190. French director Stéphane Brizé’s “La loi du marché” (The Measure of a Man) (2015): Internalized reactions to jungle law of the market forces under economic gloom

Economic stress can do strange things to an upright individual. Stéphane Brizé’s French film The Measure of a Man does not merely look at individuals who scramble for jobs to make a living, the film is equally a critical look at the human resource development teams that hire the workforce for their companies in trying times of low GDP growth. The film is set in France but the tale it presents is universal.  The film entertains sensitive thinking viewers by providing options on personal ethics one has to adopt to bring home the bacon on the table under trying circumstances.

The tale of The Measure of a Man revolves around Thierry (Vincent Lindon), a 51-year-old middle class man, with a wife and a differently-abled son. He has lost his previous job in which he evidently earned enough to own a trailer (a mobile home) to enjoy his holidays. We learn that Thierry has not lost his job because of inefficiency on his part but because his employers wanted to earn more with a leaner workforce.   Co-scripted by Oliver Gorce, Brizé’s script and movie builds on the world of Thierry 20 months after being laid off by his employer. His resentment and frustration are not directed at his past employers, they are directed at the employment exchange/services that is/are supposed to help him find a new job and his potential hirers when he applies to get a job and is given a short shrift during on-line Skype interviews. He is hurt but does not make any outbursts, when they state that they don't want to meet him face to face even when Thierry suggests that. Cyber interviews may not help every good candidate.

Thierry (Vincent Lindon) helps his differently-abled son at home

In 20 months, Thierry's savings are rapidly depleting while his responsibilities as a parent and husband looms large. The internal stress and conflict are externalized subtly by an amazing performance by Lindon, who is poised and watchful in the most trying of situations.  Brizé and Gorce craft a screenplay in which Lindon hardly speaks a word to his wife and yet communicates his support and love for her. Even with depleting finances, both he and his wife go for dance lessons together—the subtle message of the filmmakers on the couple’s compatibility will not be lost on an alert filmgoer.  The introduction of the family is completed in the first half and in the second half Thierry finds a job. This is a job which changes the human values of Thierry because he needs to keep it.  It is this change that makes you think about what you would do to measure up as a man in Thierry’s shoes. The citation of the Ecumenical Jury commendation at Cannes for The Measure of a Man reads: “For its prophetical stance on the world of work and its sharp reflection on our tacit complicity in the inhumane logics of merchandising.”

Searching for a job includes listening to humiliating assessments of Thierry
by other job seekers, half his age, on why he is not successful in his job quest

It wouldn’t be out of place to compare and contrast The Measure of a Man with the recent award-winning Dardenne bothers’ Belgian film Two Days, One Night (2014). Both films dealt with effects of unemployment and both have a pivotal central character struggling to survive. Both films are similar in style, slow paced, and yet very intense. Of course, the genders of their lead characters differ. Yet both films offer different perspectives. In Two Days, One Night, the lead character is emotionally fragile with a somewhat strong family, especially a caring husband. In The Measure of a Man, the lead character is stoic in facing his adversity but has a growing disabled son who needs the parents’ support. In the Belgian film, the focus is on attitudes of the co-workers towards a laid off worker, while the French film reverses the perspective by looking at the emotional turmoil of a worker towards his co-workers, who are likely to be laid-off for petty misdemeanours related to financial stress. More importantly, The Measure of a Man deals with lack of empathy of the human resource staff of various organizations as they recruit new employees. The French film provides several pointers where recruiters could improve on their interactions with candidates seeking a job and could thus be ideal for business students specializing on human resource management to study and reflect upon. It is easy for employment services to ask a laid off worker to take 5-month course as a crane operator. Thierry follows the suggestion only to find that there is no vacancies for the new profile that he was asked to create for himself.  Who will bear the responsibility for the lost time and effort of this unfortunate man? Would the employed person who suggested the additional burden to Thierry be accountable to the unemployed man? Brizé and Gorce step away from blaming anyone. In The Measure of a Man, the decision of to lay off an employee is made to appear to be a collective decision of co-workers and not of the employer. In The Measure of a Man, the employer is evil or inconsiderate and the ethical and considerate worker gradually becomes less ethical and considerate towards people including his co-workers, much against his conscience.

In a new job, Thierry faces a new challenge, within himself

The Measure of a Man offers a lovely screenplay that suggests continuous humiliation of a gentle soul could result in actions by the sufferer that are contrary to his nature, all for the sake of survival not just of oneself but also for the sake of one’s dependants. Debut cinematographer Eric Dumont cleverly aids the viewer to realize the internal predicament of Thierry by using long shots and close-ups as he relates to changing scenarios.

