269. Canadian film director Denis Côté’s tenth feature film “Hygiène sociale” (Social Hygiene) (2021) in French, based on his original script: An unusual film that serves to entertain verbally and visually as a dark comedy, without sex or violence

The title of the film Social Hygiene will remind viewers of the Covid pandemic’s cardinal rule to avoid infection—maintain social distancing to avoid infection. In fact, no two characters make physical contact in the entire film and maintain at least a 12 feet distance between each other. There is no mention of Covid or even wearing of masks in the film. Simply put, though the film was made during the pandemic, the film has nothing to do with it. Further, the film’s original script was written by the director Denis Côté in 2015, much before the onset of the pandemic. 

 

Antonin (right) spars verbally with his love
Cassiopée, while her new admirer silently watches 
in the background

The film is built around the pivotal character, Antonin, married, but staying away from his wife, Eglantine. Where? In a friend’s Volkswagen! Antonin, we realize is prone to making up unreal stories, is well read, deft with language wordplay, and is a thief, vandalizing cars in the process. The director/screenplay-writer Denis Côté’s central character encounters four ladies apart from his wife Eglantine. He meets with his sister, Solveig; his secret love, Cassiopée; a lady named Rose from the Ministry of Revenue tracking him down to coerce him to cough up his unpaid tax dues; and finally, Aurore, who has been also tracking him to get back a jacket and a computer he stole from her car, and some compensation for smashing its windows to steal those items.   

Antonin talks to his wife Eglantine

Antonin talks to Rose (note she wears pink),
the tax collector who can send him to prison

All the meetings with the five ladies are staged like a Samuel Beckett play with two or three characters (always including Antonin) in open grassy fields, often on the edges of forests. There is minimal movement from the characters often rooted to the same spot; only wordplay ensues with pregnant pauses between spoken lines. The only exceptionally active scene is Aurore dancing by herself in the forest to music, the source of which is never revealed. Why and what provokes Aurore, a theology student who works in a McDonald’s outlet, to suddenly dance or decide to take an interest in criminals is an amusing conundrum. To the casual viewer, the social criticism of Facebook, internet and taxes in the script may not be obvious. All the characters have lines to speak that refer to the ills of contemporary society and lifestyles.   

Antonin interacts with Solveig, his sister,
after she states that she found a lover at a restaurant
Note: She is still holding her wine glass 

Côté’s Antonin (mostly captured by the static camera in long shots, with a rare close-up towards the end of the film) is revealed as a filmmaker struggling to complete his script, and responds to Aurore’s revelation that she is a student of theology thus: “I believe in myself. I believe I can find the keys to my enigmas in my life by myself.”  

Antonin returns the jacket he stole from
Aurore's car to her. Note: Aurore's dress differs
 from those worn by other women

When asked about when and where he met his wife, Antonin wittily replies “I met my wife in a zoo, by the cage of the hyena. The rest is a long quiet river.” 

In Côté’s interesting script, the best lines are not invested with Antonin alone. Antonin’s love Cassiopée calls him a narcissist and says “You are 100 times dead. I love you as a zombie....Men are like mushrooms. The more handsome they are the more poison they contain.” The cocky Antonin pleads and buckles under Rose’s threat “I have the key to your prison cell at the edge of my pen,” to pay his taxes. To Aurore, Antonin agrees to return the jacket and computer. His sister, Solveig, finally finds a lover over tea and long tales, uttering the words “Carpe Diem.” His wife, too, leaves him for another lover. The once confident and witty Antonin is completely “socially distanced.” 

Antonin holds a flower he wishes to present to his love
Cassiopée (center, background) while his wife (left)
notes it all and decides to leave her philandering husband

Denis Côté, the filmmaker is essentially a charming, absurdist playwright, who stages his written work in natural open surroundings with clearly demarcated stage markings for his actors in grassy patches with distant bird, animal, and traffic sounds on the soundtrack. The rare body movements of most characters are in sharp contrast to Aurore flexible body movements during her dancing spell in the film. 

Aurore dances in the forest, the only character
in the film who moves a lot physically

While Côté presents verbal sparring that will interest most viewers, there are details that some could miss. The clothes worn by all actors are period costumes a century old, with the sole exception of Aurore’s clothes that are contemporary. Thus her clothes and her dance movements are in interesting contrast to all other characters. Is Côté suggesting that Antonin’s appropriate love interest should be Aurore, not the characters wearing century-old costumes? Antonin does confess he finds Aurore attractive. 

Antonin (Maxim Gaudette) levelled by all women:
The only close-up shot in the entire film

Then there is a deliberate smudge in the static vision to the left corner of the First Act in the countryside with Antonin sparring with his sister possibly to accentuate the picture postcard shot, because Solveig retains her hands-on-the-hips pose for a long while. When the static camera moves, there seems to be a purpose to intervene in the social distancing of the actors and the camera. Denis Côté’s film provides unusual entertainment for those who can appreciate good playwrights and a totally fresh approach to the medium that is visually and verbally witty. A very interesting filmmaker setting a new style! 

 P.S.  Social Hygiene won the Best Director award at the Berlin Film Festival’s “Encounters” section and the Best Director award at the Fajr Film Festival in Iran. This film is one of the best films of 2021 for the author.

246. Palestinian director Elia Suleiman’s fifth feature film “It Must Be Heaven” (2019): A marvellous visual treat and a film appropriately dedicated to John Berger and the director’s late parents

Elia Suleiman’s fifth feature film It Must Be Heaven is one of four important films made in 2019 with semi-autobiographical components from the life of the four respective filmmakers.  The three others films are  Spanish director Pedro Almodovar’s Pain and Glory, US/Italian director Abel Ferraro’s  Tommaso and the British director Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir.  Among the four films, only It Must Be Heaven has its director appearing in front of the camera and that too without hiding under a fictional name/alter ego.

