146. Russian maestro Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Zerkalo” (Mirror/The Mirror) (1975): An appraisal of a movie that filmmakers have rated as one of the 10 best movies of all time

Sight and Sound, the official journal of the British Film Institute, conducts two polls for 10 best films ever made--one for top film critics and one for major film directors. Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror figures in the second list as no.9 in the 2012 poll. Knowledgeable film critics would not be surprised—because any of the seven feature films of the acclaimed Russian director is truly a classic, each growing in stature by the year.

Mirror, is indeed a film that can provide immense satisfaction to a patient, intelligent viewer interested in good cinema, art, classical Western music and Russian literature. The movie has so much to offer that each patient viewer can take away a slice of entertainment from this film that differs from another slice. That is perhaps the reason for Tarkovsky (1938-86) being increasingly revered with time by new generations of filmgoers. Each of his films is spiritual, meditative, critical, and mesmerising. In an interview, Tarkovsky stated “It makes no difference to me how the public receives and interprets my films. I make films in such a way as to create certain spiritual state in the viewer” in Andrei Tarkovsky Talking, "Cencrastus" 1981 (2) [Pol. trans. Jadwiga Kobylinska]. That statement is not very different from the views of contemporary masters of cinema such as Terrence Malick or Carlos Reygadas. But Tarkovsky is intensely Russian and close to the values of the Russian Orthodox church.

For those readers who have not seen the film, a word of caution: Mirror is a very complex autobiographical film of Tarkovsky reflecting on his memories, good and bad, from childhood to adult life. Memories need not be precise but can be associated with events and epiphanies that telescope to reveal the director’s opinion on art, music, literature religion, marriage, family, politics and religion. The film is akin to many similar complex autobiographical films—Frederico Fellini’s 8 and a half (1963), Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (2011), and almost the entire body of cinematic works of Raul Ruiz. For those viewers who find Malick, Ruiz and the later works of Fellini difficult cinema to enjoy will definitely find Mirror a work that is too formidable to easily appreciate.  This review attempts to unravel and demystify the layers of dense dissemination of views from the director for a global viewership, while trying to gingerly sidestep the Soviet censorship critical of the contemporary state viewpoints at that time.

Facts vs. memories in Mirror

Again for those readers who have not seen the film, Mirror does not have a plot, it does not contain any violence or sex, and it does not follow linear (chronological) narration. To further confound matters for the viewer, the lead actress Margarita Terekhova plays two distinct characters: the narrator Alexei’s (the director’s alter ego in the film) mother and Alexei’s wife, separated by a generation.  To make matters more complex, the viewer never sees the adult Alexei, only hears him (the voice of the gifted thespian Innokenty Smoktunovsky, who played the lead in Kozinstev’s major award-winning film Hamlet made in 1964 a decade before Mirror was made). An informed viewer will find another amusing and confounding fact:  Tarkovsky’s real-life mother  (Maria Vishniyakova) does appear in the film as his aged mother replacing Ms Terekhova in a few sequences; Tarkovsky’s real-life father Arseny Tarkovsky (1907-89), a major poet of Soviet Russia, narrates his own poems on the soundtrack of Mirror but is visually represented by an actor who resembles him; Tarkovsky’s real-life second wife, Larisa Tarkovskaya, appears in an interlude as a housewife with a lovely male child who buys a set of earrings from Alexei’s  mother, and finally Tarkovsky’s  real-life step-daughter (Olga Kizilova) appears as a red-haired girl who is a love interest of Alexei. While any lesser director would have let the film drift into a typical home movie, Tarkovsky elevates the film to a sublime state of reflection (hence the title Mirror) on the importance of family and spiritual life for the viewer, encouraging the viewer to notice similar elements visual and aural that one might have experienced in one’s own life.

Margarita Terekhova as mother...

A valid question for any viewer of Mirror would be to question Tarkovsky’s decision to cast actress Margarita Terekhova as both his mother (in her younger days) and his wife who has borne him a son Ignat (as in Tarkovsky’s real-life, his first wife Irma bore him a son Arseny Jr.) and is divorcing Alexei. For Tarkovsky, his mother and his first wife were crucial figures in his life, more than his father Arseny Sr. who was away in the army and hardly an influential father figure in spite of being a poet of repute.  (Terrence Malick watchers will see a parallel strand in The Tree of Life, where the son is influenced by the mother, rather than the father.)  Even more confusing for Tarkovsky watchers is the fact that his second wife Larisa, who appears in Mirror, never divorced him and had a son with Andrei Tarkovsky called Andrei Tarkovsky Jr. Larisa, the second wife, is even buried alongside Tarkovsky in France. Evidently, the wife and son of Tarkovsky depicted in Mirror refer to Irma (Tarkovsky's first wife)  and their son Arseny Jr (whose alter ego is Ignat). Armed with these factoids, Mirror becomes less of an enigma for the casual viewer.

..and Margarita Terekhova as wife

The resemblance

Somewhere half-way into the film, Alexei’s divorced wife looking at photographs of herself with Alexei’s mother notes that they resemble each other--a comment to which the adult Alexei expresses surprise.  But the casting of Margarita Terekhova as young Alexei’s mother and adult Alexei’s wife by Andrei Tarkovsky send opposing messages to the viewer. The resemblance may not be merely physical but at a mental level—both love Tarkovsky and he realizes this but does not respond as he ought to have. Like his own father Arseny Sr., the poet, who had very little exposure to his son in his formative years, Andrei Tarkovsky’s alter ego Alexei finds that his son Ignat (alter ego of Andrei’s son Arseny Jr.) is also not comfortable with him and prefers his mother’s company to his father. It is evident that both the women (played mostly by the same actress) love their respective husbands who are physically and emotionally far away. Both are attractive young women and their respective predicaments bring tears to their eyes. But the intelligent director points out the single difference that separates the two women—his mother could be patient and reflective (the conversation between the doctor and her, preceding the mention of Chekov’s Ward no.6) while the wife is always in a hurry (the conversation between her and Ignat after she drops the contents of her bag in her rush).

Three profound sequences in Mirror

While critics have written extensively on Tarkovsky’s fondness for the sound of falling water droplets, fires, sudden wind and rain that appear and disappear without much reason, as do birds, dogs and horses (there are no horses in Mirror) in all his major films, except perhaps as epiphanies of a Joycean kind, three exceptional and unusual sequences in Mirror stood out for this critic.