Now Brizé may not be a major French filmmaker but The Measure of a Man, his sixth feature film, proves he can make interesting and original screenplays that have a relevance in contemporary society, He can make a film that is relevant worldwide. He can get a lot said without his key character speaking a lot. He proves that the true power of cinema need not be in spoken words but in body language. That is how Brizé helped Lindon win the best actor awards for this film at Cannes Film Festival and at the Indian International Film Festival in Goa, India. 

P.S. The Measure of a Man is on the author’s top 10 films of 2015 list. The film Two Days, One Night,  compared with The Measure of a Man in the above review, has been reviewed in detail earlier on this blog.

189. Colombian director César Augusto Acevedo’s debut film “La tierra y la sombra" (Land and Shade) (2015): A grim, yet amazingly, beautiful tale of the poor when sugar cane is symbolically no longer sweet and can kill

For a debut film, César Augusto Acevedo’s Land and Shade is amazing in its simplicity and quiet power.  

Land and Shade is powerful because it deals with two things that mean a lot to most people--home and family.  When you are poor, home could mean your house, your apartment, your hut, your piece of land that you own. In Acevedo’s Land and Shade—the word “land” refers to all those things. In Land and Shade, in halcyon days decades ago, that piece of land on which a modest house stood benefitted from the shade of a giant tree.  Decades later, the sun is obliterated not by the tree but by smoke—smoke that kills the dogs and humans without distinction in the vicinity. And the smoke comes from man-made fires to burn sugarcane crop residues as a cost effective method adopted by the farm owners to clear the land before planting a fresh sugarcane crop once again. Ecologists have been increasingly critical of this practice as it has several negative effects the industry ignores, which myopically concentrates on profits.  The word “shade” in the title Land and Shade, refers to the shade of a giant tree in the past which has been replaced by the omnipresent ash flakes from burnt sugarcane stubs in the air that blocks out the sun’s rays. The film exudes “quiet” power because its soundtrack is almost devoid of music except towards the end when a song is played—and the song is translated in the subtitles as “love is written with tears.” Ironically nobody cries in this lovely film. And spoken words are minimal.

Acevedo’s remarkable debut film Land and Shade makes one recall the tale and approach of Italian filmmaker Ermanno Olmi’s Golden Palm winner The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978). Both films deal with farm labourers.  Both deal with their dwellings. Both deal with economic disparity between rich and poor on agricultural lands. Both deal with relationships between parents and their offspring.  Both deal with the pain of leaving their rural homes that they liked. Both deal with contrasts of the poor in rural farms of the poor in urban communities. Both films employ unprofessional actors. And more importantly both films are original stories and screenplays of the respective directors themselves. Despite the common threads, Land and Shade is quite different from The Tree of Wooden Clogs. And both prove to be extraordinary films.

Grandfather Alfonso and grandson meet for the first time in their house

Acevedo’s Land and Shade begins with a static camera shot of a man walking towards the camera on a dusty road flanked by sugarcane fields.  You see a truck approaching in the distance behind the man.  As the truck nears the man, he has to step aside, close to the sugarcane fields to let the symbolic monster of industrialization pass. He is covered with dust and ash as it passes.  Much later in the film, a similar situation is again captured by the filmmaker and his cinematographer. This time the same man is walking with his grandson who is enjoying an ice-cream cone. A similar truck approaches them from behind. They step aside to let it pass. The man tries to cover his grandson as best as he can. But the dust spoils the ice cream. Not a word is spoken. The visuals and sound speak louder than words. These two parallel sequences are unforgettable once you have seen them. It is not surprising the film went on to win the Camera d’Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival for the cinematography of Mateo Guzmán, possibly making his debut as a feature film cinematographer as well.

Alfonso's wife (right) and daughter-in-law work as daily wage farmhands
harvesting sugarcane often faced with delayed payments of salaries

Land and Shade is a tale of five members of a rural Columbian family delicately told. Grandfather Alfonso, we are told, left his family 17 years ago (17 years before the film’s tale begins) to live in an urban dwelling. There is no evidence of Alfonso having another spouse or other offspring. His rural house is occupied by his wife, his son, his daughter-in-law, and his young grandson. His taciturn wife, who apparently knew where he was living, has called him home to look after his grown-up and married son, who is slowly dying from the ash polluted air after struggling as a daily wage earner on the sugarcane farm. Now his wife and daughter-in-law work long hours in his son’s place to make ends meet alongside male labourers.  Scenes of flying ash from the oppressive fires resemble the locust and fire scenes of Malick’s Days of Heaven.  The intensity of the family ties in the film is not imagined but has roots in the director’s own life.

