A selection of intelligent cinema from around the world that entertains and provokes a mature viewer to reflect on what the viewer saw, long after the film ends--extending the entertainment value
When a country such as Iran puts restrictions on its citizens' creativity, it is not surprising that great works of art emerge with a certain vengeance and vigor that free society rarely produce. We saw this in the former USSR, and cineastes were rewarded with the great works of Kozintsev, Tarkovsky and Parajanov. As I write this review, Jafar Panahi, another talented Iranian filmmaker, has been arrested. His friend and peer Abbas Kiarostami has appealed for his release. It is not surprising that the list of Iranian films winning recognition worldwide grows longer by the day.
About Elly won the Silver Bear (Best Director) award at Berlin, one of the top three festivals in the world. Apart from this recognition, the film has already won awards at four other lesser festivals (Asia-Pacific, Brisbane, Tribeca, and the International Film Festival of Kerala) and at Iran’s national festival at Fajr. It was Iran’s submission for the best Foreign Film at the 2010 Oscars.
What is the film about? As in the case of most Iranian films it has no sex or violence and yet provides clean entertainment for adults. It is a tale of how we view others, however close or distant we are. It’s a tale of value judgments we make in everyday life. Now these value judgments could often be colored by small lies or exaggerations that could leapfrog into greater problems that one could ever imagine.
The story line is basically of a young unmarried woman Elly who joins three families on a vacation to the Caspian Sea coastline of Iran. Elly has been invited by Sepideh to spend a night with the three families, Sepideh being one of the three wives in the group. The only relationship established between the two is that Elly teaches Sepideh’s child at school and that Elly could be paired off with one eligible divorced male in the group if the two get to like each other. While the elders are busy playing volleyball or away shopping, a child nearly drowns and is rescued. Elly, who was asked to keep an eye on the kids, disappears. Has she drowned? Has she left for the city as she had wanted to? Her mother, in Teheran, is not aware of where she is vacationing. Why is that?
The tale is cleverly developed from that point of Elly’s disappearance by Farhadi, who is also the co-author of the story and the screenplay-writer. There is another co-author of the tale, Iranian writer-director Azad Jafarian. Thankfully, the group tells the police only facts as they knew at that point of time. The lies emerge later. Even a well-intentioned joke that Elly is a newly wed, a joke stated to get access to an accommodation at the holiday spot spirals into complications later in the film. And so on. The film goes beyond social comment and a thriller. Relationships get shattered. In a way, it recalls the ending of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s recent Turkish film Three Monkeys and easily could be called “Three Monkey Families.”
What nagged me was the situation in the film where parents enjoy themselves but do not keep an eye of their kids playing near the sea, until things go wrong. Is this modern Iran? Is this modern Asia?
Here is a film that has a very talented cast including Golshifteh Farhani, who plays the pivotal role of Sepideh. Ms Farhani is arguably one of the finest actresses from Iran. She has appeared in Mehrjui’s Santoori, Kiarostami’s Shirin and Ghobadi’s Half Moon. It was not surprising that Ridley Scott cast her in his 1979 film Body of Lies. It is not just actors that carry the film but the script and direction are noteworthy. For instance the film has a fascinating kite flying act by the film’s character Elly. The beautiful sequence forebodes the events that follow. Yet this is not the finest example of Iranian cinema. I prefer the works of Mehrjui among the many great filmmakers of modern Iran and, of course, Bitter Dreams, the brilliant debut film of the young Mohsen Amiryousefi. Unfortunately, Asgahr Farhadi, who is definitely an interesting filmmaker, has yet to make a film that can truly rub shoulders with the very best from that country.
While film deserves all the adulation it is receiving and will receive, Indian viewers will recall a similar tale filmed by an Indian director Mrinal Sen from a story by Ramapada Chowdhury. The film was called Ek din Achanak (1989) which competed at the Venice Film Festival some 20 years ago and even received an honorable mention from the jury. Like Elly disappears in About Elly, in Ek din Achanak, a professor and head (played by Dr Shreeram Lagoo) of a family, that included his two daughters and a son, suddenly disappears without explanation or trace. That Mrinal Sen film had also developed a parallel story to that of Farhadi.
While Farhadi’s work can be appreciated in isolation, Indian cineastes ought to compare and contrast the two works separated by 20 years. In December 2009, Mrinal Sen had inaugurated the 14th International Film Festival of Kerala where About Elly was in the competition section and eventually won the Golden Crow Pheasant for the best film. It would have been ironic if Sen was there to hand over the grand prize to Farhadi, which would have marked a 20-year cycle of similar ideas being presented on screen from two different filmmaking nations.