For the doctor, "we are not trusting nature in us, we have no time to stop and think"

The first sequence of importance is the meeting of the doctor and Alexei’s mother sitting on the wooden fence smoking a cigarette.  The scene has a grown-up Alexei introducing the scene through a narration. Yet we see later on that Alexei is a tiny tot sleeping with his sister on a hammock at that time. If Alexei was sleeping and so young, how does one explain that the grown-up Alexei could recall the event so vividly? And interestingly during the interaction between Alexei’s mother and the doctor, Alexei’s mother glances back at her sleeping kids and at that moment Alexei’s eyes open briefly. But most of all, the intriguing conversation veers to trees and roots. The doctor speaks of “not trusting nature in us, we have no time to stop and think..” Then comes the most intriguing response from Tarkovsky’s /Alexei’s mother “What about Chekov’s Ward no.6?” That one brief statement/rhetorical question is amazing. How many of us in a similar situation meeting a stranger would bring up Chekov’s fascinating tale of a doctor in charge of a lunatic asylum being trapped as an inmate? And the doctor’s response after talking of people “not having time to stop and think” is briefly stumped but then responds “Chekov made it all up.” This innocuous sequence is probably the most loaded conversation in the entire film—in case the viewer is familiar with this particular work of Chekov and the socio-politics of Russia at the time Mirror was made.

Isn't that Leon Trotsky on the wall in the printing press?

The second sequence of importance is the one where young Alexei’s mother rushes to the printing press to check if she had unwittingly let an error slip into print. While most viewers would be pulled into figuring out the outcome of the search whether a major error has been made, Tarkovsky’s camera goes past a photograph on the wall of the printing press that resembles Leon Trotsky, who is a major Communist figure in Russia but fell out with Stalin and was assassinated in Mexico at the behest of Stalin’s government. At the time Mirror was made, Trotsky’s writings were not allowed to be published in the Soviet Union—they were only re-released in the late Eighties. Tarkovsky skirted the censors by not making political statements but this innocuous visual tells a story by itself about the director. Those who spotted this detail would have had a quiet laugh.

The third sequence of importance in the film relates to young Ignat’s conversation with a strange lady drinking tea in his apartment. She appears and disappears. She specifically asks Ignat to read Pushkin’s letter to Chaadayev and it is a conscious lesson on the history of Christianity for the Russian “soul.”  It mentions the division of Churches that is crucial for appreciating the role of the Russian Orthodox Church for Tarkovsky’s spiritual growth. It mentions the separation of the Russian Orthodox Church from every event that shook Christianity in Europe. Ignat’s parents had earlier recalled the burning bush in the Bible that appeared to Moses as they watch a younger Ignat burn some books from a distance.  (To understand the concept of the Russian “soul” in cultural and religious terms further, this critic recommends Tarkovsky’s early collaborator and filmmaker of substance Andrei Mikhalkov Konchalovsky’s recent essay on the subject.)

Family and its role in Mirror

“I think my father had no influence on me, inner influence. I owe everything mainly to my mother. It was she who helped me find myself,” reveals Tarkovsky in an interview with Jerzy Illig and Leonard Neuger (to be found on www.nostalghia.com). Tarkovsky made Mirror while his mother was alive assuming he was making a film about himself but much later, after his mother’s passing, he realizes that the film was equally about his mother as well.  In spite of all these comments, there are shots of the father figure who is caring. Arseny Sr. returning from the army on leave hugs his two children. Alexei in the opening lines of the film after the credits speak of waiting for someone to turn after the bush towards their home—and if someone did turn it would be their father.  And the scenes of Alexei’s father washing the hair of his mother and the levitation scene later on are indicative of the spiritual uxorial bonding between man and wife (and the lack of it when the mother is forced to kill a chicken in the absence of the husband). And in spite of Andrei Tarkovsky ostensibly devaluing his father, he uses him to read out his poems extensively in Mirror. The very fact that Mirror deals with Irma Raush and the son of Tarkovsky through her after their divorce, is indicative of Tarkovsky’s views on marriage.  Even the proof-reader Liza admonishes Alexei’s mother on her independent views and states unequivocally “You will make your children miserable.”  Viewers of Mirror will recall that young Alexei wakes up from a dream crying out “Papa!” The father might not have always been physically present but occupies a significant space in Tarkovsky’s life and the film Mirror through the poetry of his father.

Role of documentary footage in Mirror

A first time viewer of Mirror would wonder at the relevance of the opening black and white footage of a young boy with a speech defect being cured by a doctor using hypnosis, especially when you note the boom's shadow is obviously visible in the frame. One would wonder how a renowned director could have made such a poor sequence. Tarkovsky uses this sequence to declare metaphorically that he (the director) can now speak using the medium of “cinema” without any speech impairment. Much later, Tarkovsky stated in an interview with Jerzy Illig and Leonard Neuger (www.nostalghia.com) “For me this is almost like a prayer in which my own "I" has no significance. Because the talent bestowed upon me was given from on high and — if I'm indeed given this talent — I'm somehow distinguished. And if I'm distinguished, it means I should serve it, I'm a slave, not the centre of the universe — it's all clear. “

Documentaries were useful for Tarkovsky to interpolate in his films made in Soviet Russia since he was making these movies using the State’s finances and officials were pleased to see the documentaries as propaganda but for Tarkovsky to weave in the poems of his father Arseny Sr. and bring in his innate pride of the Russian culture through literature and history. Tarkovsky in the same interview stated “You'll go to the pictures where you'd rather watch a Spielberg film; and if you go to a bookshop, you'll buy a comic or some bestseller or other which one ought to buy. That's all. You won't buy Thomas Mann, you won't buy Hesse, Faulkner, Dostoyevsky. See, this is it: you can buy everything. Yet in order to absorb culture one has to make an effort equal to artist's own when he was creating his work. And this won't even occur to such consumer. He thinks: I can go and buy; all I have to do is pay. This is where the lack of spirituality leads. It won't occur to him that art is aristocratic — in the spiritual sense of the word, I repeat, God forbid I should use it in any other sense.” Therefore, in Mirror, during the conversation of Alexei and Alexei’s divorced wife, where Alexei suggests she should get married, the wife reveals the name of her lover to be Dostoyevsky, a writer who cannot get his works published. It is a subtle play on the predicament of writers and artists in Russia at that time, more than the particular individual.

Levitation in Mirror

"Manifestation of love on screen"

The scene in Mirror (and in Sacrifice) where Alexei’s father is stroking the hands of his wife who is seemingly suspended in mid-air is best explained by the director himself who explained it thus:  “Why do I so frequently include a levitation scene, a body rising up? Simply because the scene has a great power. This way things can be created that are more cinematic, more photogenic. When I imagine a person suspended in mid-air, it pleases me.. I find myself filled with emotion. If some fool asks me why in my last film people float up in the air, I would say: “It’s magic”. If the same question came from someone with a more acute intelligence and poetic sensibility, I would respond that for these characters love was not the same thing as it was for the author of Betty Blue. For me love is the supreme manifestation of mutual understanding, and this cannot be represented by the sexual act. Everybody says that if there is no ‘love’ in a film, it is because of censorship. In reality it is not ‘love’ that’s shown on screen but the sexual act. The sexual act is for everyone, for every couple, something unique. When it is put into films, it’s the opposite.”

Finally, is Tarkovsky’s Mirror his best work? This critic rates Solaris, Stalker and Sacrifice as superior works of cinema compared with Mirror, when appraised as a total cinema experience.

