284. Indian director Payal Kapadia’s 2nd feature film “All We Imagine as Light” (2024) in Malayalam, Hindi, and other Indian languages: An honest, sophisticated perspective of real India, intelligently presented

 

"There is always a feeling that I have to leave." -- an off-screen remark on the cloud of impermanence faced by an Indian immigrant to Mumbai, the Indian metropolis 

"Desire, love, religion, class, gender, and social structures--all come under director Payal Kapadia's close and sensitive gaze. The ensemble's tender and unadorned performance also deserves special mention"--Special Mention by the Jury of the Denver International Film Festival, 2024

Very few Indian films have been able to pack in considerable realistic socio-political details and cinematic styles as Ms Payal Kapadia accomplished in All We Imagine as Light, comparable to similar contemporary cinematic works made elsewhere.  Further, her modest film is bereft of high-cost special effects or an alluring star-cast value associated with commercial cinema. While it appears simple and ordinary documentation of real life, it merely blankets the well-structured conceptualization that made it a remarkable work, providing a fresh, wholesome treat for a perceptive viewer.

The Realistic Details

Few film viewers and critics distinguish the difference in value between films perceived as great works that were essentially the adaptation of existing creative materials (novels, plays, short stories, etc.)  or true historical incidents when compared to films built on an original screenplay conceived and written by the director of the film. All We Imagine as Light belongs to the latter group. When Ms Kapadia chose to make a film on the lower-middle class population in a city, which is also a home to some of the world's richest billionaires, her choice to build her film around two nurses, among all possible professions she could have chosen to build her tale of compassion and camaraderie was most appropriate. Care-givers are often invisible wall-flower cinematic characters, while doctors are more likely to be hogging the spotlight. Kapadia's Florence Nightingales are strengthened mentally to deal squeamish situations. The main character in the film deals with a dementia patient who imagines conversations she had with her husband in the past. That very sequence prepares the viewer to link it to the somewhat similar sequence much later on in the film. 

Kapadia's choice of nurses as principal characters become strategic in the development of her film.  A nurse becomes empathetic towards a worried cook she interacts with at her workplace and discovers her problems--fleshing out her screenplay as it unfolds. Kapadia's choice of Malayalee nurses is again commendable as these professionals from the state of Kerala have spread their wings far and wide to distant lands gaining appreciation and goodwill. Not many will note that Kapadia is not a Malayalee from Kerala making a film that is predominantly in Malayalam language.

Kapadia's film, which is considerably Mumbai-centric, is different from the two Kolkata-centric Indian  trilogies, made in the Seventies, by the acclaimed Indian directors Satyajit Ray (Pratidwandi; Seemabaddha; and Jano Aranya) and Mrinal Sen (Interview; Calcutta '71 and Padatik) because all those six films were adaptations of well-known written works in Bengali language. The closest comparable work to Kapadia's film would be Satyajit Ray's Mahanagar, which won the director a Silver Bear award at the Berlin Film festival in 1963; but that film too was an adaptation of a literary work of  Narendranath Mitra. In comparison, Kapadia's work is truly original.

The world of Mumbai and the ever present camaraderie and goodwill of its immigrant Indian population with all the folks they rub shoulders with over time is infused into the screenplay. Indians are often inquisitive when they encounter someone they know who appears to be under stress or heading for trouble, bypassing their social pecking order, unlike their Occidental counterparts who insist on respecting privacy of others.

Prabha (Kani Kasruti, left) receives a surprise gift from
her husband working in Germany, while her roommate
Anu (right) inspects details of the gift

Prabha (Kani Kasruti), a married senior nurse, craves for her husband's physical and emotional presence after he left for Germany seeking greener pastures soon after her hurried marriage, arranged by her parents. Surprisingly, Prabha's husband, who sparingly communicates with her after his departure, sends her a surprise gift--an electric rice cooker. Prabha's longing for her husband is visually communicated by a brief sequence of Prabha, hugging her unused gift, when she is alone in her room, which she shares with her younger colleague Anu. Anu (Divya Prabha), another Hindu nurse, in contrast is unmarried and is having a surreptitious affair with a Muslim man, which is likely to be frowned upon by their respective families and friends in contemporary India with its increasing Hindutva intolerance and the fear of "love Jihad," realistic trends rarely touched in frothy commercial Indian cinema. Parvati (Chhaya Kadam), the hospital cook, is widowed and possibly childless, and is forced out her 2-decade-old dwelling by uncaring land developers because her dead husband either never had or never chose to share with her any document of ownership or tenancy. Kapadia's social commentary on the rich getting richer at the expense of the poor is underscored when two principal women characters in the film pelt stones in the night at a land-developer's hoarding to attract real estate buyers of a new housing project built on acquired land that once belonged to the poor. The hoarding has the ironic and magnetic words: "Class is a Privilege. Reserved for the Privileged." Even flooding of parts of Mumbai leading to stoppage of local trains are cleverly weaved into the script. Casual viewers are likely to miss out on the critical socio-political commentary that dot the film, if they were merely concentrating on the story.

Anu (Divya Prabha) is lost in happy dreams while having
a respite from dealing with patients
at her hospital counter, where she soon
gives helpful advice to a lady patient on birth control

Similarly, Kapadia developed Prabha and Anu to be different, yet complementary and seemingly inverse of the other. Prabha is married, mature, true to her spouse and rejecting the overtures of a qualified doctor also from Kerala but accepting her destiny of being married and living alone. Anu is young, adventurous, and rebellious enough to test the social and religious prejudices of the day. Parvati's character seems have a limited role of merely presenting the unpredictability of Mumbai for the less educated immigrants. 

Much of Kapadia's script reflects the real India and is obliquely in consonance with the Indian Opposition parties' views on economic conditions of the poor in India. Even the man rescued from drowning states that he was toiling in a job where he could not differentiate between night and day. That comment from the rescued man leads us to the styles employed in the film.