Director Elia Suleiman as he appears in the film,
travelling in a Parisian metro train

Mr Suleiman’s film has the director appearing with a signature hat and wearing a dark jacket and spectacles. He does not speak a word while others talk to him. He is obviously absorbing activities physically close to him, sometimes perplexed, sometimes bemused, and sometimes immersed in thought.  The viewer would see parallels between his screen persona and Jacques Tati’s Monsieur Hulot in Tati’s films Mr Hulot’s Vacation, My Uncle, Playtime and Traffic.  Unlike Tati’s four films with the fictional Hulot as an extension of Tati, Suleiman prefers to be identified by his real identity Elia Suleiman, the Palestinian film director, delicately comparing the no-win situation for Palestinians within Palestine with parallel situations for a Palestinian or any person of colour or limited means living (or visiting) in France and in USA.  Why France and the US? The director explained, in an interview, that he had lived in each of those two countries for 14 years apiece. For those viewers who are familiar with John Berger’s seminal book on art appreciation Ways of Seeing and the related TV series made in 1972 will see the connection between Berger’s work and  ways to approach (as a viewer) Suleiman’s It Must Be Heaven. Berger had maintained in his book that “photographs always need language and a narrative to make complete sense.” The visuals of It Must Be Heaven become richer with the spoken words and narrative structure of the film. Thus a viewer who misses out on the director’s dedication statement at the end of the film or one who does not know about John Berger and his book will only get a diluted taste of the film’s rich visual, seemingly unconnected, episodes that are actually strung like beads of an ornate necklace.

A Palestinian man drinking Scotch whiskey but upset that his sister
has been served food with wine as an ingredient, as women are not
supposed to imbibe wine or liquor

What is admirable about the film It Must Be Heaven is its ability to criticize Palestinians while making a film that is indirectly supporting their cause. The opening sequence is of a Greek Orthodox Easter ritual (in Bethlehem?) where a bishop, leading his flock of worshippers, knocks three times on the door of a holy crypt expecting it to be opened from inside by the church staff.  The inebriate person behind the door refuses to open the door, until the irate Bishop removes his religious headgear and physically forces the inebriate individual to open the crypt door by accessing the crypt through another entrance. The viewer can hear the distinct breaking of a bottle, possibly by the angry Bishop. Suleiman is criticizing both the church and the inebriate Palestinians. The director Suleiman is a Palestinian Christian. In another tableau, reminiscent of Roy Anderssons’ films, Suleiman while sitting in a restaurant in Palestine watches two Muslim male Palestinians sitting on another table and imbibing Scotch whiskey, while their sister is eating on the same table. Suddenly they complain about the food served to their sister to the restaurant owner about a change in the taste of the dish, which their sister had enjoyed in the past.  The restaurant owner explains that the dish has been prepared with a dash of wine for the first time to enhance the taste. The explanation only angers the men as their sister is not permitted to consume liquor (for religious reasons?) and their anger is doused by the restaurant owner who offers them free Scotch whiskey to make amends for having served a food preparation that contained wine. Then there are Palestinians who steal their neighbour’s lemons in the guise of tending the lemon trees, men who tell unbelievable  tales of snakes who fill air in a flat tire and repair it and a woman who trudges a distance multiple times because she is carrying two vessels of water, one vessel at a time.

Suleiman takes swipes at the callous attitudes of Israeli policemen in two separate vignettes. In one, Suleiman, driving his car, passes an Israeli police car with its two policemen switching their sunglasses playfully, while a blindfolded Palestinian woman (arrested, one assumes) sits behind them quietly.  In another vignette, two Israeli policemen are busy with a set of binoculars, while close at hand a vagrant urinates on the street and smashes his liquor bottle, not attracting the attention of those cops.

Director Suleiman in Paris, in front of a shop appropriately
named "The Human Comedy"

All these delectable/critical views of “home” (Palestine + Israel) are contrasted and compared with Suleiman’s “homes away from home” (France + USA) in the latter part of It Must Be Heaven.

The film director returns to France and then to USA seeking financial support for his next film. The converse visuals in France and in USA, appear to be unconnected but are sending messages for perceptive viewers.  In a Parisian near-empty metro rail car a menacing young man glares at the docile Suleiman, and the viewer expects an ugly event, until you see him eventually playing with beer cans. The viewer has to put the sequence in perspective with another one earlier in the film where Suleiman is walking on a lonely street in Palestine/Israel when he sees that he is followed by menacing youngsters with sticks. As in the Paris metro sequence, we soon realize that the scary youths have targets other than the lonely, apprehensive Suleiman. The John Berger elements come into play on both continents, in parallel situations, within the film.

Director Suleiman sitting in front of a bistro/restaurant,
while the policemen check the distance of the furniture from the road,
to see if it conforms to rules

Similarly Suleiman doesn’t merely poke fun at Israeli policemen; he draws parallels with Paris policemen measuring the seating area of French restaurants/bistros that spill on to the sidewalka with help of measuring tapes, cops riding Segways (electric scooters) as though they were ballerinas dancing on a road theatre  (touches of Tati?) pursuing a criminal on the run. In USA, too, airport police are very suspicious of foreigners like Suleiman and ask him step aside for a detailed physical check, while men and women openly carry guns into US supermarkets while doing their shopping. In New York’s Central Park, a woman dressed as an angel disrobes in public, while cops swoop in on her.

In Paris, the street cleaners are all blacks: in USA, the upmarket women’s wear boutique kept lit in the night to attract potential customers is cleaned by a black woman. who obviously cannot afford the clothes on display. 