P.S. Readers of this blog will recall this critic’s admiration for both Malick and Tarkovsky.  The author of another blog “The-Tarpeian-Rock” has provided several superb examples of Malick’s imagery in The Tree of Life that recalls Tarkovsky's well-thought out selection of images in Mirror. Mirror and The Tree of Life are both among the author's top 100 films of all time.

145. Japanese maestro Akira Kurosawa’s “Ikiru“ (To Live) (1952): A prescription for curing our ailing souls and living our lives meaningfully.

“Life is so short, dear maiden,

so fall in love while your lips are still red

And before your passion cools

For there will be no tomorrow.

. . .Tomorrow will not come again.”

--The Gondola Song, written in 1915, sung by the lead character 

Kanji Watanabe (played by actor Takashi Shimura)

Two films of Akira Kurosawa figure in this critic’s top 100 films of all time: one is Dersu Uzala (1975) and the other is Ikiru (1952). There are several reasons why the Berlin Film Festival’s Silver Bear winner Ikiru is sufficiently enchanting to watch again and again. When you view Ikiru, the fact that you are watching a Japanese film slowly recedes into the background and you realize that this is indeed a powerful and universal tale, amazingly knit together by a brilliant screenplay. That it is Japanese becomes inconsequential.

It is a tale of an ineffective bureaucrat named Kanji Watanabe, who has slogged away in a government office for 30 years pushing files diligently without taking a day off or making any willful difference to anyone in his office or to society at large by acting on any matter raised in those files. Watanabe is suddenly confronted with the fact that he is dying of cancer and has a bare year to live. The first half of the film Ikiru deals with the transformation of Watanabe by this sudden revelation. The second half of Ikiru deals with how different individuals perceive his transformation differently. In fact, many film critics see parallels in Ikiru’s structure with the German Wolfgang von Goethe’s play Faust, especially with the literary work divided into Faust on earth versus Faust in macro-cosmos. The German play and the Japanese film are structured in a similar way. This is not surprising because it is well known that F W Marnau’s silent German film Faust (1926), based on Goethe's play, was one of Kurosawa’s favorite films.

The film Ikiru is not about death that will eventually strike all of us—it is a film about living a life that will make a difference to humanity, and not merely living a life that is fulfilling to us and our immediate family. It is a film that reverberates with Buddhist values that the Dalai Lama expounds: ‘‘Awareness of death is the very bedrock of the path. Until you have developed this awareness, all other practices are obstructed.’’ Now Kurosawa was not a practicing Buddhist but it quite possible that Kurosawa’s co-scriptwriters Hideo Oguni (1904-96) and Shinobu Hashimoto were Buddhists.

Dr Francis G Lu, a Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the University of California San Fransisco,  has published scientific papers on Kurosawa's (and his co-scriptwriters')  observations in Ikiru on human reactions of individuals shaken out of their mundane existence by life threatening diseases to transform themselves dramatically and lead meaningful lives. One of his scientific papers that appears in The Journal of Trans-personal Psychology, 2006, Vol. 37, No. 1, states that Kurosawa himself admitted ‘‘Sometimes I think of my death. I think of ceasing to be ... and it is from these thoughts that Ikiru came.’’ Another scientific paper on Ikiru's appeared in the same journal in 1987, Vol.19, No.2, which was co-authored by Dr Sanford Weimer, (Chairman, Department of Psychiatry, CIGNA, Los Angeles, USA) and Dr Francis Lu comparing Watanabe's transformation in Ikiru with a real life case study.  Yes, good cinema can be serious subjects of scientific journals!

For this critic, Ikiru does recall the life changing willful transformation of the Indian King Ashoka the Great (304-232 BC) from king to a monk and conversion to Buddhism, a fact  that Professor Lu seems to have missed mentioning in his otherwise excellent scientific paper written in 2006.

A jolt at the zenith of your career

It would be too simplistic to categorize Ikiru as a  mere tale of living life meaningfully before death. It is a film that explores the love of a father for his son and the apparent lack of love for the father from his son, who in his turn only cares for what he can inherit after his father’s passing. Kurosawa and his co-scriptwriters weaved a lovely discussion between the cancer-stricken bureaucrat Watanabe and the vivacious Miss Toyo Odagiri who had worked under Watanabe but subsequently wants to resign her bureaucratic job so that she could  make toy rabbits for the children of Japan. Miss Odagiri and Watanabe discuss the aspect that children "don’t ask to be born" and it finally dawns on the young lady that Watanabe led the colorless life thus far for the sake of his only son: "I know why you did it. You love him!" Evidently Watanabe doesn't have a wife anymore—so all his love is focused on his son. Watanabe wistfully confides to Miss Odagiri: “I became a ‘mummy’ for the sake of my son and he does not appreciate me. My son is far away somewhere, just as my parents were far away when I was drowning.”   These words reveal stories that are never fleshed out in the film but were there in the minds of the three scriptwriters. The Asian trait of living one’s life for the sake of one’s progeny might be unfamiliar to non-Asians.  It is this withdrawal of focus on his family that Watanabe adopts as death approaches him that is similar to another ancient Asian religion Hinduism that classifies the last two stages of a man’s life as Vanaprastha  and Sanyasa, moving away from the household duties (in Watanabe's case, of caring for his son and daughter-in-law). Now Kurosawa was neither a Hindu nor a practicing Buddhist but he was Asian in his outlook, and this Asian heritage and values come through in the final screenplay.

"Life is short"

Finally, Ikiru is a brilliant study of human characters that we encounter each day.  The first group examined in Ikiru are the typical bureaucrats that populate Watanabe’s office and who are given nicknames that typify bureaucrats. These include: 'eel' (a slippery man), 'fly paper' (a person who sticks to certain people), 'the fixed meal' (a man who has no preferences in life), 'gelatin' (the quivering man who is scared of taking decisions), 'drain cover' (a man who is figuratively dampens every mood) and 'mummy' (apparently a living dead man). And appropriately Watanabe’s nickname in his office is ‘mummy.’ In this first part of Ikiru, Watanabe decides that he will not live the last year of his life like a ‘mummy ‘ The second part of Ikiru provides equally interesting studies of various politicians and officials participating in Watanabe’s wake who show their guile in appropriating the positive contribution of the dead Watanabe as their own. More importantly those who promise to uphold the values of the latter day Watanabe, return to their desk jobs only to reprise the very actions of the inactive Watanabe of old. A policeman also attends the wake and recalls Watanabe sitting on a swing in the park that Watanabe helped create for total strangers in the falling snow singing the Gondola song after which he apparently died. The policeman feels sorry that he did not intervene and had left Watanabe to freeze in the cold.