Styles Adopted in Kapadia's Film

Light is a key element not just in the title of the film All We Imagine as Light but equally important in the structure of the screenplay. The man rescued from drowning in the sea speaks of having toiled somewhere where he could not distinguish night from day. 

Very rarely does one see daylight in the Mumbai sequences. When it is day, the characters are indoors with electric lights brightening up their working space. When they are home after work, their small room is lit up by electric lights.  

Sequences outside Mumbai is swathed in sunlight. Here Anu is 
lost in her dreamworld of her future with her lover.

Daylight is reserved for the mid-segment of the film, when Prabha and Anu accompany Parvati to her rural home near the sea-shore after Parvati loses her right to stay on in her dwelling in Mumbai. Even when Prabha enters Parvati's modest house with reduced daylight, Prabha instinctively tries to switch on an electric light switch noticing it but realizes that there is no electricity. Otherwise there is sunlight throughout Prabha's and Anu's stay in Parvati's sea-side village, except when Prabha and Anu await their bus to board for their return to Mumbai, with bright-colored lights decorating the pre-dawn open-air shanty restaurant.

Cineastes familiar with contemporary world cinema will recall Carlos Reygadas' film Silent Light (2007) and its unforgettable opening and closing sequences. In that film, the opening sequence begins with insects chirping in the night until dawn breaks and reverses the gradual changes of light and sound for its end-sequence. That film too, is all about light and darkness, metaphorically used to tell a tale. That film also won awards at the Cannes and Chicago film festivals, the very same festivals that first honored Kapadia's film, 17 years apart. In both films, the respective directors wrote their original screenplays. Darkness and light can indeed be used as parentheses in the ever-evolving cinematic grammar to separate key sections for cine-literate audiences, beyond the limits of the common Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde scenario.

In this film All We Imagine as Light, light could well refer to the aspirations and dreams of immigrant Indians in Mumbai.

Kapadia treads into the world of magic realism as Prabha interacts with a person she had resuscitated after being rescued from drowning in the sea, in a manner used effectively by Italian director Ermanno Olmi in The Legend of the Holy Drinker (1988) in a magical sequence in a bar where the protagonist assumes an elderly couple sitting across his table are his dead parents communicating with him.

Kapadia might have upset the current Government in power with her films and implicit commentary. With her mother's (the talented painter Nalini Malani) genes in her blood, she is already stealing a march over the best of Indian film directors over several decades. 

All We Imagine as Light is not just a film that has won the Grand Prix at Cannes and the Silver Hugo at Chicago in the annals of Indian cinema or the first Golden Globe nomination for an Indian director. It is a film that transcends Bollywood that makes films in Hindi, and regional cinema that limits language to small geographical areas of the Indian map. The film has gone beyond the late Bengali director Karlovy Vary film festival award-winning Mrinal Sen's film Oka Oorie Katha (1977) in Telugu language, adapting Munshi Premchand's Hindi literary work Kafan, with actors from Karnataka and West Bengal states. Payal Kapadia's effort will go a long way in introducing the concept of an Indian film that unifies India with a mix of Indian languages and cultures. 

P.S. This critic values his brief encounter as a journalist in the early-Eighties with Payal Kapadia's mother Nalini Malani at the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, and the impromptu discussion on one of her paintings on exhibit. All We Imagine as Light is now on this critic's list of best Indian films and one of the best cinematic works of 2024. Ermanno Olmi's film The Legend of the Holy Drinker  (1988) was reviewed on this blog earlier. Similarly, Carlos Reygadas' film Silent Light was also reviewed earlier on this blog. (Click on the name of the film in this postscript to access the review. ) 

283. The Vietnamese director Thien An Pham’s debut feature film “Ben trong vo ken vang“ (Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell) (2023), based on his original screenplay: Searching for faith and meaning in life, following a recent personal tragedy

 

 

 

 

“Faith is what I am searching for” --answers the film’s main character, Thien, to his toddler nephew’s question, on what is faith, soon after his dead mother is described publicly as someone who had strong faith  

“Would you give your favorite toys to your friend and did you think he would to return them to you?” Thien asks his nephew  

“He will return them to me because he is good,” answers the nephew  

“Faith is a little bit like that,” Thien explains to his nephew

Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell is nearly 3-hours long, bereft of sex, violence, or crime. Further, it is slow-moving, philosophical, magical (literally and metaphorically) and charming--aspects missing in most contemporary American and British films. You don’t see fast cars in this Vietnamese film; instead you see mopeds that often breakdown, traversing dirt tracks more often than on proper paved roads. Much of what you see in the film is rural contemporary Vietnam with birds, animals and human beings sharing space and time. Cocks crow before dawn and humans wake early to trap wild, well-fed cocks that fight for fresh territory with others. This is not a film that could conventionally compete and win an Oscar. Yet, this film has won the coveted 2023 Golden Camera award at the Cannes international film festival , from amongst debut films competing in all the competitive sections of the 2023 festival. The Vietnamese film  was chosen in the ‘Director’s Fortnight’ section and won the coveted award that transcends the conventional borders of that particular section of the festival. A dream-start for a young, relatively unknown filmmaker’s career who scripted a mature screenplay with the lead character sharing the director’s name.

Thien and his toddler nephew accompany 
his sister-in-law Hanh's coffin to his village

What is remarkable about this work is the swathe of complex ideas that fill the film’s canvas as the young filmmaker Thien paints it. The film opens with a near-monologue over dinner for three in a small, crowded restaurant in Saigon over the opportunities offered in city life versus those in rural Vietnam. The ensuing film does discuss that in a meandering manner. What is equally remarkable is that the film’s cinematography and the diegetic soundtrack that could amaze perceptive viewers, who notice those aspects while watching a film over the more obvious narrative.   