Suleiman waiting outside a prospective producer's office
to seek funds for his next film 

In this Palestinian film, where spoken words from the protagonist (the director of the film) are totally missing, songs are carefully chosen to make-up for this silence. Surprisingly but fittingly it includes the song Darkness written and sung by Leonard Cohen, a Canadian secular Jew, who sings:

I got no future,
I know my days are few
The present's not that pleasant
Just a lot of things to do
I thought the past would last me
But the darkness got that too

When the famous Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal introduces Suleiman to a female producer in USA, the producer considers Suleiman as Palestinian from Israel when Garcia corrects her that he is a Palestinian from Palestine. When told that Suleiman is making a comedy film on peace in the Middle East, the quick, acerbic, negative response is “That is already funny.”  Yes, It Must Be Heaven, is an indirect comedy about Palestinians and their aspirations for a separate state distinct from Israel, which Suleiman firmly believes (put in the words mouthed by a tarot card reader in the film) will eventually happen but perhaps not in his lifetime. Is heaven in USA or in France or is it in Palestine itself for the Palestinian people? That is the rhetorical question posed by the filmmaker. 

For me, this was the most rewarding film among the four 2019 autobiographical films mentioned earlier, not merely for its content but more for its humour and detailed observations of people and their behaviour.  John Berger would have approved, so would Suleiman’s dead parents.

P.S.  It Must Be Heaven is one of the author’s top 20 films of 2019. The film won the FIPRESCI  prize and a Special Mention from the competition jury at the Cannes Film Festival and the Eurimages Award at the Seville European Film Festival. Pedro Almodovar’s Pain and Glory and Abel Ferraro’s Tommaso are also on the author’s top 20 films list of 2019. However, Divine Intervention, an earlier work of the same director does not offer even a remote semblance of the maturity of It Must Be Heaven.  

122. Canadian director Sébastien Pilote’s debut film feature film “Le vendeur” (The Salesman) (2011): White lies to make people happy and sell products that are not essential for the buyer

If there is one director who has made his presence felt with a debut in 2011, it is Sébastien Pilote from Canada. Few have heard of him, and even fewer have seen his first feature film The Salesman. The Salesman is probably one of the most powerful films from Canada in recent decades that recall the quiet intensity of the works of Canadian directors Claude Jutra and Norman McLaren, some forty or fifty years ago. The Salesman was honoured with the Jury’s Grand Prize and the Best Actor Silver Gateway award at the recently concluded Mumbai International Film Festival where the competition section is only open to debut films across the world. Having caught up with the film at the International Film Festival of Kerala, one realizes that the Mumbai jury had honoured the two aspects of the movie that truly make it a rewarding experience—the direction and the acting.

 

The Salesman does not have the trappings of a ponderous movie. Yet, this critic considers it as one of the finest films of 2011.  It captures the global concerns of the day—unusual weather changes and economic turmoil that affect almost all citizens globally. Yet the film is not ostensibly about either of those two subjects. The weather and the economic upheaval that leaves so many jobless remain as a bleak backdrop for this lovely tale of an individual whose life is interesting while on screen and will be interesting for the viewer long after the movie gets over. That is precisely what makes the film stand out—a “lovely” humanistic tale against the “dark” background. It gives you an indication of the contrasts that the film provides the viewer at several stages of the film. Everything in the film needs re-evaluation in each differing context—what is lovely could take on a dark hue.

 

It is a tale of a car salesman in a small town in Quebec, Canada, that is reeling under some 250 plus days of continuous snow and a local economic catastrophe of the impending closure of a paper mill that directly and indirectly supports the town’s population. Who is he? "I sell cars, that's all," says the salesman in the film. That's the devotion and the single purpose of his life as it appears for the viewer.

 

It is essentially about business ethics that ought to make many students of business schools squirm-- if they have a conscience. A successful salesman has to show results, not once but several times, and especially in bad times of recession. Canadian actor Gilbert Sicotte (who has been associated with so many good Canadian films) plays the affable Marcel Levesque, the elderly car salesman. A successful salesman is not a new concept in cinema—David Mamet’s play that was made into a film by James Foley and called Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) and Arthur Miller’s play made into a film by Volker Schlondorf f called Death of a Salesman (1985) seemed to have flogged the angst of the textbook salesman to the extreme. But Pilote’s debut film provides a new perspective—once a salesman, always a salesman. The true salesman is indestructible. Irrespective of what happens, they go on and on. In a way Pilote’s film The Salesman reminds the viewer indirectly that all true professionals are similar—once they are good at a job they never give up, till they are made to stop by external forces or physical handicaps. A doctor remains a doctor, a journalist a journalist, a scientist a scientist, an actor an actor, if they are good at their job, even after they are shaken mid-career by personal losses that question whether all their devotion was worth it. 

 

Examine the film’s tale from the viewpoint of business managers. A good salesman is a goose that lays golden eggs. A healthy, smart business organization rewards the top performer always, in the presence of less competent salesmen. The top performer is given the more difficult of assignments—here in this Pilote film of selling a fleet of new vehicles to the police department. The salesman’s manager (read the ideal human resource manager) is sensitive to the personal upheavals of his staff’s lives—and even suggests that his top salesman take a break. But will a good professional take a break or keep on working towards new goals set by the organization?

 

Then again the film is really a film on balancing ethics with being good at your job, being the best in the rat race. It might be philosophically an existential question. Do we live to be happy having lived ethically in our professional careers or do we give more importance to win the race and keep our pay packets secure? These are not questions asked in the film—these are implicit questions for the viewer as the film ends. And that for this critic is the reason why the film gains importance. And it is this judgement of each viewer that will morally assess the salesman who cares little about what happens or what could happen to the buyer after the sale, in the medium term. And I am quite sure there will many who will debate their individual viewpoints after the movie gets over.

 

The film is a wonderful example of a film driven by a great performance. Actor Gilbert Sicotte, always well dressed and quietly persuasive, not just brings on screen the character of a perfect salesman, but also makes the viewer like the character. The salesman treats his co-workers well and they in turn even admire him. He is a good parent and a good grandparent. One of the finest and delicate sequences in the film is of the grandfather teaching his grandson the Lord’s prayer. There is another innocuous sequence when the salesman quietly joins the jobless workers of the paper factory in a group prayer. Religion is compacted into very few scenes in the film but how powerful those scenes are can only be assessed at the end of the film. Perhaps it is intense religion that keeps the salesman ticking. And may be not.

