however.
Appropriately, most of the characters are damaged in some way - all part of the same catastrophic events of the Civil War. Carmen is in a constant state of discomfort from her prosthetic leg. The doctor’s impotence not only prevents him from acting on his feelings for Carmen, but is symbolic of a wider inability to act – to put his humanist values into action against the brutal dictates of the Fascists. Even Jacinto, the villain of the piece, is not wholly without sympathy - an abandoned orphan himself, his fragile emotional state cannot have been helped by entering into a sexual relationship with Carmen not long after he turned 17; one he is only too aware as being purely sexual, and almost incestuous in light of the older woman’s role as mother figure to the boys. It is this complexity in terms of character that elevates the film far beyond standard ghost story fare. In fact, Del Toro has so much going on behind his ghost story, it’s a minor miracle the film makes sense at all.
That it does is testament to Del Toro’s exquisite craftsmanship. M. Night Shyamalan could learn much from the cohesion of The Devil’s Backbone’s screenplay, with its plot twists and multiple layers never feeling forced or used merely for effect. Backing up the cohesion is a cinematography which eschews generic gloom and claustrophobia in favour of a vibrant use of colour (with much of the film taking place in daylight, baking under the Spanish sun), and with buildings and everyday objects strangely oversized, as though seen through a child’s eyes. The predominance of red and yellow tones (in sandstone buildings, in the parched desert surrounding the orphanage, in blood) indicates this is a film very much about Spain, but it is amber that is the most thematically significant. Amber tones link Santi’s watery grave to the deformed embryos preserved in the doctor’s jars, as well as relating to the voiceover which opens the film defining a ghost as “a moment of pain…an insect trapped in amber.”
The film is so visually polished, so Hollywood slick, and seemingly custom-built for the appreciation of a mainstream audience, that at first you might not notice just how incredibly dark some of its themes are. That we see the fascistic Jacinto in one early scene naked and so eroticised even the freedom-fighter Carmen cannot resist him suggests Del Toro is implying there is something inherently sexy about fascism, something in its call to order and obedience that we are irresistibly drawn to. It is one of the film’s ironies that the children, presumably the most vulnerable to the violence and brutality of war, must finally resort to violence themselves, in a scene reminiscent of Lord Of The Flies, in order to both save their lives and reassert values of humanism and goodness against so much totalitarian barbarity. Such themes give The Devil’s Backbone the ability to disturb and move long after the initial thrills and shocks of more run-of-the-mill horror films have faded away.
While The Devil’s Backbone falls just short of being a masterpiece in quite the same way as Pan’s Labyrinth, it is still a small gem of a movie. Forgetting Del Toro’s own output, it’s hard to think of many horror films in recent memory possessing quite as much depth, sub-text and emotional impact. One of the best films to emerge from that fertile period of Spanish horror during the first decade of this century, and highly recommended. GJK
Film: Pirates Of Langkasuka
Release date: 8th November 2010
Certificate: 12
Running time: 114 mins
Director: Nonzee Nimibutr
Starring: Dan Chupong, Ananda Everingham, Jakrit Panichpatikam, Jesdaporn Pholdee, Anna Ris
Genre: Action/Adventure/Fantasy/History
Studio: E1
Format: DVD
Country: Thailand
Originally released in 2008, Puen Yai Jom Salad has been translated into a variety of titles for the international market - from The Legend Of The Tsunami Warrior to the Queens Of Langkasuka, and coming to UK screens as Pirates Of Langkasuka. That each of these alternate titles focuses on a different aspect of the movie hints at just how much Thai director Nonzee Nimibutr has going on within his big budget blockbuster.
In the year 1600 A.D., Queen Hijau of Langkasuka faces coordinated assassination attempts from the villainous Prince Rawai and the pirates’ ringleader Black Raven. Forced to forge reluctant alliances with the Chinese and the Dutch, the queen also marries off one of her younger sisters, Princess Ungu, to the Malay Prince of Pahang.
The Dutch send a powerful cannon to assist the queen, but the ship is hijacked by the pirates, and in the ensuing struggle, the ship is blown up. The cannon sinks into the abyss of the ocean, thereafter made unreachable by the impenetrable depths and a guard of jellyfish.
Recovering the cannon becomes a source of mounting obsession for both sides, as does tracking down Lim Kium, the canon-maker’s apprentice, who is rumoured to have survived the disaster.
Against this background, Prince Rawai recruits Black Ray, the hermit with powers of black magic able to rescue the cannon; and Queen Hijau solicits the help from two men: martial arts master Jarang, and Pari, who is the hermit’s prodigy student, as well as an orphan with a personal vendetta against Black Raven.