Father-in-law and daughter-in-law have a moment to themselves
(the windows are closed to keep out the dust)

Director Acevedo’s reveals why he made Land and Shade in the press kit of the film distributed at Cannes Film Festival and available online. His reasons are poignant:

“La tierra y la sombra (Land and Shade) was born of personal pain. When I began writing the screenplay my mother was dead, my father was a ghost, and because it was impossible for me to generate memories, I was condemned to lose them forever. And so arose the need to make a film that would allow me to recover the people dearest to me, using cinematic language. At the time I set out to use the most private, the most important people and events to reflect upon what our lives together had been, and what they might have been. I therefore constructed a house with words and shut everything I desired inside it. I don’t know why I hoped to find them there, in this way, but I trusted in the idea of sharing a little more time together, one last time. I quickly discovered that this was a serious mistake: I’d filled a house with ghosts that wandered from room to room without recognizing each other, incapable of expressing everything they kept inside. It wasn’t easy to understand that I needed some distance in order to construct more human characters, and I was only able to advance once I’d accepted that all I longed for in the world was gone forever.”

“The film became a way of attempting to return to my roots, of facing oblivion. Despite the inevitability of the family breakdown and the solitude this brings about, I wanted to speak of the importance of maintaining the fragile ties that bind us to those we love most, regardless of the violent emotions provoked occasionally by the internal passions that devour our hearts. For this reason I chose to give a different family some time, a final opportunity to find one another and face their guilt and pain before it was too late. The dramatic power in this conflict, however, does not lie in words, but rather in the silences, in the distance between bodies, in the gazes that never meet, and in the small things, like a plate of food growing cold on the table. Because what is truly important is not found in what the characters show or say, but in what they hide from us, or what they don’t even suspect they harbour inside. Because my roots are firmly anchored in the geography of Colombia’s Valle del Cauca region, I also wanted to base the story on the microcosm set up in the film (a family of five, a tiny house, and a tree surrounded by an oppressive sugar cane field), to speak of how a false illusion of progress has threatened the history, memory and identity of an entire people. For this reason I attempted to use cinematic language to make visible some of the greatest social problems inherent in the overwhelming expansion of the sugar industry in this region: modification of the landscape, soil destruction, the bankruptcy of small-scale farmers, poverty, disease, and displacement. To me, this film responds to an urgent need to draw attention to the rural people’s sense of belonging to the land and their valiant struggle and resistance, especially important in a country where the identities of a variety of peoples are constantly under threat.”

“Land and Shade is a hymn to life, liberty, dignity, and hope. An honest attempt to clear our vision and rethink the way we see ourselves. Perhaps in this way we can understand that what binds us is something more than indifference and that only by remaining united will we be able to face oblivion. This project is another contribution to this cause, thanks to having finally understood that my gaze is what I am, and where I’m from.”

The sick and dying son views his bleak future

In 17 years, Alosnso’s house is surrounded by sugarcane fields almost choking the building. But the big tree survives. One of the most moving conversations is between grandfather and grandson. The grandson wishes he had pet puppy dog and wistfully informs his grandfather “We can’t have dogs here because they die.” So the duo tries to attract birds that will hopefully entertain the lonely child, who cannot have a dog to play with, in that fractured environment.

Land and Shade and the 2013 Chilean film The Quispe Girls (based on a true story that took place in 1974) are examples of resurgent South American cinema by committed young filmmakers who discuss pertinent and real issues with non-professional actors, a very well thought-out script and amazing photography in their very first respective feature films. Yes, both are extraordinary debut films. Colombia should be proud of Acevedo’s persistence to make this film against all odds, eventually winning awards at Cannes Film Festival, the Best Film award at the Bratislava International Film Festival (Slovakia), and multiple awards at the Thessaloniki Film Festival (Greece). We should be proud of a man like Acevedo, who recognizes the importance of his parents and record it for posterity through a slightly fictionalized cinematic tale of quality. This is one of the most important films of 2015 proving once again that good cinema can be made with limited budgets by committed, creative filmmakers..

P.S. Land and Shade is on the author’s top 10 films of 2015 list. The three films mentioned in the above review-- The Tree of Wooden Clogs, Days of Heaven, and The Quispe Girls have all been reviewed in detail earlier on this blog.

Official Trailer - LAND AND SHADE directed by César Acevedo from Burning Blue on Vimeo.