"Christ carrying a cross called cancer" is how Watanabe is perceived by the  hack writer

The power if Ikiru is not limited to its wonderful tale. Its characters include a second-rate writer (the Mephistopheles equivalent) who has a problem sleeping and offers to show where Watanabe can enjoy women and song, and drink the best of liquor as well, when Watanabe offers him sleeping pills possibly stockpiled by Watanabe for a future suicide attempt. Watanabe's interactions with such characters and the effect he has on them are interesting details for the viewer to study.  When Watanabe tells his medical predicament to the writer, the Mephistophelian actor says “Men are such fools. They only realize how beautiful life is when they are face to face with death. And even those people are rare. Some die without knowing what life is. You are a fine man. You are rebelling against it. . .That's what impresses me. You've been a slave to life; now you are trying to master it. Man's duty is to enjoy life. It's against God's will not to do so. Man must have a lust for life. Lust is considered immoral but it is not. A lust for life is a virtue."  These interesting words reveal the combined power of the three screenplay-writers who made Ikiru what is today: Hideo Oguni (1904-96), Shinobu Hashimoto, and Akira Kurosawa. Drs Lu and Weimer have praised Kurosawa for his insights on human psychology but Oguni and Hahimoto need to share the praise from the professors as well. The conversations and the body language of varied characters can be appreciated endlessly by viewers half a century after the film Ikiru was made because of its honesty.

Screenplay writer Oguni contributed to seven Kurosawa movies, and screenplay writer Hashimoto, to eight Kurosawa films. Thus it is fascinating to note that Ikiru is an unusual product of two of Kurosawa’s closest screenplay collaborators.  Oguni would have collaborated on an eighth Kurosawa film, had Kurosawa indeed made the film Runaway Train co-scripted by Oguni and Kurosawa, but the film was eventually made by the Russian director Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky in Alaska, USA, with Hollywood actors. (Runaway Train, nominated unsuccessfully for the Best Film, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor Oscars in 1986, remains to this day, one of the favorite films of this critic. Director Konchalovsky was Tarkovsky classmate and collaborator on one Tarkovsky film.) Oguni apparently had modeled the lead role as a gangster dying of cancer but his co-scriptwriters transformed the gangster into a bureaucrat in the final script. But the one of the finest moments in the film Ikiru is when a gangster confronts the transformed bureaucrat and threatens to kill him.  "Don't you value your life?" the gangster asks the meek Watanabe "I can't be angry, I don't have the time” is the loaded reply from the dying Watanabe. It does not matter whether those lines were written by Oguni or Hashimoto or Kurosawa. Those are one of the finest lines in cinema that not only disarms the gangster but the viewer of the film. Equally important is visage of actor Shimura when he utters those lines.

The trio of screenplay writers structured the story with the denouement of the tale in the opening scenes and then probably at the behest of Kurosawa, the tale was structures on the lines of Goethe’s Faust. The end result was a film that went beyond the tale of Watanabe’s disease, transformation, and death. The film was able to put on display different sets of people and their varied reactions to the few reformed Watanabes we are likely to come across in our own lives. Do we change as ‘gelatin’, the colleague of Watanabe, did in Ikiru? Only he could appreciate the sunset as Watanabe did and evidently the transformed ‘gelatin’ had become 'rock solid' with a new perspective to living life, thanks to Watanabe.

You are ready for death when you are no longer a 'mummy'

The other pillar of Ikiru will remain actor Takashi Shimura who plays the ineffective bureaucrat dying from cancer. Actor Shimura (1905-82) was a thespian in 21 of 30 Kurosawa films—yet people tend to forget Shimura but recall another Kurosawa film regular—Toshiro Mifune, who played the tough-guy roles. Shimura on the other hand could play both the wimp and the tough guy (as in Seven Samurai) and that capability of playing distinctly different characters is why Shimura needs to be admired more than Mifune, whose roles were mere variants of the tough guy. When Shimura playing Watanabe in Ikiru was required to sing the Gondola song , Kurosawa’s apparently directed him thus:  "Sing the song as if you are a stranger in a world where nobody believes you exist." (IMDB trivia). And that is exactly what Shimura did with aplomb.

In essence, the film teaches us to go beyond ourselves and our families, to reach out with compassion to help strangers—the basic element of all the great religions including Buddhism. It is exemplified in the words and actions of the most important female character in the movie, Miss Toyo Odagiri, who resigns her clerical job to make toy rabbits for children and suggests to Watanabe: ”I mean it...all I do is make these little things. Even making these is so much fun. Making them, I feel like I'm playing with every baby in Japan. Why don't you try making something, too?"

"I know why you did it. You love him."

Every viewer of Ikiru will be forced to re-evaluate their own lives, whether they are a cancer patient or not. That is the power of this Kurosawa classic.

P.S. An Indian film Hrishikesh Mukherji’s Anand (1971) went on to win many awards including one for its screenplay. What few people realized in India was that it mirrored Ikiru. Hrishikesh Mukherji had insisted to his screenplay-writer Gulzar that he wanted to inform the audience that the cancer patient played by Rajesh Khanna was dead at the start of the movie itself (ref: IMDB trivia of Anand) --the very concept that Oguni/Hashimoto/Kurosawa had so effectively used in Ikiru. 

144. US director Terrence Malick’s sixth feature film “To the Wonder” (2012): Love your spouse in the context of divine love

Terrence Malick’s films tend to perplex certain audiences. To the Wonder is likely to leave many viewers, used to the typical Hollywood movies with unambiguous narrative tales, totally stone cold. And yet it is true poetry on celluloid for others.

Malick’s cinema is different from the average Hollywood fare. In many ways, To the Wonder is comparatively easy to appreciate amongst Malick’s body of work because this is a film that deals essentially with a regular man-woman love affair, a subject that would go down well with for most traditional movie-goers.  However, it is the treatment of the subject that is so different from the usual fare, not the subject. A major difference that an attentive viewer will pick up is that when you hear the voice-over of Marina, the main protagonist, the constant occurrence of  “you” in her monologue do not merely refer to her beau Neil but also to God. A viewer is likely to assume that she is addressing her male companion because he does appear to be the obvious center of her affection on screen—but a careful study of the ambiguous words reveals that Marina is addressing God as well.

Dance of joy during courtship

Appreciating Malick’s cinema, or at least appreciating the last five of his six films, does not necessarily require the audiences to be believers in God—but belief in God and knowledge of Christian scriptures definitely helps understand Malick’s dialectics beyond the visual and the spoken word.  Malick’s cinema can be enthralling by the sheer and combined  beauty of the pristine images of nature, natural light and physical movements of gay abandon captured by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki  (his third feature film for Malick) that visually waltzes with joy recalling the Geoffrey Unsworth’s camerawork in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey, which had sequences where space stations seemed to dance to the music of Johann Strauss. Any viewer would appreciate the importance that Malick when his films tend to linger and savor natural light (especially during twilight and dawn) and magnify the beauty of wind, plants, grasses, trees, flowers, animals and even insects-- all visuals and imagery to underscore the tale of love between men and women in the forefront of the cinematic tale.  A viewer with a taste for music can also appreciate the eclectic and the magical choice of music that Malick arranges from diverse sources (especially in his The Tree of Life, and less so in To the Wonder) in his films. In To the Wonder, Malick carefully picks sublime pieces by Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Haydn, Gorecki, Bach, Shostakovich, and Rachmaninoff and knits them into the film with profound effect.  But these very visuals and music take on added meaning, if they are appreciated in the context of the voice-overs (the spoken words that the viewer rarely sees actually being spoken by actors on the screen).  