As a huge armada of pirate ships, bolstered by recruits from Japan and Java, bears down on Langkasuka, the scene is set for a climactic battle destined to go down in legend…
Given its UK title, expectations are immediately set low in anticipation of an Asian answer to Pirates Of The Caribbean with added martial arts. Depressing enough that Hollywood is set for a fourth instalment of a franchise originally based on a theme park ride without Asia getting in on the action, the most you might be expecting from this Thai movie is at least the eternally pointless Orlando Bloom won’t be making an appearance. It comes as a pleasant surprise, then, that Pirates Of Langkasuka often proves a highly entertaining and inventive movie, even if it does falter on occasions under the weight of its own ambition.
In every sense of the word, this is a blockbuster. In Nonzee Nimibutr, it has a director who has shaped the landscape of modern Thai cinema in the late-90s; screenwriter Win Lyovari, one of Thailand’s most renowned novelists; and an all-star cast that includes a return to the big screen of Jarunee Suksawat after a decade’s absence, as well as stars from Ong-Bak and Shutter. In addition, every penny of its gargantuan budget appears on screen in lavish costumes, ornate set decoration and grandiose visual effects.
Some of it may have been based on actual historical events, but if you’re after an accurate recreation of life in 17th century Malay, Pirates Of Langkasuka isn’t that film. After an opening ten minutes in which a man soars through the sky in a self-made flying machine and a group of assassins demonstrate a Matrix-like ability to defy the laws of physics, it becomes clear this is very much from the 300 school of historical accuracy. Far less cynical than the revisionism of a Pearl Harbour, or much of the propagandistic historical films currently coming out of China, it’s an unashamedly fantastical movie. That being the case, it’s okay if Dan Chupong leaps in the air and flies around a bit during fight scenes which mix swordsmanship with Muay Thai to thrilling effect, just as it’s no big deal that you’re unlikely to find any mention of ninja pirates in the history books.
Pirates Of Langkasuka was originally intended as a two-part tale, but commercial considerations forced Nimibutr to condense it into one 114-minute movie. This does show. The film is overloaded with two many subplots, often overcrowding the film and the viewer’s memory of people and events. As a result, scenes such as Pari returning to his village to find the entire population, including his new wife, brutally massacred, are dealt with too briefly to hold the impact they should.
The condensed plot also takes a toll on the performances, as each of the all-star cast receives too short of a screen time to develop their characters, or fully demonstrate their talents. They come with some big reputations but there’s little on screen here to justify it. The much-heralded return of Jarunee Suksawat is a disappointment, as the veteran actress coasts through the film, and the performances of Winai Kraibutr (Nang Nak) and Dan Chupong (Ong-Bak, Dynamite Warrior) are equally underwhelming. Ananda Everingham, in particular, a huge star in Thailand, with a reputation as a fine versatile actor, often appears as little more than eye-candy for the girls, complete with a scene where he emerges Daniel Craig-like from the sea clad only in a skimpy loincloth. The only truly memorable performance comes from Jakkrit Phanichphatikram as the cannon-maker’s apprentice, Lium Kiam.
All these shortcomings are more or less forgotten, though, come the film’s literally explosive climax, a spectacular clash between the pirates and some impressively large cannons. Nimibutr, aware there’s only so much mileage to be had from the spectacle of a cannon repeatedly shelling ships, throws into the mix dive-bombing hang-gliders, Du Lum sorcerers and one very angry CGI whale. And if you’ve been waiting all your life for the chance to watch a man battle an armada of pirate ships while riding a giant manta-ray, Pirates Of Langkasuka just might be your DVD release of the year.
Fans of Asian cinema, enticed by the impressive credentials on show, may find that Pirates Of Langkasuka promises more than it actually delivers. For everyone else, Nimibutr’s movie is a mildly diverting and enjoyable enough piece of popcorn fodder. GJK
Film: Heimat Fragments: The Women
Release date: 13th September 2010
Certificate: 12
Running time: 146 mins
Director: Edgar Reitz
Starring: Nicola Schössler, Henry Arnold, Salome Kammer, Caspar Arnhold, Gudrun Landgrebe
Genre: Drama/Fantasy/History
Studio: Second Sight
Format: DVD
Country: Germany
After over 53 hours of film, you’d be forgiven for thinking Edgar Reitz had said all he had to say regarding the numerous descendents and associates of the Simon family throughout his epic Heimat series. Heimat Fragments: TheWomen is the latest addition to the franchise, combining new footage with previously unseen outtakes from all three prior instalments. Focussing mainly on Reitz’s female characters, the film attempts to show how the various women from the Simon past have combined to shape the person of Lulu Simon today.
Heimat Fragments has no plot as such, structured as a dream-like narrative in which Lulu, the 35-year-old daughter of the musician Hermann Simon, searches for something which she calls “the old future of childhood.”