 

 

Then there is a relationship between a father and a daughter. The affection of a daughter towards the widower father is not just the in food she brings him but  in the understanding that the best gift she could provide her father would be to make him happy in his job as a salesman by driving down to pick up a vehicle to humour her father’s client’s wishes. Pilote’s direction comes to the fore with the visuals of the employed salesman driving past the jobless workers and the innocuous statement of the salesman that he believes in keeping his clients happy. The salesman says "You have to like the people. And you need to look into their eyes. If you look into their eyes, you look into their souls." Pilote’s marked ability to develop a character indirectly by beading simple incidents is fascinating. The salesman prides in knowing his clients. Yet you know from an earlier Pilote sequence that he doesn’t know them or rather he has forgotten them in spite of keeping a tape recorder to learn from his own mistakes and become even better at his work. Yet he goes on with his job aware that he might be bringing misery to others than happiness. Pilote's film accentuates the contradictions.

Two incidents late into the film provide the pivotal intensity by which the film needs to be evaluated. And interestingly the two incidents help the viewer to evaluate and revaluate the salesman.

 

The film exudes a quiet power that is gripping and thought provoking, as the final scene of the film of the salesman looking at the arrival of the next lot of vehicles to sell. You might not get the feeling that you are watching great cinema unfold on screen but if you care to reflect on what you saw after the film concludes you will realize that Pilote’s film packs a punch that becomes obvious over time as you reflect on the issues presented in the film that have universal significance today. Like the salesman who claims to know his clients' souls by looking into their eyes, Pilote's film allows the viewer to "see" the soul of the salesman. 

P.S. The Salesman ranks as one of the 10 best films of 2011 for the author.

107. Canadian director Neil Diamond’s documentary film “Reel Injun” (2009): A documentary that helps a viewer re-evaluate what cinema makes the viewer believe to be true

Who is the real Native Indian of North America or, if you prefer, the American Indian? The images that many will recall of the Native Indian of USA and Canada are often closely related to the images of the native Indian conjured up by Hollywood, often images that have been stretched far from an accurate depiction for the sake of convenience by Hollywood directors, scriptwriters, and costume designers. And we the viewers after watching several such depictions begin to believe in these inaccuracies. For instance, one associates Native Indians to wear headbands while in reality the headband was common headgear only for a small fraction of the Indian nations on that continent. The headband was used by Hollywood initially for stunt actors to keep their wigs in place as they performed amazing acts for the camera. Gradually the headband became the norm of the Native Indian’s regalia. This is one of the many interesting insights provided by Neil Diamond’s Reel Injun.


Neil Diamond, the director of the full-length documentary is not the singer Neil Diamond that my generation would fondly recall. He is a Native Indian from Canada, of the Cree nation, and a filmmaker. The film is an interesting mix of interviews and film clips of Westerns made over a century with Native Indians. Reel Injun looks critically at how cinema can blur the truth about the Native Indian. The interviewees include Native Indians and Hollywood icons such as Clint Eastwood and independent director Jim Jarmusch, who are obviously not Native Indians. The film discusses the controversial incident at Wounded Knee in 1973, which has a direct bearing on the several Hollywood films recalling the century-old but more important incident at Wounded Knee in 1890 and of the more famous Little Big Horn incident in 1876. Both incidents are history; the moot question is how the incidents were recorded in history and on film. Poet Stephen Vincent Benet immortalized the former incident in his poem “Bury my heart at Wounded Knee,” and popular songs and films such as Hidalgo (2004) and Into the West (2005) followed in Benet’s footsteps.

I am not a US citizen but I grew up watching Hollywood cinema that recorded the 1876 incident. One particular film etched in my memory as a kid was Lewis R Forster’s Tonka (1958) produced by Walt Disney and thanks to that film even as a kid the viewpoint of the Native Indian struck a chord with me. It is unfortunate that no clip from Tonka was included in Reel Injun because it was one of the few Hollywood movies that came very close to portraying a positive view of the Native Indian. Forster’s film is an important one for Native Indians as it provided the “unromantic truth of the warfare on the plains” (General Custer’s last stand) as one writer wryly noted. Tonka was not the only Hollywood film that portrayed native Indians positively: there was John Ford’s important film Cheyenne Autumn (1964), Arthur Penn’s Little Big Man (1970) , Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Terence Mallick’s The New World (2005) and finally my favourite Abraham Polonsky’s Tell Them Willie Boy is Here (1969). Each of these top-notch films are important takes on the Native Indian but Mr Diamond only chose to discuss the Arthur Penn film and the Michael Mann film to drive home his point of view.

A major point of discussion in the film is Marlon Brando’s support for the Native American and Brando’s decision to decline the Godfather Best Actor Oscar in 1973 by sending a Native Indian to read out his message protesting the depiction of the Native Indian by Hollywood. John Wayne was so incensed that he wanted to physically attack the Native Indian who came on stage to refuse the award. Other critics claimed the lady was not a Native American at all but was of Italian descent and so on. But the brave lady Sacheen Littlefeather (born Marie Cruz) made a point that made the world sit up. For me, Brando was not just a great actor, but a man who was sensitive to social issues around him. This action of Brando is in line with his comment that his lead role in Gillo Pontecorvo’s Quiemada was the finest piece of acting he ever did. Quiemada has only seen a fraction of critical acclaim in comparison with Brando’s work in mainstream Hollywood films.