Thein (back to the camera) listens to former soldier Lu'u
in his humble abode. There is no music, only diegetic sound. 

 As the film unspools, there are ordinary conversations between young and old, strangers and villagers who have known each other’s families over decades; small birds that enter the film’s narrative and then die, adding to the mosaic of lives offered in the film;  magic tricks to entrance kids (and even elder viewers of the film) with props such as a finger-sized bell that proves to have a tale of its own as the film progresses; and dialogs between different elders and Thien that reek of wisdom and philosophy rarely encountered in a film made by a young director. The connection between Thien and his elders are as mystical as varied encounters of Thien has with nature (rain, butterflies, sericulture cocoons, dreams of aggressive buffaloes that sense danger only to turn around, the soothing invitation of the flowing waters of a brook). 

Searching for his brother Tam,
Thien encounters the wise old lady who experienced
a near death event and has wisdom to impart for his search

After the conversation with the old lady, Thien falls asleep
at the same spot, and dreams of an encounter with buffaloes

On waking up, Thien has an urge to walk in the rain,
until encountering the shrub with white butterflies

Each character populating the film offers depth to the screenplay. Thiem’s brother Tam, who has suddenly left his wife and son, had wanted and to be a priest, until his theological teachers advised him to get married instead. Tam’s wife Hanh is described as a woman of “faith,” who wanted to give birth to her unborn child, even after doctors had warned her that the child would be born without arms. A former soldier who had fought in the Vietnam war and had once enjoyed war combats as a young man, explains to Thien that he no longer has interest in lucre even when it is offered to him by Thien and instead  prefers to live a humble life, preparing shrouds for the dead in his village. Then there is an old lady, who claims to have endured a near death experience, providing philosophical solace to Thien in his quest to locate his elder brother to inform him of his wife Hanh’s passing and of his son being admitted into a convent where Thien’s former sweetheart, now a nun, teaches the tiny tots.  

  

Thien gets closer to finding his brother Tam (a sericulturist) 
and holds Tam's child surrounded by yellow silk cocoons

Tam's new wife with Tam's child leads Thien to Tam's
work spot 

At Tam's work spot, Thien falls asleep, Tam's wife and child
disappear, and the farm owner (back to camera) states
that there is no Tam there. (For confused filmgoers. the
maroon bag on the moped is crucial to explain matters)

What is stunning is the long single shot of Thien holding Tam’s baby in his arms and the shot ending without cuts with Thien sleeping on his moped alone and being woken up by the farm owner who states that there is no person named Tam anywhere near his farm.  These are aspects (sleep, dreams, etc.) in Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell that any knowledgeable filmgoer will recall of the Thai  director Weerasethakul’s superb film  Memoria, another cinematic tale connecting death, history  and the present or the long takes of the Greek director Angelopoulos, drifting in time within a single shot. The sudden rains (common in Vietnam and other parts of Asia) is intentionally used as a stylistic device to blur time and space. Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, as in Zvyaginstev’s The Return or Tarkovsky’s earth sequences in Solaris uses rain to invite Thien  on a dreamlike walk that offers images akin to Joycean epiphanies (white butterflies on a particular shrub in the rain). Could it be a mulberry shrub? The viewer is equally reminded of Theo Angelopoulos’ films (e.g., Eternity and a Day) of the historical connections of the Vietnam war and the present and the present through the memories of elders, such as the former soldier Lu’u, content making shrouds for the dead remarking that there will be no one else to do it, if he stopped doing it.

The last shot: Thien lies in the brook as the gently flowing
waters of the brook stroke his body

     

Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell may not appeal to the millions who love commercial cinema and believe the Oscars, the BAFTAs and the Golden Globes honor the best in world cinema, oblivious of good cinema of a different kind being made elsewhere on the globe. That is where the three big film festivals of the world (Cannes, Berlin, and Venice) step in to alert us to the fact such films do exist.  Knowledgeable folks know that even Hollywood’s best filmmakers compete in those festivals for early valuable recognition before the Oscar circus.  

 

Thien An Pham’s Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell has heralded the arrival of a new prodigy from Vietnam. This cinematic product amply proves that any young director with talent will get world recognition, if the film’s style and content are original and admirable, while specifically not spoon-feeding a lazy viewer on what the film is all about. A good film has to ultimately make the viewer think.     

P.S. Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell won the Golden Camera award at Cannes, the Roberto Rossellini award for the Best Film at the Pingyao (China) and the Best Asian feature film award at the Singapore international film festival. Three films, mentioned in passing in the above review—Memoria, The Return and Solaris have been reviewed on this blog earlier and those reviews can be accessed by clicking on their names in this postscript. Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell is listed by the author as one of  the Best Films of 2023.

277. Japanese film director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s fifteenth feature film “Broker” (2022), based on his original screenplay, set in South Korea and made in the Korean language: “Finding ourselves and each other”

 

 

"'Thank you for being born.' - A single sentence that touches the audience in such a way that entire films rarely can. When every character, no matter how small or large, is intricately layered, simultaneously fractured and in the end so lovingly developed, that's cinema. Great cinema. This film is a journey. One filled with longings, with decisions, with detours. Sometimes it is precisely these detours that we must take in life to find ourselves and each other. And we found a bit of ourselves in this film."

--Citation of the Best International film award for Broker at the Munich film festival

Two contemporary Japanese directors Hirokazu Kore-eda and Naomi Kawase are fascinating filmmakers because both make wonderful, distinctive films, both write their own original screenplays and most of their tales revolve around relationships involving parents and children, orphans and adoption. Sometimes the parents are old and dying, sometimes they are young and experiencing parenthood for the first time; sometimes they are yearning to be part of a family. (Kawase, of course, adds nature into the equation, while Kore-eda adds heart-warming humour.) That is why their films are so appealing when you reflect on what they offer in their films.