Silent grazing bisons and humans during twilight

In To the Wonder,  Malick introduces images of the American bison, wild horses and tamed horses, and even a couple of insects on the wall of a house. Is it by accident or by design? The human behavior captured in To the Wonder appears to be a projection of these very images of natural fauna—there is Neil. who is mostly quiet but can be as violent as a bison when provoked, there is Marina who can be carefree and happy as a wild horse and simultaneously difficult to contain her impulses as a corralled horse, and there are several individuals in the movie such as the two insects on the wall attracted to each other.

Almost all the later Malick films increasingly resort to the sporadic voice-overs  of characters who are participating in the film but may or may not be in front of the camera. And in To the Wonder, Malick adds yet another element that could irritate the conventional cinema-goer:  the voice-over begins before the visuals change. Editing gets a makeover. Malick is changing the grammar of cinema in a way the French director Jacques Demy attempted with his feature film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, a 1964 French film that replaced regular spoken dialog totally with songs. No one attempted another film like that again but Malick is relentless in a somewhat similar effort to create cinema with a difference. There is hardly any conventional spoken dialogue between two individuals in To the Wonder: what the audience gets served instead are visuals, music, silence (the incredible scene with the bisons, often incorrectly referred to as the American buffalo), and meditative voice-overs. For Malick, the changes of scenes are mere beads on a rosary—they are all interconnected thematically and he wishes to make the connection more obvious by bringing in the voices of the next scene before the existing scene disappears.

W

Wonder of natural beauty set off against human beings again in twilight

What difference is Malick gradually introducing to cinema you might ask? In To the Wonder, the entire film is a visual poem with very few sequences where people speak to each other on screen. Regular dialogues are rare and minimal.  If characters speak, it is only to provide a clue to what follows.  For instance, the child Tatiana asks her mother Marina (Olga Kurylenko) in the Paris apartment, “Why are you unhappy?” The response to the on-screen question is typical of Malick—a silent street shot of Paris from a window in an apartment, suggesting the unhappiness of Marina awaiting some affirmative response from her lover Neil. This is followed up with visual scenes of happiness with Marina gamboling with joy outdoors with Tatiana and Neil after Neil invites them to Oklahoma.  Happiness is emphasized through body movements as Marina and Tatiana frolic just as the characters in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg did. Unhappiness is depicted visually when Marina is sitting on the floor trying to play a musical instrument.  Interestingly, the few instances where there is conventional dialogue, it is between Tatiana (Marina’s daughter) and Neil (Ben Affleck) and later during the interactions of the Catholic priest Father Quintana (Javier Bardem) tending his flock in his parish and in a prison. For this critic, the only few significant “conventional” dialogs in the entire film were of Tatiana rejecting Neil as her “father“ and  Quintana’s  interactions with a black parishioner on “light” versus “spiritual light” and an elderly white woman parishioner who holds the priest’s hands and stating that she will “pray for him” to the poor man’s amazement.  Almost all others spoken lines in the film involve a single statement or a rhetorical question followed by a visual answer.  Neil and Marina even fight verbally but the sound is muted and the fight is captured visually by the indirect effect on Tatiana listening to the squabble! Malick is very deliberate in what dialogues need to be heard.

To appreciate To the Wonder there are a few Malickian keys that unlock the true wonder of the film. First, Malick’s recent films seem connected in a unique manner. The Thin Red Line began with a shot of a flame in darkness. The flame reappears when the Pvt. Witt (Jim Caviezel) confronts the imprisoned AWOL First Sgt Welsh (Sean Penn) and later when Welsh asks Witt about believing in “the beautiful light” and Witt responding “I still see a spark in you.” The visual flame was further explained in the film to the viewer by the spoken words of Pvt. Bell (Ben Chaplin) “Love. Where does it come from? Who lit this flame in us? No war can put it out, conquer it. I was a prisoner. You set me free.” For Malick, divine love is introduced in his films by the flame. In Malick’s The Tree of Life, the flame is used as punctuation. It appears at the start of the film and then again when the transformation of the adult Jack (Sean Penn) is signified by the lighting of the blue candle. In To the Wonder, the first spoken lines are those of Marina “Newborn. I open my eyes. I melt into the eternal light. A spark. I fall into the flame. You brought me out of the shadows.  You lifted me from the ground. Brought me back to life.” To those uninitiated to Malick’s cinema, these words would be a monologue of Marina representing love with Neil. That would be too simplistic an interpretation of the words. It is actually a spiritual rumination. And this aspect can only be accepted by a viewer who accepts God or accept cinema that deals with God. The final words spoken in the film are also a spiritual statement from Marina “Love that loves us. Thank you.” Again to the un-initiated Malick viewer, this crucial monologue of Marina could also be relating to Neil, but it is not. It is an intense personal conversation with God. The entire plot of the film falls into place, if we note the last words, especially the epilogue following Mariana’s second departure to France followed by the wild horses running free and wild in Oklahoma---all visual clues for the viewer to understand the ending of the tale.

The film, ostensibly a love story of Neil and Marina, is structured on four key sacraments of the Church—baptism, marriage, confession and the Holy Communion. There is no baptism: we only hear the opening words of being “newborn” when the”child” in the film is actually a grown-up Marina who is entering a second marital relationship. There are several mentions, visual and aural, of marriage and how Marina, a Catholic, is worried about the aftermath of her first broken marriage and implications it has on her spiritual life (recall the brief statement she makes to Fr. Quintana on her arrival in Oklahoma, prior to her second marriage, on the sacraments.) Then she is tempted to commit sin within marriage and there is a subsequent confession (to both the priest and to her husband separately). Marina significantly receives the Holy Communion after her confession from the priest.