After you have viewed Neil Diamond’s documentary you will have a definite position on the subject. You might agree with Diamond or you might not. Arguably Reel Injun is not the finest of documentaries but it is definitely a documentary that will set the viewer thinking. Diamond underscores the fact that often the viewer assumes that what he or she sees on screen is correct while cinema is a potent hidden persuader. Diamond fleshes out the real personalities of Native Indian actors such as Russell Means and Wes Studi, who played major roles as Native Indians in Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans. Diamond’s film, most of all, will effectively persuade a true filmgoer to seek out the revisionist films from North America that put the Native Indian in a better perspective than the traditional Western with the stereotype roles of scalp-hunting savages. Diamond’s film discusses roles and personalities of Native Indian actors Graham Greene (I often wonder if the celebrated late novelist Graham Greene knew of this Canadian actor, best known for his Oscar-winning role in another revisionist film Dances with Wolves and who shared his name) and American Native Indian actor Will Sampson who played the unforgettable role of Chief Bromden who pretends to be deaf and dumb in Milos Foreman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Finally, Diamond’s film includes Clint Eastwood’s statement made in an interview to Mr Diamond that relates to the Oscar Academy debating whether Native Indians portraying themselves can be considered to be essaying a performance worthy of an Academy Award! However, the following personal quote of the late actor Will Sampson best encapsulates the point of view of Reel Injun: “Hollywood writers and directors are still using 'em for livestock. They somehow just can't seem to bring it around to give the truth about Indians.”

P.S. Arthur Penn's Little Big Man and Gillo Pontecorvo's Quiemada (Burn!) have been discussed earlier on this blog.

100. Australian director Andrew Dominik’s US film “The assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford” (2007): A psychological maze

I confess that this movie made me fall asleep after the first half hour. When I woke up, certain images from the film persisted in my memory (Roger Deakin’s play with light and shadow of the approaching train), nagging me to view the film once again from the start. To my surprise, on my second attempt, I found it to be one of those rare films which do not provide much evidence of good cinema in the early sequences while it provides such evidence much later on. And this is a rather long (2hr 40min) film. However, the film gradually entices the viewer to keep watching with the filmmaking competence improving as the film keeps un-spooling. By the end of the movie, it is quite likely that a patient viewer will not feel cheated by the director Andrew Dominik but instead admire his work that is a cocktail of delicate performances, suitable music, and admirable cinematography.

Long titles often summarize the plot of a film. The killing of the outlaw Jesse James is miniscule to the long tale of psychological games between various characters in the film. Here is a case of fictional biography (what an oxymoron!) authored by Ron Hansen and written for the screen by the director Dominik. While the assassination itself forms the fulcrum of the film, Dominik divides the film at that juncture. First he presents the buildup to the assassination and the second part is the reaction to and the aftermath of the event. Much shorter than the earlier one, it is the second half that truly makes the film come alive.

One would usually associate the word assassination with leaders, political or religious. Here is a tale of an outlaw who killed human beings as he would kill snakes (shown in the movie). Yet ironically he captured the hearts and minds of an entire nation. Here is a tale of a robber of banks and trains. Dominik and Hansen present a revisionist view of the outlaw Jesse James (Brad Pitt), an outlaw wearing clean clothes and a typical family man. The viewer is made to empathize with the dapper Jesse James, the moody Jesse James, the loving Jesse James who gifts a gun to his would be killer…The clouds in the film have a touch of Terence Mallick’s cinema as much as the absurdist visuals of a man taking a bath in a bathtub in the middle of a field. This is not surprising as Dominik is stated to be a fan of Mallick’s Badlands and Mallick in his turn thanks Dominik in the credits of the latter’s The New World.

The film appears to be tale of a fan and a larger-than-life hero. A hero has to be a loner—he not one of us lesser mortals. It is therefore no wonder that Dominik/Hansen’s outlaw sits alone brooding in a backyard close to snakes that he is about to kill to make a point. It is no wonder Dominik/Hansen’s outlaw is one that his own blood brother Frank (Sam Shepard) gradually distances himself from a normal sibling relationship. The filmmakers take great pains to sketch the toll of the evil deeds of the outlaw on himself while journalists and fans think of him differently. The bounty on his head does not help the disintegration of a normal mind that sees enemies and turn tails among his buddies. The repressed anger and frustration comes out on screen as Jesse shoots at a fish in a frozen lake. It is no small wonder that Brad Pitt won the best actor award at the Venice film festival for the role.

The unusual merit of the film is the hero Jesse James in part recognizing his would-be assassin Robert Ford (Casey Affleck), much in advance of his death. He not only quick with his gun, he is quick on the uptake. The silent pact of a Jesus and a Judas is insinuated between the all-knowing outlaw, who after going to the church with his family uncharacteristically keeps his gun away to dust a painting on the wall, and the eventual killer. One could argue that this "Jesus" of the American wild west needs a "Judas" to keep his notoriety alive. The many confrontations between the hero and the fan add up to a cat and mouse game that is captured delightfully by the camera, a twitch here and a look there, and the game is up. Even the Mallick-like nature shots by the impressive Roger Deakins add an underscore to the visual details of the battles between coward and hero.

One of the defining lines of this psychological film is when Jesse James (Pitt) asks his fan and eventual killer Robert Ford (Affleck): “Do you want to be like me or do you want to be me?” Sometime later the fan replies after introspecting “Heaven knows I would be “ornerier” (sic) if I were in your position.” To reduce the film to interactions between hero/anti-hero and coward would be incorrect as the characters take on different hues in each sequence just as the clouds captured by Deakins and Dominik in the movie are ephemeral, changing colors and shapes with time (note the poster of the movie above).

The script goes into top gear after Jesse is killed. Casey Affleck’s character was so far shown in the movie as a fan of 19 going on 20, looking for a chance get rich with the bounty money. The disintegration of the “coward” is more interesting than the disintegration of the “hero”. The first part had shown an assassin hero-worshiping his victim, with homosexual overtones of even sleeping in his bed before the kill. The second section shows him as a heterosexual and exhibiting signs of a courageous man confronting a balladeer (Nick Cave) to correct him on his facts. The scenes of the re-enacted assassinations are lovely studies in human psychology. Affleck’s Oscar nomination for his performance was well deserved.