Young mother So-young (acted by IU, the stage name of
singer-songwriter-actress Lee Ji-eun)
preparing to deposit her child in the box
for adoption late in the night

So-young depositing her child in the Church's adoption box

Kore-eda has shifted gears in the last two films; his tales have moved beyond Japan. In The Truth (2019) the tale was set in France with three generations of a family in focus and the ethics or lack of ethics in their behaviour, developing the tale, with the help of outstanding French actresses (Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche, playing the major roles of mother and daughter, respectively). In Broker (2022), the Kore-eda tale is set in South Korea with Korean actors, one of whom won the Best Actor award at Cannes for his performance in this very film. Almost every character in Broker is significant. Each character is an orphan, or has given birth to a child that she cannot care for, or is a character hoping to have a foster child to care for. Thus, the tale is once again about orphans and families, a recurring Kore-eda theme. To this basic framework in Broker, Kore-eda adds the element of illegal, unethical and criminal commerce into the mix.

Kore-eda's criminal family: like the one in his Shoplifters.
Three, if not four (including the baby), are orphans. The man
holding the child is the main 'broker' (Song Kang-ho, who won
the Cannes Best Actor award for the role)

The two lady Korean police officers shadowing the brokers
in an unmarked car to catch them the act of human-trafficking 

The mother So-young entrapped by the shadow police

Kore-eda’s forte is to present diverse characters and to link them all in a single central concept as directors Robert Altman or John Cassavetes would do in their films. In Broker, as stated in the above award citation, the overarching theme is about being born into this world and appreciating the support from another person to live and form essential relationships for the future. Those who have been deprived of such fulsome life try to ensure that others they notice to be deprived of that privilege do get to enjoy that missing bonding. In Kore-eda’s Shoplifters  (2018) the film dwelt on the fact that we don’t choose our family—it could have helped if we could. In Kore-eda’s most complex and rewarding film, The Third Murder (2017), the director extended the human bonding among human beings, to visual metaphors of man and birds. Kore-eda’s recent geographical moves to France and Korea, remind you of another contemporary Japanese filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car (2021), consciously shifting the tale of the film from Japan to Korea. Kore-eda and Hamaguchi are both asking us to view the world as a global village, where human concerns remain the same, irrespective of geographies.

The mother joins the 'brokers' to negotiate with 
likely foster parents

In Broker, Kore-eda’s move from Japan to Korea is possibly prompted by Korea allowing unwanted children to be anonymously dropped off in a box at a church, which is not so common a practice in Japan. Whilst most such children are taken good care of by the church, there is a grown-up orphan who has infiltrated the staff of that church to steal new drop-offs before the church authorities get to record its arrival. The “brokers” delete footage recorded in the surveillance footage recorded by the church. The stolen children get good care by the human traffickers described by the director’s chosen title as ”brokers” who look for foster parents in the black market.  There are always eager childless couples ready to pay good money for adopting a child bypassing the red tape of legal adoption that the church and the country insist on before the adoption is legally formalized. Two Korean police-women in an unmarked vehicle, have tip-off of the brokers’ activities and are shadowing them to catch the brokers red-handed making an illegal deal with foster parents. Director and writer Kore-eda loves to add spice to the basic framework—here he throws in a murder, a rich-widow of the murdered person with no real love for a child but shows an interest in raising the child because it her murdered husband’s offspring, and finally one of the shadowing policewomen‘s personal interest in adoption. It may seem too convoluted and unreal but it works as it did in Shoplifters.  Both Kore-eda and Kawase, as original scriptwriters/directors, are amazing in their abilities making film after film on subjects that are essentially on children, orphans and family.

Kore-eda’s nod to US director P. T. Anderson’s film Magnolia (1999), with the policewoman listening to the song Wise Up, used in the US film and discussing it over the phone while shadowing the human-traffickers is another element to reinforce the global village concept of Kore-eda’s vision.  

Broker is definitely one of the best films of 2022 and of the director’s oeuvre. The last five minutes of the film wraps up the tale on a positive note, bringing to mind the similarities and the contrasts of the two films Broker and Shoplifters. Once again Kore-eda makes the thin line between the good guys (Korean cops, caring parents) and the bad guys (brokers of all hues, murderers, vengeful wives, bad son born to a good family getting involved with thugs) almost disappear. The Third Murder, however,  remains the more sophisticated and philosophical work of Kore-eda.

P.S.   Broker won the Best Actor award and the Ecumenical Jury prize at the Cannes international film festival in 2022. It won the Best International Film award at the 2022 Munich film festival. Two earlier works of director Kore-eda The Third Murder (2017) and The Truth (2019) have been reviewed earlier on this blog. (Please click on their names in this post-script to access those reviews.) My ranked list of Kore-eda's films is on Letterboxd. Broker is one of the author's best films of 2022.

 

273. Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s tenth complete feature film, “Memoria” (2021), shot in Colombia, based on his original screenplay: Metaphysics of awakening human memory through sound and sight, rather than words

 

 

“A sound like a rumble from the core of the earth” 

—Jessica (Tilda Swinton), a Scotswoman and a scientist, describing the sound that woke her up one day from slumber  in Colombia, a sound that she wishes to identify and understand (words spoken in the early part of the film)

 

“Why are you crying, when they are not of your memories?” 