Malick is urging his viewers to study the parallels of Marina’s life as she struggles to discover true love while searching in vain for a resolute response from Neil with the crisis of faith of Fr Quintana as he tends to the contrasting spiritual needs of sick and dying members of his Parish, the rich members of his Parish who are only concerned about adding facilities to the existing Church, of convicts in jails who see his visits as a glimmer of hope of salvation. And yet the priest rues “Everywhere You are present, and yet I can’t see You. You are within me, around me, and I have no experience of You. Not as I once did.” Malick seems to be revisiting the theological doubts of the priest in Ingmar Bergman’s 1963 classic film Winter Light. A moot question for the viewer would be why does Malick introduce the priest into this cinematic tale? The priest helps put into context the importance of the blessed sacraments that Malick is discussing in Marina’s life—marriage, confession of sin and absolution though Holy Communion. The movie is centred on Marina not the priest. (In Malick’s earlier film, The Tree of Life, a priest was included to provide a sermon on bereavement with a touch of Kierkegaardian philosophy “Do you trust in God? Job too was close to the Lord.”) Priests in Malick’s films are not ornaments—they add to the theological debate running through the length of the films. Regular Malick followers will note a startling departure—the priest is for the first time is a Roman Catholic. In To the Wonder, the priest serves a similar function to the one in The Tree of Life—to give prescient spiritual meaning to Neil’s actions with his sermon “To choose is to commit yourself and to commit yourself is to run the risk of failure. Forgiveness he (Jesus) never denies us. The man who makes a mistake can repent. But the man who hesitates, who does nothing, who buries his talent in the earth, with him he can do nothing.” Neil defers commitment and when he does so, he walks on a tight rope from which he could easily fall off.

Spirituality is not limited to priests in Malick’s films—it pervades the few spoken lines. Jane (Rachel McAdams) speaks of losing a child and her father consoling her and asking to read Romans, a book in the Bible, and Jane speaks the specific lines to Neil “And we know that all things work together for good (Romans 8:28). He believed that and prayed with me”

Human beings set against a man-made wonder and silt deposits surrounding the monument 

There is yet another parameter that can be used to appreciate the film To the Wonder: this is the element of earth and sky, what is below us and what is above us just as Fr Quintana’s sermon mentions “burying one’s talent in the earth.” The unusual Mont Saint Michel is a deliberately chosen location by Malick to fit into the tale. The 11^th century abbey and church is built on an island on the French coast with formidable architecture considering its natural foundations. It is today a UNESCO World Heritage site that is called the Wonder. Malick uses visuals of climbing the steps and the unusual and dangerous silt (caused to accumulate by short-sighted human decisions)  near the sea front surrounding the heritage site reacting to the sea tides as recurring symbols of God in the heavens (a repeat of The Tree of Life) and heavenly love as opposed to human love on earth.  The film is peppered with voice-overs that refer time and again to the sky and heights as counterbalance to the polluted earth and waters below our feet. Visually there are shots of the sky through trees, of birds just as there are shots of turtles swimming underwater.  There are sufficient visual and verbal suggestions that we on earth are polluted (as the soil of the Oklahoma town) and imperfect and that we need to let the light of goodness shine on earth.  The shore line of Mont St Michel with the abbey in the background reappears at the end of the film to highlight the difference in heights subtly introduced time and again throughout the film in different contexts. Every visual shot reinforces Malick’s total appreciation of divine love, which for Malick comes from above but can be found below as well. The script is Malick’s own and one can guess there are considerable autobiographical touches to the tale, by the mere fact that Malick once lived in the town of Barnesville where the movie is largely shot.

Just as The Tree of Life was a paean to the love of a man for his dead younger brother and for his mother, To the Wonder is a paean to the love of a woman for her husband. In both films, the reassuring touch of hands embellishes this idea. In The Tree of Life there was the evocative scene of the child reaching out to its elder brother’s hand.  In To the Wonder a similar affection is alluded to as future man and wife hold hands in the train. Both films use images and emotion of love between individuals to study and appreciate divine love. “We were made to see You” says Fr Quintana in a parting monologue towards the end of the film. The pollution and the filth around the town is set off against the beautiful natural unpolluted visuals of birds in flight and flowing water.

A poster that tells a tale: a symbolic fold in the middle, suggesting the Neil-Jane interlude

Having seen the entire body of Malick’s feature films, The Tree of Life, The Thin Red Line and Days of Heaven are three films that tower over all the others in substance and scope of subject matter, while each work of Malick will provide additional satisfaction with repeat viewings, just as we never tire of reading monumental works of literature again and again.  Malick is indeed America’s most awesome living filmmaker.

P.S. The Tree of Life, The Thin Red Line and Days of Heaven have been reviewed earlier on this blog and are included in the author’s top 100 films of all time. To the Wonder won a minor award at the Venice film festival 2012.

143. Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino’s film made in USA “This Must Be the Place” (2011): Place and time continuum reinforced for the reflective viewer

Paolo Sorrentino is definitely a talented director.  His films considerably rely on visual statements.  Sorrentino’s This Must Be the Place indirectly urges the film’s viewer to observe the details of visual statements, which often put in context the quaint sense of humor of the spoken word in the film.  That does not mean the viewer should miss the quirky spoken words either, such as the deadpan non sequitur "Why is Lady Gaga?"  The most important lines, stated nonchalantly, come mid-way into the film and those lines are the key to understanding it:

“You have to choose a moment in your life to be not afraid.”

“And have you chosen that moment?”

“Yes, I have.”

Those critical lines explain the entire film for those who might find the film exasperating to understand, beyond the obvious strands of the film being a cocktail of a road movie, a detective movie and a Nazi-criminal-hunt movie.  It also a vengeance movie but one that presents the antithesis of violence one associates with Hollywood vengeance movies, a la Quentin Tarantino. The film is perhaps best described as a psychological study about individuals who wear masks and are able to remove their masks when they are no longer afraid and ultimately realize they don’t need masks to survive. The film also gives importance to the time and place when a life-changing moment in one’s life allows for an important u-turn in your life, a point in life when you mentally grow up.

Cheyenne (Penn) and wife (McDormand)

This Must Be the Place is an unusual film and for many viewers half an hour into the film will probably make them cringe away from looking at the screen and instead glance in the wrong direction—the exit door. One is likely to have similar urges with Sorrentino’s spectacular and more complex work The Consequences of Love (2004) as well. However, if you have some forbearance, both films will prove to be audacious, intelligent and rewarding provided you stay glued to the screen right up to the end of the film. And if you do stay right up to the end, you are likely to be delighted to have viewed cinema of a distinct and unusual quality and re-evaluate the early bits of any Sorrentino film in a totally new light once the movie gets over.  That is the amazing talent of Sorrentino.  And Sorrentino is only 42!

Sorrentino is an Italian who has made his name with works totally Italian. And yet his latest film which is only his fourth feature film,  This Must Be the Place is remarkably different: it is in English language, with Hollywood actors, and capturing Americana as an American director would to the bone. But the movie retains its European directorial style, just as German Werner Herzog made Stroszek (1977) or German Wim Wenders who made Paris, Texas (1984) and decades later followed up with The Million Dollar Hotel (2000) in USA utilizing several Hollywood stars, some of whom were already major actors elsewhere before they became to be known as Hollywood stars.