Over the years I have been amused to find fine Australian talent migrating to USA to make movies. Andrew Dominik is not the first. One recalls Peter Weir who could never recreate the magic of Picnic at Hanging Rock or The Last Wave after crossing the Pacific. Big budgets and Hollywood’s rules seemed to stifle him with some of his latent talent emerging in Dead Poet’s Society. Bruce Beresford is another Aussie director whose work in Australia (such as Breaker Morant) was a tad better than the Oscar winning Tender Mercies and Driving Miss Daisy. It is equally true of a slew of actors Mel Gibson, Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, et al. Or the case of the amazing Australian cinematographers Russell Boyd and John Seale, who have both made a mark in recent times with new technology rather than the creative surges evident in their early Australian works. It is no wonder that Dominik chose Australian musicians, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, to lend a fabulous musical score, over American musicians.

In retrospect, this American film, shot in Canada, with all the Australian talent behind the camera, is different from other regular American films. Two remarkable directors, the Scott brothers—Ridley and Tony—have partly bankrolled the film. Evidently they had confidence in Dominik to make a rather unusual American film. Revisionist films have been made in the US but have never been highlighted by most film critics. A particular film that I would put in perspective is Abraham Polonsky’s less-fictional biography Tell Them Willie Boy is Here (1969) with Robert Redford, Katherine Ross and Robert Blake. Unfortunately, the talented Polonsky was blacklisted by the McCarthyists. Dominik need not have such fears as his film only looks inside minds of men and women, not the politics of bounty-killing.

Dominik has made an interesting film. I wish the mettle of the latter part of the film was evident in the earlier parts to make a viewer sit up from the beginning of the film. And last but not least, enjoy the unobtrusive music that adds to the richness of the film. A more pertinent evaluation of the film would be to focus on the word "coward" than the word "assassination" in the title of the film. If one reflects on the movie, it is basically a study of hero worship rather than of heroism or of cowardice. It is also a study of how the larger population reacts to heroes and what the journalists write about them. For a while the assassin is the hero for many; later he is not. Arguably, the film is not just about Jesse James or Robert Ford. It is about us.

Author's note:  As this is is the hundredth movie discussed on this blog, I thank all the readers who have written to me with useful comments or words of encouragement.

79. French director Laurent Salgues’ debut film “Rêves de poussière (Dreams of Dust)” (2008): Infusing dignity and elegance to cinema on Africa

The opening sequence of films often indicates the quality of cinema that follows. Writers and journalists are aware that they need to grab the attention of the reader at the outset, not later, if they have to win longer-term attention. In Laurent Salgues’ debut feature film Dreams of dust, the opening sequence will remain an amazing one—one that sets the tone for what would eventually follow.

The opening sequence here captures the rural, dusty, semi-arid Burkina Faso, a West African country on the fringes of the massive Saharan desert, an area known to many as the Sahel. The viewer doesn’t see anyone for a while. Not even animals seem to inhabit the horizon. In the foreground, the viewer sees mounds of dust, like anthills. Suddenly you see, dust-covered humans emerge from holes in the ground, like rats emerging from their holes. These are prospectors digging in archaic mine-shafts (now apparently banned in Burkina Faso) for gold in a god-forsaken part of Africa. That opening shot reminds you of a choreographed musical—only there is no music, only silence and the sounds of workers’ tools. The workers are emerging after toiling underground for several hours constantly at the risk of being buried alive with no one to rescue them if the mine ever caves in. They would leave behind widows and fatherless children, if that were ever to happen.

Dreams of dust is an important film on Africa. First, it exhibits the vigor and competence of a talented French director making a debut feature film armed with his very own script that evolved from an initial idea of a documentary on the lives of these gold miners hunting for gold under unusual circumstances. Second, it is a film made by a European on a real sub-Saharan African subject in a real location. The film is able to raise the cinematic content to a level above mere actions and words (say, compared to the recent award-winning Chadean film Daratt or Dry Season) as it gradually transforms into a metaphysical cinematic essay on the continent’s people, their dreams, their despair, and their infrequent quests for a deeper meaning of their trials and tribulations and an eventual resolution of personal loss in this transient life. Third, it is a film that does not end with the typical hero and heroine riding out into the setting sun, but instead offers an end that would evoke feelings in the viewer’s mind that are similar to those while viewing the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey, although the visuals in the two films couldn’t be more starkly dissimilar. Fourth, it underscores the dignity and integrity of the sensitive and pensive African, rarely captured on film or in literature that transcends physical strength. Finally, it attempts to poetically bring on screen the King Arthur like quest of a Holy Grail at the end of the film leaving an open end for the viewer and filmmaker alike, alluding to the literal meaning of the word “Sahel,” which in Arabic means “the shore” as the hero symbolically, as in a mirage, walks into the desert.

The film is a story of a male Nigerien (from Niger, not Nigeria) gold prospector seeking to make a fortune in gold in the neighboring country Burkina Faso. He is an intriguing individual, tall, strong, and an honest worker. He is also a “man with a past”. The film does not reveal much about him; only that he was once a farmer, was married and had a daughter. He is evidently a person with heroic qualities that separate him from his co-workers. He does get attracted to a local attractive woman and her girl child, who naturally remind him of his own family. While several strands of the film are incredibly close to stories that made Westerns and Hollywood films so successful at the box office, Salgues deals with the subject in a way Hollywood would never attempt to shape, by injecting dignity and detachment in the principal character to the world around him.