188. Italian director Paolo Sorrentino’s second English film “Youth” (2015): Witty, cinematic, aesthetic contemplation on youth and aging—the past, the present and the future of our lives

Youth is the most rewarding film of 2015. It is not just humorous; beyond the laughs, it has a depth that any inattentive viewer is likely to miss.  It has deservedly won the Best Film, the Best Director and the Best Actor (for Michael Caine) at the European Film awards, and has predictably been bypassed at the Oscars, save for a single unsuccessful nomination for the music, for David Lang, a composer to watch out for. And, most of all, it is a fine example of delightfully composed cinematography (at a level beyond the lovely Swiss exterior shots), amazing sound effects (as opposed to music) and a clever, dense and philosophical screenplay.

The most creditable aspect of the film is the original screenplay by the director Sorrentino. Sorrentino’s films do not rely on other literary works—these are films on tales he conceives himself. He rarely employs a co-scriptwriter. Both Youth and his earlier Consequences of Love (2004) only credit Sorrentino himself as the sole author and scriptwriter. Such films deserve more respect than those that ride on the shoulders of great writers other than the film’s director since most viewers rarely note this important aspect of the credits, concentrating merely of the story rather than who was the true author and/or the scriptwriter or the originator of the tale.

The oldest look most active, the youngest most resigned
(from left to right: Paul Dano, Harvey Keitel,  Michael Caine)

Sorrentino’s four important works: Consequences of Love, This Must be the Place (2011), The Great Beauty (2013), and Youth are all inward looking existential tales—more importantly, all are original Sorrentino tales.  Each of the films is about memories, each is about human relationships, and each is about human life. In Consequences of Love, the principal character Titta overhears a girl sitting opposite him in a hotel lobby read aloud a passage from a book by Louis-Ferdinand Céline on memories, relationships and life that acts as a catalyst for his actions that follow. In The Great Beauty, the lead character Jep Gambardella, attempts to recall and resolve his life on the lines of a quote from Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night, a quote which opens the film-- “To travel is very useful, it makes the imagination work, the rest is just delusion and pain. Our journey is entirely imaginary, which is its strength.” Youth does not specifically refer to Céline’s writings but reflects on similar subjects. In Youth, retired composer/conductor Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine) with just two surviving family members--a wife  struck by dementia or Alzheimer’s disease and their daughter Lena facing a crumbling marriage--reflects  “I'm wondering what happens to your memory over time. I can't remember my family. I don't remember their faces or how they talked. Last night I was watching Lena (his grown –up, married daughter) while she was asleep. And I was thinking about all the thousands of little things that I done for her as her father. And I had done them deliberately so that she would remember them. When she grows up...in time...she won't remember a single thing.”  Those words are not far removed from another Sorrentino film with another interesting original Sorrentino script. In This Must be the Place, the lead character Cheyenne (Sean Penn) confesses on parallel thoughts “I pretended to be a kid for too long. And it is only now that I realize that a father can help and love his child. And that I have no kids makes me really, really sick.” All the four Sorrentino films provide amazing tales for a viewer to contemplate and derive pleasure for a mature, reflective mind.

Cinematographer Bigazzi conceptualizes the aging film director Boyle
recalling all the past roles of his leading ladies
in a composite dream shot.

Sorrentino’s four films discussed above are either about relationships or lack of it, in each tale. In Youth, the aging composer Ballinger visits his dementia stricken wife Melanie, who probably is not physically and mentally fit to listen to her loving husband’s soliloquy about their lives “Children don't know their parents ordeals. Sure, they know certain details, striking elements. And they know what they need to know to be on one side or the other. They don't know that I trembled the first time I ever saw you on stage. All the orchestra behind my back were laughing at my falling in love. And my unexpected fragility. They don't know that you sold of your mother's jewellery in order to help me with my second piece. When everyone else was turning me down, calling me a presumptuous, inelegant musician. They don't know that you too, and you were right, that you thought I was a presumptuous, inelegant musician at that time. And you cried so hard. Not because you sold your mother's jewellery but because you sold your mother. They don't know that we were together. You and I. Despite all the exhaustion, and the pain, and hardship. Melanie. They must never know that you and I, despite everything, liked to think of ourselves as a simple song.” That‘s great scriptwriting—“the simple song” at end of that quote is the name of Ballinger’s composition that would fetch him his knighthood in the film. The love of the old couple for each other is contrasted by Sorrentino to the fragile marriage of their young daughter and young son-in-law.

Lena Ballinger, the composer's married daughter, (Rachel Weisz):
 "..he stroked my cheek for the first time in my life!"