As part of this search, the film sketches in forty scenes, or fragments, that deal with the lives and dreams of the women of Heimat. Scanning almost the whole of the 20th century, the women featured include Maria, Lucie, Clarissa, Renate, Olga, Evelyne, Ms. Cerphal, Helga, Marianne and Dorli from Duelmen.
Also included are old and forgotten war scenes in which her father’s brothers were involved, the day when her grandmother Maria’s last cow is taken away from the Simon farm, and Hermann, once again a schoolboy in shorts, experiencing first love with Klara, or as a young ambitious artist at the music conservatory.
Lulu views these excursions into the past as representing not only the end of her youth, but also as a means by which she can discover a new freedom…
It makes sense that Reitz returns to the theme of womanhood. The women of Heimat were always the most compelling - caught between a sense of duty toward home and family and a desire for personal freedom, they embodied most the themes of the series. Unfortunately, Lulu is one of the least engaging female characters, often coming across as charmless and self-involved. Though her personality is partly explained by being the daughter of the similarly solipsistic Hermann Simon, Nicola Schössler’s mannered performance does not make it any easier for us to empathise with her.
The worst the original Heimat series could be accused of was of being sentimental or melodramatic - though even these elements were tempered by the wider historical-political contexts, be it the rise of Nazism or Cold War and pre-millennial tension; the darkness at the edge of Heimat’s town. Filtered through the perspective of the emotionally distant Lulu, Heimat Fragments certainly can’t be accused of sentimentality, but it can be accused of self-indulgence, and of being seriously confused and muddled.
Aiming for a Proustian remembrance of things past, it falls way short - alternating between banal truisms (endless variations on looking into the past signalling the end of youth) and quasi-philosophical pretentiousness (“I am the archaeologist of the future, who excavates the present”). As if this wasn’t silly enough, Reitz has Lulu constantly wandering around with a shovel and a bore in her hands, digging in the ground, boring holes into trees and into the pillars of the music conservatory through which we look into older scenes. Clearly these sequences contain an element of fantasy, with an all-too-obvious symbolic meaning (metaphors about digging up the past are often followed by scenes of actual digging), but then Reitz insists on shooting the scenes with Lulu through a digital camera – usually the lingua franca of the gritty realist. The end result is some very cheap looking cinematography, jarring considerably with the older, more accomplished shots taken from the earlier series.
There is one moment when Reitz’s approach almost works, during a scene when Lulu revisits the village of Schabbach. As she hammers on an anvil, recalling an iconic scene from Heimat’s opening episode, she speaks of reawakening memories of days gone by. It’s an evocative moment, but the effect is quickly ruined by a shot showing a startled old man overacting as though his life depends on it, as he reacts to the ringing of the anvil. Just like the various allusions, both verbal and physical, to digging, it makes for an odd match of pretentiousness alongside an unnecessary tendency to spell things out for the viewer.
As if the piece wasn’t confused enough, Reitz also includes misjudged attempts at a post-modern self-reflexivity. There is an outtake from Heimat 2 involving the editing of a film that seems to suggest what is left out is just as important as that which is included (a conceit which might have been viable if the outtakes included in this film were not as generally banal and clearly superfluous as they are). Another scene has Lulu in a cinema, insisting: “I do not dream about a movie… The movie dreams about me.”
The picture culminates with Lulu’s attempts to communicate through the film with her father (or, rather, the image of her father upon the screen). Such attempts at breaking the fourth wall could be lauded as daring if they even came close to working, but the execution is clumsy, and the ideas behind them are never really fleshed out enough to succeed.
Of most interest to Heimat fans will be the outtakes from previous series’. However, just as we learn virtually nothing about the character of Lulu, these outtakes are similarly unrevealing. The older scenes, although not entirely without interest, add little to the Heimat series as a whole. Though they do mainly deal with the lives of the women, sometimes at turning points, involving love or career decisions, they seem fairly arbitrary. Often it’s obvious why they were originally left on the cutting-room floor, and you could go through the entire series and pick out a great number of scenes that better illustrate the themes Reitz is getting at.
Watching the fourth instalment of Reitz’s Heimat series, it is the writer Sherwood Anderson that comes to mind - never quite able to recapture the success he enjoyed through his depiction of life in the eponymous town of Winesburg, Ohio. But while Anderson at least tried to move on, Reitz seems unwilling, or even unable to. As Heimat Fragments draws to a close, the overriding feeling is perhaps it’s finally time Reitz left his own fictional village behind.
Even the most ardent fan of the original Heimat series will find Heimat Fragments hard going. Clocking in at just under two-and-a-half hours, it’s an exhausting and ultimately unrewarding watch, confused both in its message and delivery. A huge disappointment from a director capable of so much more. GJK