—Jessica’s new-found acquaintance Hernan (the metaphoric “hard disk," as he describes himself”) says to her, after Jessica (the metaphoric “antenna”, in Hernan’s words) physically connects with Hernan by Jessica placing his palm on her arm (words spoken towards the end of the film)

Memoria is a film that recalls Carlos Reygadas’ opening and closing sequences of his Silent Light (2007), approaching metaphysical mysteries using sounds and visuals. It was not surprising for this critic that Reygadas was one of the many thanked by the filmmakers in the film’s credits. Memoria equally recalls sequences from Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 film Solaris (Kris’ sequences on earth outside his home before travelling into space and Kris viewing the liquid world of Solaris from his spaceship window) and Stalker (the child watching the glass tumbler moving off the table, aided by external vibrations). Viewers, who found Silent Light, Solaris and Stalker boring, would find Memoria exasperating with almost negligible spoken words compared to those films and mysteries deliberately left partially explained. However, for a viewer who loves the films of Reygadas and Tarkovsky—Memoria would be a strangely rewarding and exhilarating experience to view, mixing science and the history of Colombia, where director Weerasethakul detects parallels in recent times with his native Thailand. Those parallels become more apparent if the viewer has watched two of the director’s films Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) and Cemetery of Splendor (2018).

Jessica (Tilda Swinton) becomes the antenna
of "hard disk" Hernan (Elkin Diaz) by placing his palm on her hand

The archeologist Agnes (Jeanne Balibar) encourages Jessica
to touch the manmade hole in the head of a skull of a girl who 
lived in Colombia 6000 years ago.

Director Weerasethakul had spent time in Colombia to research and grapple with the parallel histories of Colombia and his native Thailand before he decided to write the original script of Memoria as an extension of ideas he had developed in his earlier films Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives and Cemetery of Splendor. His fictional character Uncle Boonmee could recall the past lives, so too in Memoria can the mysterious elder Hernan, who claims he never left that village, as he removes the scales of fishes to salt and dry them. In Memoria, there are several references to the dead being excavated in tunnels by road builders possibly referring to the dead bodies of the battles between Marxist Leninist FARC activists and the Colombian militia as well as the skeleton of a girl who had lived 6000 years ago in Colombia with a manmade hole in her skull indicating the way she died. In Cemetery of Splendor, comatose Thai soldiers were kept in hospital wards (over lands where Thai kings were buried) with bright colorful lights to induce good dreams in the still alive but comatose soldiers. None of these facts are mentioned in Memoria explicitly. It is left for an intelligent filmgoer, familiar with the director’s past works to figure out why Jessica’s eyes well with tears when she connects with “hard disk” Hernan, who knows all the past lives of the people of Colombia.

Jessica with young sound engineer Hernan
(Juan Pablo Urrego),who was never real,
presenting her the precise recorded sound

Memoria is a film on sleep, dreams, death and life. Jessica is woken from “sleep” by the strange sound and is eager to know how the elder Hernan can “sleep” without memories and watches him sleep for a while. Dreams play a part in the film as Jessica’s sister Karen claims she was affected by a strange illness after she did not feed and take care of a stray dog that had come to her doorstep. When Jessica recounts the dog story back to Karen who has been cured of her illness she does not recollect it. Who is dreaming--Jessica or Karen? The viewer learns from the sparse conversations that dot the film that Jessica has lost her husband in the recent past. Whose death certificate is Jessica asked to sign by Karen’s partner?  When Jessica connects with “hard disk“ Hernan,  Jessica’s ”antenna” allows Jessica to “recognize” her past childhood items “visible” in the room. However, earlier Jessica dreams that her dentist has died but her sister Karen and her partner assure her that he is alive and well.

Memoria communicates with its viewers using sound, silence and a visual magnetism rare in cinema. That sound that Jessica and the viewer hears for the first time, which is central to the film hits one after a long period of silence.  That thud is recreated with amazing sound engineering of the young Herman with inputs from Jessica and his studio equipment. Later on in the film, Jessica and the viewer accost other denizens of the same building where the sound engineer had worked who convince Jessica that no such person as the young Hernan ever worked there or is known to them when Jessica describes his physique. When Jessica hears the same sound on the street, one Colombian, is startled and runs for his life while others are not affected. In open areas in Colombia, the strange thud also scares a bird but no other human seem to have heard it or is affected. The strange sound switches on a wave of alarms in parked cars that subside as it started indicating it is not a human action.

Jessica had come to Colombia to study the effect of a fungus on orchids and eventually the strange sound opens her eyes to hidden histories of the land and extra-terrestrial communication. When Jessica goes to a doctor seeking a cure for her “affliction” by the strange sounds, she is refused medication but instead advised to take an interest in either art or God to cure her current state.

The cinematography of Mukdeeprom, capturing still life,
as in a painting, with birds in the far background,
uninterested in the fish, even when the characters stop speaking

Jessica recalls objects in the room
as parts of her childhood memory

In Memoria, director and original scriptwriter Weerasethakul comes close to the world of Tarkovsky and the Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem whose ideas were distilled in Solaris.

Weerasethakul is aided once again by the cinematography of Sayembhu Mukdeeprom, who captures the beauty of Colombia’s natural resources as though the scenes were still life paintings recalling the cinematography in Terence Malick’s films: The Thin Red Line, Days of Heaven, and the bison sequence in To the Wonder. Those who care to note the details of the exterior sequence of Jessica and “hard disk” Hernan, will note crow-like birds in the distance, birds that surprisingly do not seem to be attracted by the fish being dried out in the sun. Therein lies clues to the film’s narrative that unfolds in the last 15 minutes of the film.

Memoria, which won the Gold Hugo at the Chicago film festival, was given the following citation for the award: “.. for its sense of cinematic poetry and humanism. In this profound and meditative film, the director creates a story that emphasizes the connection people have to the places that they live, to the past and the present, and to the terrestrial and beyond. Tilda Swinton’s note perfect performance embodies Weerasethakul’s faith in cinema, in science, in secular mysticism, and in the possibilities of cross-cultural empathy and understanding.” The comprehensive citation captures it all. Memoria is a film that will exasperate many but be treasured by those who can pick up details in a reflective narrative and string them all together.