Fear of flying

This Must Be the Place has major Hollywood stars—Sean Penn and Frances McDormand.  And Sean Penn does an amazing turn as a burned out Goth Rock star, a character that is bizarre but will remain indelible in the minds of most viewers.  Sean Penn wears lipstick, eyeliners, and a weird hairdo and talks slowly in a manner one associates with drug addicts. You begin to wonder initially if Penn is playing a transvestite and then you realize he is not. He is just a rock star caught in a time warp and living retired life in Dublin, Ireland, as though he is still mentally on stage before a live audience of screaming fans. We soon realize he is not dangerous but an innocent and well-meaning husband with strange tastes for his appearance. But Penn and Sorrentino create another dimension:  Penn speaks slowly but in unusually high pitch in this role and what he speaks is never tripe but often measured words of wisdom.  When being served a cheeseburger, the waitress converses with Cheyenne (Sean Penn) and apologizes that the burger is a bit too well done. “You don’t mind, do you? Unfortunately that’s life” she adds. Cheyenne’s deadpan response is “You know what the problem is...we go on from an age where we say ‘My life will be that’ to an age where we say ‘That’s life’.” Or take another case when Cheyenne is offered a cigarette he responds “Smoking is only for kids who haven’t grown up.” Now that is Sorrentino and co-scriptwriter Umberto Contarello at work.  All these lines tell you that the film is definitely more than a road movie, a detective movie and a Nazi-criminal-hunt movie.

Making contact, when in trouble, with his wife

The opening shots of Sean Penn applying lipstick and eyeliner and sporting the weird hairdo of Goth Rock musicians give the viewer a clue. This is a mask of a troubled mind.  But then the clues of what is bothering Cheyenne only slowly tumble out. Despite the lovely house in Dublin (evidence of sufficient financial security) and a 35 year old stable marriage with a loving wife (Frances McDormand) who is a fire-fighter and loves “saving lives”, it is easy for the viewer to note that Cheyenne is carrying heavy emotional baggage.  We first learn that two teenage kids committed suicide due to the lyrics of Cheyenne’s songs and this has affected him. Then we learn of his fractured relationship with his father in USA, who is a Holocaust survivor on his deathbed. We also note that an old woman and Cheyenne’s not-so-cheerful neighbour in Dublin hates the sight of the old pop star every time he passes by her window because she associates Cheyenne with her son who has left her for a long while. And we realize that Cheyenne understands her pain: he himself is suffering the pangs of a broken father-son relationship.

This Must Be the Place is a film that suggests violence but does not show it—in fact the film is an ode to non-violence.  Sorrentino’s original script has some lovely comments about the easy purchase of guns in USA. In a gun shop, in the film, a customer comments: “If we are licensed to be monsters, we end up with only one desire--to truly be monsters.” These are the gems of a Sorrentino film that makes you think.

Sean Penn and Sorrentino build up Cheyenne’s character with great care—it is part feminine, part childlike. The character is only deceptively childlike. When someone remarks “Didn’t you use to drink a lot?” Cheyenne answers, “Enough to decide to stop.” The adult in Cheyenne is revealed by the uncanny detective skills he employs to reach his target—a Nazi criminal. He meets the Nazi criminal's wife as though he is an old student of hers.  He meets his Nazi criminal’s daughter and grandchild and even sings a song at their request. To locate his Nazi, Cheyenne chats up the inventor of adding wheels to bags (played by Harry Dean Stanton, a mild reference to Wenders’ movie Paris, Texas). 

With a native Indian

As a road movie, there is even a silent but evocative drive with a silent native Indian and a ping pong game where Cheyenne teaches youngsters the finer points.

Without revealing the crucial outcome of the Nazi-criminal and Cheyenne meeting, the more important aspect is how it transforms Cheyenne.  He has a haircut. He is able to walk in Dublin with an energy that eluded him before his trip to see his estranged father in USA. He can look straight in the eye of his neighbor looking at him out of her window.  Cheyenne has not just physically changed, he has changed psychologically. He has dropped off the emotional baggage. And the best part of the Sorrentino tale, the old woman gets transformed by the sight of the new Cheyenne. She is able to see that one day her own son could also return to her, transformed as Cheyenne has.

The visual tale

What is remarkable about This Must Be the Place to make it one of the finest films of 2012? Apart from the obvious remarkable performance of Sean Penn and Sorrentino’s story/screenplay/direction, it is the film’s ability to raise the quality of cinema by its images. All the four Sorrentino films released so far have Luca Bigazzi, the cinematographer, making his definite imprint on the viewer.  Bigazzi’s outdoor crane shots and the long shots come alive on the big screen.  Both in The Consequences of Love and This Must Be the Place (the only two Sorrentino  films that this critic has seen)  the alienation of the main characters are accentuated by their physical loneliness captured on camera with no individual in proximity. Even when filming scenes indoors, Bigazzi/ Sorrentino capture the loneliness with large spaces and distances. My favourite scene is of Penn/Cheyenne sitting alone in a darkened room watching slides and as the slides change the camera captures his face and the discrete changes in emotions, punctuated by the total darkness that merges with his black hair. A remarkable and clever sequence involving camerawork, screenplay and editing is how the scene of David Byrne singing the title song is introduced into the film that begins with woman sitting in an armchair in a closed room with the visuals taking you to David Byrne performing and Cheyenne commenting on the song to Byrne. However, in scenes where Penn and McDormand are together there is not much of distance separating them as they are evidently portraying a happy couple.  (In an interview, Sorrentino revealed that the close relationship and understanding in the film between Cheyenne and his wife is built on Sorrentino’s own relationship with his wife.)  Even in the shot of Cheyenne returning from the US approaching the window of his neighbor who had earlier despised him the physical distances between them appear to be reducing. Every shot in the Sorrentino films reminds one of the visual distances you encounter in films of Antonioni.  

Cheyenne is hyperactive playing handball with his wife in an empty swimming pool

This Must Be the Place might not be as great a film as The Consequences of Love but it definitely proves that Sorrentino, Penn and Bigazzi are each remarkable in their own individual but versatile contributions they have made to this lovely film. The film deservedly won the Ecumenical Jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival 2012.

P.S. This Must Be the Place is one of the top 10 films of 2012 for the author. Sorrentino’s The Consequences of Love has been reviewed earlier on this blog.

142. British film director Ken Loach’s film “The Angels' Share” (2012): A comedy that entertains and makes you think as well

If you get half a dozen viewers of this lovely film together across a table and ask them what the film was all about after they had watched it, you are likely to get up to six different views on the same film. 

One would say it is a comedy. One would consider it to be a caper film. One would call it is a cinematic essay on the virtues of single malt whisky.  Another would see it as a study of dilemmas facing the urban Scottish youth today.  Yet another would see the movie as a critical look at the English judicial system and its inadequate ways to reform delinquents who would love to reform and seek a life far away from the urban violence and gang warfare that they are involuntarily pulled into. A smart guy could interpret the tale as a family film, on the virtues of  looking ahead to build a financially secure future for your nuclear family. And there could be yet another view that this is a lopsided movie where the “bad” guys win. And all of these perceptions of the film would be correct. That is the intriguing aspect of The Angels' Share and that is also its unusual strength.