Initially the viewer would think the film is Blood Diamond revisited in a different and less hospitable environment. Towards the final half hour of the film, the story evolves from a mere “sweat-and-blood” tale of an expatriate into a metaphysical, psychological tale of a man seeking redemption from some sad events in his past. The film makes the viewer to ponder over the common dream of the African immigrant to acquire wealth. Here the African immigrant is not in USA or in Europe but in a neighboring Sahelian country. Here is a fascinating tale of a farmer with money in his pocket opting to become a voluntary slave in a tough environment, quite confident that he will eventually get to his pot of gold. The gold mine could suggest a metaphoric transit point in a long personal journey in the life of a thinking individual, if not the average African immigrant.

There are social pointers in the film that a viewer is not likely to miss. The fatherless girl plays with a doll but interestingly the face of the doll is blackened. The tyrannical boss of the mine is eventually replaced by a hardworking miner who is more understanding of the plight of the workers—perhaps suggesting the waves of change taking place on the continent. However, the title of the film reiterates the intent of the director/writer Salgues. Would the dreams of the African really lead to gold or would it lead to dust? The optimistic film shows both taking place, to different individuals, in different ways.

The film presents the nobility and elegance of African men and women, rarely seen on screen. Words spoken in the film are few and yet the few words contribute inversely to the strength of the film. Senegalese actor Makena Diop plays the intriguing Nigerian farmer Moctar who comes to neighboring Burkina Faso to try his hand in prospecting for gold in a mine in Essakane, where such gold mines did exist before Canadian and South African mining companies earned licenses to excavate gold with more efficient scientific methods recently. Filmgoers could note that the beautiful actor Fatou Tall-Salgues who plays Coumba actually married the director Salgues prior to the filming.

I had the advantage of having visited the rural areas of Burkina Faso and Niger (indirectly discussed in the film) as part of my principal vocation, which involves participating in international efforts to improve livelihoods in the Sahel through increased appropriate agricultural production in the water-scarce environment. However, there were odd bits in the film that did not look real—for instance, the mining boss asks for his fees in Euros rather than CFA, the currency of the region.

I saw the film at the recent edition of the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK 08). Director Laurent Salgues and his cinematographer Crystel Fournier were so impressive with this film that a particular shot of a woman seen through a cascade of water elicited spontaneous clapping from the cine-literate audience. At another juncture, the film showed Indian superstar of yesteryear's Meena Kumari dancing in the Bollywood hit Pakeezah making the Kerala audience wonder if the projectionist had mistakenly switched reels of another film. Salgues was merely showing reality—the workers do watch videos of Indian films in Hindi in the Sahel which are more popular than Hollywood blockbusters.



The film is an interesting tale that insinuates that a sequel could follow. If a sequel does appear, it would be interesting to trace the growth of this interesting director who has so efficiently pooled the technical mastery of Canadian and French production teams to fashion a film with top-notch digital quality that will bring pride to cinema on African subjects. The film won attention at Sundance Film Festival. I am not surprised. It is a film that deserves to be widely seen and critically analyzed, just as Portuguese director Teresa Prata’s film on Mozambique, Sleepwalking Land. Both films provide excellent cinematic examples of Europeans empathetically getting inside the African mind.

P.S. Teresa Prata's Sleepwalking Land was reviewed earlier on this blog.

57. Canadian filmmaker Paolo Barzman's second film "Emotional Arithmetic" (2007): Subtracting the past, adding the present and balancing the equation

It is fascinating how the horrors of World War II continue to spark off good, intelligent cinema around the world even after a gap of over half a century.

Emotional Arithmetic, based on a novel by Matt Cohen (I guess, a Jew), begins with an astounding remark "If you ask me if I believe in God, I am forced to answer does God believe in us?" The film is not about atheism. But it is a startling opening statement that makes you re-evaluate the film even after the movie is over. It reflects on the terrible scars left by war on orphans, on individuals who stand up and protest when wrong is done, on relationships forged in times of stress, pain and loss. It probes the secondary effect the scarred individuals have on their close family, who were not directly affected by World War II. Thus, a beautiful Canadian landscape seems to hide the horrors that inhabit the minds of some of its inhabitants.

The charm of Paolo Barzman's second film rests considerably in the hands of the capable actors—-Susan Sarandon, Max von Sydow, Christopher Plummer and Gabriel Byrne—-all who have a maturity to carry off their parts in the film with grace. Ms Sarandon has matured into a formidable actress in recent films and this one definitely showcases her talent. Ms Sarandon plays a comfortably married middle aged grandmother who cannot forget the trauma of having experienced life in a Nazi concentration camp called Drancy as a young American-born girl. Plummer plays her husband who is constantly worried about her health (“Did you take your pills?”).

Elementary arithmetic adds these facts to tell us that her character is not very stable. Add on the sudden arrival of her benefactor at the camp a Polish dissident played by the enigmatic Max von Sydow, the first meeting after a gap of some 40 years. Another addition to the equation is the arrival of concentration campmate played by Gabriel Byrne, another character indebted for life to the Polish dissident. Old memories, old flames of love are rekindled. Possible emotional multiplication is suggested in the emotional equation. The husband seems to be threatened with an eminent subtraction from the emotional equation. What follows is not as important as the equation itself. The film offers some answers—you can get run over a speeding train at an unmanned crossing, or just be able to survive and move on with your determination.

If you are familiar with cinema of Bergman, the film offers tantalizing parallels with Bergman’s Through a Glass Darkly. Both films have Max von Sydow. Both have a pivotal wooden dining table in the open air as an important prop for the story. In both films, you have rain that is likely to fall on the table. In both films, a woman is in a fragile mental state, with men hovering around her watching her with concern.