 

P.S.  Memoria won the Jury Prize at Cannes film Festival in 2021 and the Gold Hugo for the Best Film at the Chicago film festival. Weerasethakul’s film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010), Reygadas’ Silent Light (2007); Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972); and Malick’s  The Thin Red Line (1998), Days of Heaven (1978), and To the Wonder (2012) have been reviewed earlier on this blog. (Click on the names of the films in this post script to access each of the reviews.) Memoria is one of the author's best films of 2021. 

271. Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s ninth feature film “Doraibu mai ka” (Drive My Car) (2021), based on his co-scripted screenplay, adapting a fascinating short story written by the celebrated contemporary Japanese writer Haruki Murakami: An unusual script structure comprising a 39-minute prologue, followed by the main tale, and tying it all up with a stunning, minimalist, micro-epilogue

 

Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car will appeal to different folks for totally different reasons. Those familiar with Haruki Murakami’s written work flock to watch cinematic adaptations of his written works such as the Korean director Chang-dong Lee’s Burning (2018), Japanese director Anh Hung Tran’s Norwegian Wood (2010) or the Japanese director Jun Ichikawa’s Toni Takitani (2004), among the nine such feature films already released.  Drive My Car is the latest cinematic adaptation of the nine films and is based on a short story with the same title as the film. 

The film Drive My Car is equally interesting for readers who love Anton Chekov’s famous play Uncle Vanya. They will be pleasantly surprised that it still can be staged in myriad ways, though purists will find Andrei Konchalovsky’s 1970 film version of Uncle Vanya with Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy, Sergei Bondarchuk and Irina Kupchenko, as the definitive cinematic adaptation.

However, director Hamaguchi leaps beyond the original tales of Murakami and Chekov with a stunning screenplay melding both the literary works. Those who have read Murakami’s short story will easily spot that Chekov’s play is barely discussed in the short story, while the film discusses the casting, the rehearsals and the staging of the play in considerable detail. There is a reason for it. More on that later.

Kafuku's wife Oto (Reika Kirishima),
an actress-turned-playwright,
 who appears only in the prologue

Evidently Hamaguchi had the tacit approval of Murakami (who is credited as the second among the three co-scriptwriters, the third being Takamasa Oe). Murakami’s tale is essentially of the happily married middle-aged couple, Kafuku (a stage actor who eventually becomes a stage director) and his wife Oto (an attractive stage actress flowering into a playwright over the decades). The couple have an active sex life and Oto gets her creative ideas as a playwright post-coitus, narrating it to her husband before writing it on paper. (This aspect of the tale is incorporated by the scriptwriters from another Murakami short story called Scheherazade.) Both thespians are in love with each other. Some 20 years before, a child was born to Kafuku and Oto, that did not survive beyond 3 days after birth. Both grieved and mutually decided not to procreate another child. In spite of their mutual love, the wife has trysts with other actors on the sly, which the husband had sensed and discovered to be true. As the uxorial love between the couple was not affected, the husband opted to never confront his wife with his knowledge of his wife’s infidelity. One day, his beloved wife of 20 years dies. In the film, Drive My Car, Oto’s death is unexpected. In the short story, the husband and wife knew Oto had cancer; Oto was hospitalized and only allowed Kafuku, Oto’s mother and Oto’s sister to visit her—no one else.

After the screen credits, the substantive main tale of the film is presented. The Saab car is an interesting subject for both the film and the short story. In Murakami’s tale, the Saab car is yellow; in the film, it’s red. In the prologue, Kafuku’s fondness for this vehicle recalls novelist Robert Pirsig’s hero and his philosophical fondness for his motorbike in his famous autobiographical novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an inquiry into values. Kafuku, who loves his car and is a careful driver, involuntarily involves it in an accident due to a blind spot in his vision (real and metaphorical), soon after discovering his wife in bed with a lover. It is the red Saab that links the prologue, the main tale and the epilogue—hence the Pirsig connection. Not even Kafuku. In fact, Kafuku is “physically absent” in the epilogue. Kafuku’s love for his Saab is as strong as his love for his dead wife Oto. When Kafuku, is invited to a Japanese city of Hiroshima to direct and present an experimental Uncle Vanya, with performers speaking different languages, we are indirectly made to realize that considerable time has passed after Oto’s death as Kafuku has evolved from a famous actor playing Uncle Vanya in the play to be respected at that point of time as a famous director of the Chekov play. Thus, it is in the main portion of Hamaguchi’s film that we encounter for the first time Kafuku’s female driver Misaki, suggested by the drama company funding and contracting Kafuku to stage the play. As per their rules of that company, all major creative figures are not allowed to drive cars, during period the play is being rehearsed and performed publicly. This would not seem out of place for a viewer who has not read Murakami’s short story.  However, Murakami’s short story begins with Misaki being employed by Kafuku soon after Oto’s death and the Saab accident, at the behest of the garage owner who repaired the Saab, following the accident.

The Saab car flanked by its owner Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) (left) and his personal
driver Misaki (Toko Miura) (right)

Hamaguchi’s film now reintroduces Oto’s final illicit lover, Takatsuki, briefly shown in the prologue twice, once having sex with Oto and then at Oto’s funeral where Takatsuki condoles Kafuku. Takatsuki is picked by Kafuku in the film to play Uncle Vanya, a role Kafuku had perfected as an actor in earlier stage productions in Japan—despite Takatsuki being too young to play the role. Kafuku’s ulterior design is to get to befriend Takatsuki to figure out what attracted Oto to Takatsuki for a brief period.

Kafuku (right) engages Takatsuki (Oto's lover, left)
in conversations relating to Oto

The deliberate switching of chronology and changes in the introduction of the driver Misaki serves a bigger role in Hamaguchi’s film than in the short story—he introduces two new characters that are not part of the Murakami story. They are a male official of the drama company and his Korean wife who is an actress, who cannot speak but communicates in the sign language. These two important characters are not part of Murakami’s story.  The Korean actress is cast by Kafuku in an important role in the experimental production accentuating that the world is a global village. These additional characters are creations of co-scriptwriters Hamaguchi and Oe, without tampering much with Murakami’s original creations of Kafuku, his wife Oto, his driver Misaki and Oto’s last lover Takatsuki.