The reformer spotting the reform-able

If you ask a person of my age, The Angels' Share is first and foremost a lovely fictional tale revolving around Scotland’s most popular and distinct produce:  fine Scotch whisky, and more specifically, single malt whisky. And the film is NOT about people guzzling down the lovely liquid, euphemistically called the “water of life”; the film is instead a very educative movie that reveals all about the complexities of manufacturing it, aging it, grading it, evaluating the better ones by connoisseurs, and finally auctioning the rarest of the single malts (called “Malt Mill” in the movie) for incredible sums to bidders from all over the world, where the cost could be literally higher than gold.

In the words of director Ken Loach provided in an interview to Neil Ridley in the Whisky magazine: “Appreciating whisky is about taking great care and enjoying it. It’s the opposite of just getting wasted. So, like anything, it’s about catching the imagination of younger people. It has the added bonus of requiring the drinker to keep focused to discover what they really like. (In the film) we discuss the remarkable longevity and job security often experienced at many of Scotland’s well-known distilleries and the fact that the whisky business is one of the only industries where people have remained with the same employer for decades, helping to maintain the sense of local community in rural Scotland.” Thus, in a way the film is not about whisky per se, but about the workers who are devoted to the industry that has made Scotland and fine whisky synonymous worldwide. Much of the film educates the viewer and would even serve as case studies for human resource management gurus as to why employees of these distilleries remain loyal to their employers—and, perish the thought; it is not because they get to swig the liquid.

One of the first and most important bits of trivia the viewer of the film learns is the meaning of the movie’s title: The Angels' Share.  When good whisky is aged in wooden oak barrels a small percentage of the liquid is lost to evaporation, and the varied flavors that the different oaks used to make the barrel can impart to the liquid ultimately makes the evaluation of the final product so important. The rarest of the single malts are auctioned just the way famous works of art are auctioned and buyers from all corners of the globe bid astronomical sums.  But then is the film The Angels' Share about whisky alone or something else?

The 76-year-old Ken Loach’s cinema (often termed as “kitchen-sink” realism) has been varied if one looks at his body of work. He has discussed the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War in The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006), which won the director the highest honor at the Cannes film festival that year.  His documentary film Which Side are You On? (1985), with the cinematographer Chris Menges,  was based on the songs and poems of the UK coal miners’ strike and the movie went on to win an award at the Berlin film festival after it encountered some stumbling blocks after it was made. Loach’s most important work is arguably Kes (1969), also with cinematographer Chris Menges, a tale of a troubled schoolboy and his pet bird, a kestrel. Today Kes is widely accepted as one of the finest works in British cinema.  In recent years, Loach’s nine film collaboration with Kolkata-born screenplay writer Paul Laverty has been phenomenal. The collaboration includes award-winning films The Wind that Shakes the Barley, The Angels' Share, Bread and Roses (2000), Carla’s Song (1996), Tickets (2005: co-directed by Iranian Abbas Kiarostami and Italian Ermanno Olmi) and Sweet Sixteen (2002),  Loach is definitely a socialist and a Free Thinker. And that is what makes his films tick—not just the subject he chooses but rather his approach to the subject. And going by the recent films, Paul Laverty has contributed considerably to Loach’s work getting increasingly recognized.

The Whisky magazine interview reveals this collaboration further when Loach discusses the genesis of The Angels' Share. Says Loach “Well Paul and I were endlessly nattering about the way of the world and the starting point was the massive alienation that you find among young Scottish people--where they’re often victims of a system that gives them nothing. We spent some time with them and were really struck by their wild senses of humor  how inventive they were and how they don’t fit the stereotype of what you’d imagine. From that, we started to think of a story that would really reflect this and give people a positive view of those who are often disregarded. Paul had the idea of marrying that with the ‘national industry’ and the arcane and extravagant language that whisky lovers use.”

Getting the "share"

Therefore, director Loach and scriptwriter Laverty leverage the world of whisky production in The Angels' Share to give the viewer a comedy, a robbery film, and a social study of Scottish youth all knitted well to suit different viewer tastes.  The filmmakers are aware of the problems that face the poorer sections of the Glasgow population, mostly not well-educated and with few job opportunities available for them, caught up in the web of urban petty wars (or call it gang violence) that are generations old and eventually make the youngsters end up as law-breakers. The Angels' Share begins by focusing on the youngsters as Glasgow delinquents who take to drugs and violence and gradually become regular lawbreakers. Later into the film, the socialist Loach presents another contrasting view:  the educated and the rich can be equally doing acts that are against the law. The filmmakers point out that there are unethical criminal minds even among very important people in society who can be connoisseurs of single malt. Therefore, there is not much difference between those accepted in society and the social misfit Glaswegians, who just need a chance to change their lives. Loach and Laverty develop the film’s tale where actions of the ‘innovative’ and struggling delinquents appear acceptable as today’s modern quixotic Robin Hoods, who with their talent are able to conjure up law-breaking acts that forge a pathway to reform themselves and escape getting sucked into a no-win whirlpool of crime and punishment.

It is equally a family film where the new responsibility dawning on a young father makes a life-changing difference in attitudes. A misfit in society suddenly yearns to fit into the very society that would have rejected him through his own ingenuity and a little help from a mentor who has faith in him.

A fellow film-festival junkie was exasperated that he could not follow the merry jokes that pepper the film, which this critic fortunately could, having worked with Scots as colleagues over the decades.  For those who might be watching the film on DVD, it might help if the subtitles are turned on to aid with the comprehension. If you can follow the language in the movie, the film would prove to be a delight apart from some obvious visual humor of police harassment of the kilt-wearing youngsters.

Realism mixing with visual humor

There is an underlying message that the film offers. That message is typified by the character of the community service supervisor in the film. Even the dregs in our society can redeem themselves if one gives them a fleeting chance to do so, especially when they are young, and steer them in the right direction. Some viewers of The Angels' Share might wonder if the ending of the film is an ethical one—but one has to consider the broader canvas of the film that Loach and Laverty have painted on and we realize the film’s stealing angle is only a segment of the total picture. The movie is about a bouquet of subjects—it is even a tale of a "bad guy" reforming as much as it is a classical love story of the hero riding off into the sunset with his spouse and their new born child.

And that brings us back to double meaning of the movie’s title The Angels' Share.  The second meaning of the term in the movie’s context could also be interpreted as the share of the robbery for the true angels in the film. The Angels' Share is a movie that gets you to tap your feet to the music of the Proclaimers’ 1988 song ”I am gonna be/500 miles” that also underlines the optimism of the film embodied by the engaging debut performance of actor Paul Brannigan as the lead character, Robbie, in the film. The film won for Loach the Cannes jury prize in 2012, which is effectively the prize given to the second best film in competition each year. And Loach continues to bewitch audiences and film festivals decade after decade.

P.S. The Angels' Share is one of the top 10 films of 2012 for the author.