My friends are amazed that I should rate a Mrinal Sen film among the very best in world cinema. In fact, there are two films of Mrinal-da that I rate very high—Oka oorie katha (a film in Telugu language based on the Munshi Premchand tale Kafan) made in 1977 and Khandhar (made in Hindi language). These are two films, for me, which raise the bar of quality of Indian cinema, decades after they were made.
Mrinal Sen is an acknowledged Leftist. Yet a viewer of Khandhar will not come across Communist propaganda or even a red flag. There are no political speeches. The Mrinal-da of the overtly political Chorus-that won awards at Moscow and Berlin festivals apart from top Indian national honors--and Calcutta ’71 cannot be recognized as such in Khandhar.
Why then do I rate Khandhar so high? Is it because it won the Golden Hugo at Chicago or the Special Jury Prize at Montreal film festivals? Is it because it won the Golden Lotus the highest national award in India and the best actress award that year? Is it because it had a talented ensemble cast of Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi, Annu Kapoor, Pankaj Kapur and Mrinal Sen’s wife Gita Sen? For me, Khandhar was fascinating because it was a point of departure for Sen the director of Chorus, who had matured as a filmmaker and had come to accept that true greatness lay within the ambits of understatements rather than overt statements, political, psychological or social.
The opening credits of the film roll as a smalltime still photographer develops his prints in his developing room in Calcutta. The last picture he develops is of the well-balanced image of a Bengali lass among the ruins of an old mansion, with moss and weeds threatening to overshadow brick and mortar. But you soon realize the tale relating to that photograph (captured on still and moving film by the late cinematographer K. K. Mahajan) is yet to follow. The photographer is a middle-class young bachelor. Adorning his studio wall is the awesome still photograph of thespian Vasudeva Rao in Mrinal Sen’s earlier film Oka Oorie Katha (the other favorite of mine from the Sen-Mahajan combine!).
The tale is simple. Three young men, including the photographer Subhash, decide to go to a distant village for a short vacation. One of the young men has an ancestral house tucked away in the interiors of West Bengal. Evidently the house once provided shelter to a rather rich owner. The former symbol of pelf and power has fallen to crass neglect by its few inhabitants to the extent that neither public transport nor electricity is within easy reach. Only god seems to be in touch—as there is a temple and a priest in the environs.
The denizens of the ruins include a caretaker and his visiting daughter (Sreela Majumdar), a bedridden blind widow (Gita Sen) and her quietly demure and faithful daughter (Shabana Azmi) who has been betrothed to a young man who has never returned to claim her for a wife for several years. And there is a white goat that this darling daughter tends, not unlike actress Irene Papas' character in Michael Caccoyannis’ (Mihalis Kakogiannis’) 1956 film Zorba the Greek.
The film could easily be viewed as an unrequited love story between an urban photographer and an intelligent beautiful village woman caught in a time warp. The interaction is brief between Subhash and Jamini but indelible not unlike Alexis and the Greek village girl with a goat in Caccoyannis’ cinematic gem. The words spoken are few between the two protagonists in Sen’s film but the emotions captured are endless. Even the ruins seem to speak..
But the questions the viewers would ask are many. Will the lovers meet again and marry? Probably, not. Is that what the film is all about? The film asks the viewer several questions indirectly. How many of us act according to the dictates of our conscience and our hearts? Most of us prefer not to act, not to rock the boat, not to swim against the current. And there are the hundreds of Jaminis, less beautiful and less intelligent, caught within the chains of honor, family ties, religion, birth, and financial constraints, who cannot truly bloom and show their true capacities and capabilities to the world. One can mistake them as shadows unless they are captured on film as Subhash/Mahajan/Sen did.
The true power of the film lies in its understatements. The chemistry between the two strangers comes alive when a well meaning Subhash tries to cheer a blind widow by pretending to be her future son-in-law. It’s a white lie. When a white lie is spoken, many characters in the film indicate their discomfort, yet no one acts. This is a situation that one encounters so often in life. We tend to question the liar, as in the film, but do not act ourselves.The film is a tale of meaning well but never actually getting down to changing the social, psychological and political status quo. It is somewhat like the clever editing in the film of a man tottering off a steep staircase, which Sen crisply follows up with another scene recording the sound of a bucket falling into a well to withdraw water. No one has fallen--we, the viewers, assumed it. That’s cinema that suggests more than the reality. Khandhar is a subtle film that packs a tough punch. Many might forget to note that this is arguably and deceptively the strongest political film that Sen ever made. The open ending actually helps the film further. A viewer might be forced to accept the ligitamacy of the main protagonist uttering a white lie to comfort an old blind woman. But how many will travel the whole nine yards to rescue the Jaminis of this world?