Further, the unusual rehearsals and performances of Uncle Vanya in the film Drive My Car that take up considerable screen time of the 3-hour film are not even a part of the Murakami short story. In the short story, there is no mention of Takatsuki’s arrest by the police midway for crimes barely discussed in the film during a rehearsal of the Chekov play—all these are creations of Hamaguchi and Oe. So is the entire trip of Kafuko and his driver Misaki to Misaki’s house where she and her mother lived, before her mother’s death, opening up parallels in their lonely lives. The lonely Misaki and the widower Kafuko realize the difficult years of their past and that like Sonya and her Uncle Vanya need to move on with positive ideals. Both love driving the Saab car with its manual gear shifts, without literal or  metaphorical jerks.

To the credit of Hamaguchi and Oe, their additions to the Murakami tale lifted up the story to a new level. Their stunning minimalist epilogue urges the viewer to figure out much of the tale that is left for the viewer to figure out and savour. For one, the epilogue is set in the pandemic—so the time has moved forward from the main portion of the film. Secondly, the concept of the experimental version of the play with characters speaking in different tongues, with a written script projected above the stage to help the audience, in many ways reflects Chekov’s hope and dream when he wrote the play after visiting Siberia that ends with the words of Sonya to Uncle Vanya: “…We will live a good life. We will look back on it with a smile. My sweet uncle, we will hear angels, see the riches of heaven, and look down on earthly evil. All our suffering will become good that covers the earth. I believe it. I believe it.”

 The plain and physically unattractive driver Misaki, in the film and in the story, listens to the recording of the play as she drives Kafuku around and identifies herself with Sonya of the play, who like Misaki is not physically attractive. Thirdly, and most importantly. the epilogue is not set in Japan but in Korea. Misaki, the red Saab, and the dog that belongs to the Korean actress (who communicates through sign language) have moved on to Korea. (If you can’t read the two different languages, you will note the side of the road they drive on has changed in the epilogue from the main film) Hamaguchi forces the viewer to connect the dots and figure it all out at the end of the film. A reflective viewer would note the wider connection between a play performed in different languages and the Corona virus  pandemic that affected all parts of the world (indicated by the masks worn in the epilogue). This is undoubtedly one of the finest, complex, and mature adapted screenplays in recent times. It’s a also a good example of a film that cajoles a lazy film viewer to read the original written work to appreciate and compare both mediums. If one reads Murakami's short story, any intelligent viewer will be able to grasp the importance of a creative and well-adapted screenplay, which leaves the original tale, to the extent shown in the film, almost intact. Thus both Murakami and Hamaguchi would be pleased with their distinct products in two different mediums.

 

P.S.  Drive My Car is one of the author's best films of 2021. The film won the Best Screenplay award, the FIPRESCI prize and the Ecumenical Jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival; the Silver Hugo jury prize at the Chicago International Film Festival; the Kieslowski award for the best feature film at the Denver International Film Festival; the Golden Globe for the Best Motion Picture in a non-English language at the Golden Globe Awards and the Oscar for Best International Film. It is expected to win more accolades. Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky’s Uncle Vanya (1970) can be accessed with English subtitles on YouTube free of cost.

 

266. The late Chilean maestro Raoul Ruiz’ film in French “Les trois couronnes du matelot” (Three Crowns of the Sailor) (1983) (France/Portugal/Chile): An absorbing non-linear, surreal screenplay with stunning cinematography and loads of remarks that will make you ruminate

 

 

 

“You always need a living sailor on a ship full of the dead. That was me.” (Final spoken lines of the film)

“Never forget that memories, imagination and understanding must be used for an honest and productive life.”

--Two separate statements of the sailor, narrating the stories, reflecting Ruiz’ own life of self-imposed exile, moving from one country to the other, making extraordinary films

If there are two Raoul (Raul) Ruiz films that are extraordinary, these would be Three Crowns of the Sailor (1983) and Mysteries of Lisbon (2010). Both have absorbing, non-linear screenplays with stunning cinematography. Yet, the two films are different in one significant aspect: the former is based on Ruiz’ own original tale while the latter is based on a novel of Camilo Castelo Branco. Both films have lead characters mirroring Ruiz’ departure from and memories of his land of birth and incorporate biographical elements.

The sailor (Guillard, left) who narrates the tales,
asks the student (Deplanche, right) for 3 Danish Crowns
 and his attention to his tales for passage on his ship

The sailor narrates and Ruiz leads the viewer not merely
into the tales but also the narrator's views on death and life

Three Crowns of the Sailor takes a leaf from the Chilean folklore of a ghost ship. The sailors die and reappear, as the film unspools. Ruiz himself was the son of a ship captain. The only likely real individual in the film is a Polish student (Philippe Deplanche) of theology who kills his tutor. We learn from the opening statement of the student that his victim had also taught him the art of “polishing diamonds” and leaves his future killer-student a long letter to leave the country, as though the tutor knew the events in advance. We also get to know that the murder took place in July 1958 from the soliloquy of the killer. When Ruiz incorporates a date, there is a purpose. This writer did some checking. In July 1958, the Polish state police broke into the Institute of the Lady of Czestochowa located in a monastery in Poland and took way all the books, mimeographed texts, correspondence and texts (ref: www.jstor/stable/25777621). Did the killing of the theological tutor and the student picking up the letter, a ring offered by the tutor to the student several times, and some currency notes mirror those historical events? It is quite possible.