Sorrentino’s lovely script reverses later for Ballinger’s daughter Lena’s (Rachel Weisz) view of her father (Caine) as she confides in her father-in-law and her father’s close friend Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel), a film director trying to work out on the filming of his swansong before retiring from active life. Lena tells Boyle about her father ”You know, sometimes when I'm asleep at night, he watches me... and last night he stroked my cheek for the first time in my life. Only I wasn't asleep... I was pretending to be asleep.” And Mick Boyle sagaciously replies: “Parents know when their children are pretending to be asleep.”  This conversation for an astute viewer is a flipside of the soliloquy of Ballinger in the room of his sick wife.

The film is equally about ageing and memories. Sorrentino’s script includes a dialogue between film director Mick Boyle (Keitel) and a young lady admirer of his work where he asks her to view the Alps through a telescope.  “Do you see that mountain over there? “ he asks her. “Yes. It looks very close,” is the reply. Again you get a response that underscores ageing and memories from Boyle, “Exactly. This is what you see when you're young. Everything seems really close. And that's the future. And now. (He reverses the telescope) And that's what you see when you're old. Everything seems really far away. That's the past.”

Boyle. the film director, (Harvey Keitel) (left) and
Ballinger, the composer, (Michael Caine)

Sorrentino’s script has two lead characters—one is a composer, the other is a film director. One is interested in music, the other the visuals—both important components of cinema. A fictional actress Brenda Morel (Jane Fonda), the muse and possibly an actress whose career was built by Boyle (Keitel), and probably a reason why Boyle's wife left him never asking him to return to her, (a clever Sorrentino contrast to the steadfast Ballingers) devastates the old man by stating that his last three films were "shit" and that she would not be playing as his lead actress in his new film because she has opted for TV roles in USA instead:  “TV is the future and the present. Life goes on without all that cinema bullshit.”

The film, as any Sorrentino film would, offers dry verbal wit and visual wit in equal measure. While the elderly lead duo of composer and film director joke about their medical prostrate condition by the amount of urine they discharge each day, they need to be surrounded by young people. Ballinger  looks at a Buddhist monk meditating in the garden each day and wryly comments ,“You won't fool me. I know you can't levitate.”  Much later in the film, Sorrentino presents the monk actually levitating.  A young actor Jimmy Tree (Paul Dano) appears more exhausted than the older hotel guests such as Ballinger, Boyle and a Maradonna look-alike who can kick a tennis ball in the air as he did a football in the past. A statement is made towards the end of the film “You say emotions are overrated. That’s bullshit. Emotions are all that we have.” That leads to a suicide. That’s Sorrentino.

Bigazzi's magic

Boyle literally puts his head together with younger minds
in search of a great script for his last film

Cinematographer Luca Bigazzi was responsible for all the four Sorrentino films and his exterior shots are always a treat to watch a she contributes to the surreal humour of the script visually, whether it is the Buddhist monk, the Maradonna kick of a tennis ball, the array of Boyle’s leading lady characters of his past films on the imaginary Swiss countryside or grazing cows with cowbells that bring out memories of composing music in the past for Ballinger. Bigazzi is brilliant in Youth beginning with the introductory close-up of Keitel’s face (just as he dramatically, visually introduced Jep in The Great Beauty) and ending with close-ups of Ballinger conducting “The Simple Song” to the British royalty, prior to being knighted. Every shot of the film is composed carefully with a twinkle in the eye. Bigazzi and Sorrentino make a fine duo.

The most important aspect of the film was the sound management of the film (as opposed to the music) which adds to the surreal humour of the script. When the emissaries of the British monarchy visit Ballinger in the hotel, the viewer “hears” Ballinger’s true response by the sound of candy wrapper being rubbed in silence. The hotel masseuse responds to comments with silence and the sounds of massaging. The cuckoo clocks seem to have a view of their own.  An aged couple who sit at the hotel table by themselves never uttering a word our sound, meal after meal, much to the amazement of other guests are discovered having loud sex in the woods! Youth was top notch in sound management from start to finish and entertains in subtle ways.

Caine gives his best performance to date as the aging composer,
with a resemblance to Jep and Titta,
lead characters in earlier Sorrentino's films

Youth deserved its win as the best European film of the year. Michael Caine has arguably presented his best best performance to date and deserved the Best Actor award at the European film awards. So did Sorrentino deserve his Best Director award.

P.S. The three Paolo Sorrentino films mentioned in the above review---Consequences of Love, This Must be the Place (2011), and The Great Beauty (2013)--have been reviewed earlier on this blog. Youth is on the author’s top 10 films of 2015 list. Mr Sorrentino is also one of the author's 15 favourite active filmmakers