Screened at the 12th International Film Festival of Kerala, India, the film forced this viewer to compare the contents of Emotional Arithmetic also with those of a Swiss documentary A Song for Argyris, also shown at the festival. Both films underlined the difficulties in forgetting tragic events in our lives and moving on. Both films indirectly discuss the bonding of survivors of tragic events. As I watched the film I could not help but note the growing interest filmmakers in family bonds—in Emotional Arithmetic it is merely a subplot balancing a "virtual" family that suffered during the Nazi rule with that of a real family comprising three generations living in idyllic conditions in a most beautiful part of Canada.This film would offer considerable material to reflect on for the viewer, beyond the actual events shown on the screen.Though there is no mention of a divine presence, the use of the vertical crane shots of the dining table and the car at interesting junctures in the film seem to suggest this debatable interpretation. This Canadian film provides eye-candy locations that grab your attention from the opening shot. Mesmerizing crane shots provide an unusual charm to the high technical quality of the film, which becomes all the more apparent on the large cinemascope/Panavision screen. So is the competent editing of the sequences that make the viewing process delectable.

Emotional Arithmetic could fetch acting honors for Susan Sarandon, Max von Sydow and Christopher Plummer (his best performance to date after his formidable lead performance in Phillip Saville’s Oedipus the King made in 1967), when the film is officially released.

Like another Canadian film Away from Her (which shares the same gifted cinematographer Luc Montpellier with Emotional Arithmetic and shown at the 11th edition of the Kerala festival more than a year ago), Canadian cinema has proved capable of dealing with serious subjects with the help of international actors, without resorting to the commercial gimmicks of mainstream American cinema, and employing high standards of craftsmanship in the true tradition of the famous Canadian filmmaker Claude Jutra!

P.S. The films Away from Her, A Song for Argyris and Through a Glass Darkly have been reviewed earlier on this blog.

34. Canadian David Cronenberg's "Spider" (2002): What is real? Detection within the world of the insane mind

Insanity has been captured on cinema in myriad ways. David Cronenberg leads the viewer into the world of the unsettled mind in a manner few directors have been able to do in the past. And the film from a medical standpoint is rather accurate… Many of my friends swear by A beautiful mind, which though based on a real living person, I find to be the typical Hollywood dose of wide-eyed awe of a personality with capabilities that tower over the ordinary—in this case a mathematician tottering on the thin line between madness and genius.

Luciano Salce's El Greco (1966), with Mel Ferrer, Fernando Rey and Adolfo Celli, based on the real life painter El Greco was a similar cinematic tale, only far better in quality—thanks to contribution of the European filmmakers. Canadian director David Cronenberg's Spider invites the viewer into the world of madness leading the viewer to enter the deranged mind with compassion as the story is unraveled from the viewpoint of the deranged mind. Cinematic clues are liberally strewn by the director throughout the film—but will the viewer catch on? For instance, the camera shows the diary is not even made up of sentences or words but writing that resembles sentences. The number 29 on the door of the house, the present and past tenants, the broken glass give the viewer more clues that all is not what it seems. Miranda Richardson's triple role in the film gives further clues to the viewer to unravel the real story. The sequence of the body being carried out of the house, revealing who was actually killed, is a very creative twist provided by the director.

Thus the film while presenting an intimate portrait of an individual returning to normal life after drug therapy and the effect of not continuing the medication, with the help of stark and drab exteriors that reflect the state of the mind, slowly engages the viewer to realize that the story can be as lively as a detective story—with the viewer as the detective.

This work of Cronenberg pales in comparison to The Fly, which provided a fascinating sci-fi angle. Here, the viewer is limited to the world of insanity, where past and present have to be viewed clinically—not by emotions. Science helps the viewer to put a finger on what is real.

Great performances abound but the unforgettable line in the film for me was: "Clothes maketh the man; and the less there is of the man, the more the need of the clothes." The line referred to the protagonist wearing six shirts, one over the other—but that could also be symbolic. The line is in an odd way the film's story.

27. Canadian Sarah Polley's "Away from Her" (2006): Remarkable debut film and a superb performance by Julie Christie

Julie Christie's combination of talent, beauty and brains has enthralled me over four decades. Nearly a decade ago, her Oscar nominated performance in "Afterglow" established that she was not a spent force while playing a gracefully aging wife of a handyman in the US. One thought that would be her best turn at geriatric impersonations.

Less than a decade later, Christie comes up with an even better performance of a woman coping with Alzheimer's disease in a debut directorial effort Away from Her of Canadian actress Sarah Polley. I saw the film yesterday at the ongoing International Film Festival of Kerala, India, where Ms Christie, serving on the jury for the competition section, introduced her film thus: "It is immaterial whether you are rich or poor--we cannot predict what can happen to us. Enjoy the film with this thought." Ms Christie probably put in her best effort because the young director considers Ms Christie to be her "adoptive" mother, having worked together on three significant movie projects in five years. The film's subject brings memories of two similar films: Pierre Granier-Deferre' film Le Chat that won a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for both Jean Gabin and Simone Signoret in 1971 and Paul Mazursky's Harry and Tonto which won an Oscar for the lead actor Art Carney in 1974. This performance of Julie Christie ranks alongside those winners.

Today geriatric care is a growing problem. This film is a sensitive look at parting of married couples when one of them needs institutional care. Ms Polley's choice of the actor Gordon Pinsent is an intelligent one as the film relies on his narration and Mr Pinsent's deep voice provides the right measure of gravitas. Olympia Dukakis is another fine actor playing a lady who has "quit quitting". So is Michael Murphy doing a long role without saying a word.

The strengths of the film are the subject, the direction, the performances and the seamless editing by the director's spouse. It is not a film that will attract young audiences who are insensitive. Yet the film has a evocative scene where a young teenager with several part of her body pierced by rings is totally amazed by the devotion of the aging husband for his wife. So in a way the film reaches out to different age groups. Though it talks about sex, it can be safe family viewing material.

Chances are that most viewers will love the film if they are interested in films that are different from "the American films that get shown in multiplexes" to quote a character in the film. More importantly this film advertises the problem of Alzheimer's disease eloquently and artistically. It prepares you for future shocks.