The fleeing murderer/student meets a sailor (Jean-Bernard Guillard) who asks him for 3 Danish crowns (currency) and a promise to listen to his tale in exchange for a place on his ship called the “Funchalense” that will take him away from Poland. The ship, the student boards, is rusty but travels to Valparaiso, the main sea-port in Chile (not surprising!). There, as per the narration of the sailor, he looks for his family in his house which is boarded up by planks (suggestion to the actions of military junta regime that ousted President Allende, which in turn led to Ruiz’ self-exile, not stated explicitly in the film). His neighbors do not seem recognize him.

The main tale is a juxtaposition of several tales narrated by the sailor of unusual, bizarre persons he has met at every port of the ship’s journey—Singapore, Buenaventura (Colombia), Tangier (Morocco), Dakar (Senegal), and Tampico (Mexico). For example, there is a shy gum-chewing prostitute, who has a coffin kept in her room full of dolls and marks each customer’s encounter by depositing the chewed gum on the coffin. Then, in Singapore, there is a small boy who the sailor adopts as his son, because the boy is exceptionally intelligent and has already read all the writings of Robert Louis Stevenson.  He is boy who looks like a kid and does not grow old if he does not eat. He does not require light to read books because “he is the light” in the words of the Vice Consul of Singapore. Elsewhere, the sailor meets up with a beautiful singer who has only one orifice—her mouth (a suggestive symbol of scenarios in nations that are autocratic and singers sing only praises). In Dakar, he meets an African doctor who knows the Bible by heart, lives in poverty, philosophically claiming to discuss each minute of his life that would extend to days, and asks the sailor for three Danish Crowns if he is inclined to listen to him. This is the same proposition made by the sailor to the Polish student and the fee required to be paid for recounting the story.

The sailor in an angelic prostitute's room full of
dolls and a white coffin (white is often related
to the sinless dead, especially children).
Note the camera placement.

In Singapore, the sailor is introduced to a well-read
doctor who looks like a child
and can read books without light

Berenice Reynaude’s essay in “Fuse” (February/March 1985) and in “Rouge” (www.rouge.com.au/2/crowns/html) points out the several literary cinematic connections within the narrative—from Coleridge to Borges to Cortezar to Hans Christian Andersen to Selma Lagerloff. Raoul Ruiz could do that with considerable felicity rarely associated with any other director/writer worldwide. Ruiz’ ability to do this in Three Crowns of the Sailor (and in all his other films) would not be easily perceived by viewers unless they themselves are equally well-read and acquainted with works of great writers of different continents and languages to appreciate the full mastery of Ruiz’ craft. For instance, a character is reading the novel The Sea Rose by Paul Vialer, an obscure novel that was made into a French film called La maison sous la mer in 1947. Each Ruiz film is a crossword puzzle (in this film, the Vice Consul of Singapore informs the sailor that his Consulate was attacked by crossword fanatics!)  asking to be solved with clues that include love, money, religion, politics, sailors, perceived insanity, history, art (both paintings and cinematic visual perspectives), music, philosophy and literature thrown in. Three Crowns of the Sailor is no exception in this regard.

While knowledge of literature helped Ruiz carve out a niche among directors, he is also one who opted for surrealism in most of his films. In Three Crowns of the Sailor, Ruiz scripted a ghost tale where all the sailors of the ship, except for the narrator, did not defecate and had worms surfacing from their abscesses on their bodies. He has sailors committing suicide only to resurface alive next day attributing the suicide to someone else. A key spoken line in the film is “Art is barbarous.” Ruiz used surrealism to encourage the viewer to re-evaluate reality.

Surrealism vs reality

Ruiz and cinematographer Sacha Vierny:
The words spoken are neither by the person holding
the food nor the persons immediately behind the beer glass.
They are spoken by the sailor (Guillard)
at the extreme end of the room, also in focus. 

In Three Crowns of the Sailor, Ruiz is helped by the cinematographer Sacha Vierny (a regular for directors Peter Greenaway and Alain Resnais and for Bunuel’s Belle de Jour) to produce the unusual visual perspectives that bear the stamp of Ruiz in most of his films—an aspect that reached perfection in Ruiz’ Mysteries of Lisbon (decades later). The unusual camera angles and the switches from color to black-and-white and back might unnerve the regular filmgoer—but Ruiz does it with a purpose, to nudge the viewer to appreciate the unwritten script suggesting a reality that can be perceived if you distance yourself from the obvious and take in the wider world of the “political exile,” the “stranger,” the “thinker,” the “symbolic sailor striding from one geography to another,” etc.

If there is another filmmaker to match Ruiz in knowledge and surreal filmmaking it is Orson Welles (in particular, Welles’ films The Immortal Story--based on Isaak Denisen’s novel complete with a sailor as a key character as in Three Crowns of the Sailor—and F for Fake on paintings and visual tricks). Ruiz and Welles were an evolved set of directors who have few equivalent peers and have yet to be appreciated sufficiently by a broad swath of the film-going public.

Finally, another quote from the film Three Crowns of the Sailor encapsulates the film for reflection “Our presence here is gratuitous, like most things in life.” The final sequence of the film is appropriately presented in black and white as in the early segment where the sailor asks the student “Do you believe in the hereafter?” and gets the reply “I am an atheist.”

The sailor tells the student: "If all the jerks
 spread their wings, we will never see the sun"
in the final sequence

P.S.  Three Crowns of the Sailor was bestowed the rare “Perspectives du cinema“ award even though it was not a participant in any of the official sections of the 1983 Cannes film festival. The author has reviewed the following films of Ruiz on this blog earlier: Mysteries of Lisbon (2010); Klimt (2006) and That Day (2006). Orson Welles' F for Fake was also reviewed earlier on this blog. Three Crowns of the Sailor has been included among the author’s Best 100 Films which already included Mysteries of Lisbon. (Click on the names of the films in this postscript to access the author's review)