That Ms. Azmi won a national award for this role would not surprise anyone. But then a perceptive viewer will note that most of the actors in this film were trained in acting schools and could etch out their roles with a depth rarely associated with Indian cinema. The performers were not providing eye candy for the viewers or mere theatrics. Here was an example of restrained, yet detailed evocation of inner turmoil. (The only sore thumb was when Sen used the celebrated actor Om Puri's voice for a minor character in the film.) Both Sen and Azmi were at their finest fettle in this film. It is a story co-written by Premendra Mitra whose story Kapurush was used by another giant of Indian cinema Satyajit Ray. It is important for cineastes to note that Mrinal Sen is one the only Indian filmmaker to win awards at almost all the major festivals of the world--Berlin, Cannes, Moscow, Karlovy Vary, Chicago and Montreal--and an honorable mention at Venice.
Mikio Naruse’s cinema will appeal to many as it hits sensitive spots in the hearts and the minds of the viewer without resorting to the impressive tools of modern cinema, specifically special effects, stylized camerawork and use of sound and music, which contemporary film directors fall back on to mesmerize audiences. Naruse’s cinema is unpretentious, recalling the works of Satyajit Ray. Most cinema lovers forget the trio of Japanese masters who contributed a great deal to world cinema--Kurosawa, Ozu and Naruse. Unfortunately, Naruse was the least exposed of the trio to Indian and western audiences but he enjoyed domestic recognition. Decades later, critics are rediscovering Naruse.
The story line of Yama na Oto might not make audiences of the Western world sit up. That is because the concept of strong women characters holding families together is never a selling theme in the Americas and Europe.
This Naruse film is all about family values. The male head of the father is concerned about his son who is leading a wayward life after marriage. He is equally concerned about his daughter with two children of her own who is struggling to keep her marriage from falling apart. While most western audiences and audiences in Westernized Japan might accept this changing male attitude, tradition and values are important for the old man and a considerable cross section of Japanese society even today. The relationship of a woman towards her parents-in-law is another aspect etched out with care in this film. Here, the daughter-in-law is devoted to her parents to a fault and the parents-in-law reciprocate that by showering love and respect for her. However, the underlying tension that Naruse builds up is between a wayward husband and a dutiful, smiling wife, efficient and gracious to all who encounter her.
This Naruse film is also paean to the virtues of being an intelligent woman, sensitive to all family members who depend on her. At the same time, this is not a doll toiling away in the kitchen but a person who can take incredible mature decisions by herself without consulting others of whether she should procreate within a bad marriage or continue to hold the marriage and defy the wishes of her doting parents-in-law.
For cineastes who loved Kurosawa’s Ikuru, the final shot of Naruse’s Yama na Oto would strike a chord as father and daughter-in-law walk away, almost hand in hand from the camera. The camera makes you realize ironically that they are two remrakable individuals who in another life would have made a great couple, if they were not separated by age. (In Ikuru, it was the tragedy of a single, lonely individual captured in a bleak winter. Both images invite comparison and contrast.) Human relationships can be truly wonderful when one gets to appreciate the moral strengths of individuals that often lie hidden as though their real faces were behind a Noh (Japanese theater form) mask. This, incidentally, is a subject of conversation in the film Yama na Oto. A mature worldly face can change into an angelic childish face with the aid of a mask. Somehow the final shot of Yama na Oto made me recall the the end of the somewhat contemporary 1997 French film Nettoyage à sec (Dry cleaning) where the relationship of a married couple is examined through a cathartic finale, using Occidental values of cinema. Even Lars von Trier's The Anti-Christ does the same. But these examples of Occidental cinema rely on sex and violence to communicate with the viewer--a necessity which Naruse consciously rejects.
It is this aspect that the erudite American film critic Susan Sontag found most interesting in this film. Not the Noh mask but the performance of the lead actress is what she found amazing. Sontag found the performance of the Setsuko Hara in this film one of the finest performances ever on screen. If you see this film, you will concur with Sontag, as the lady is able to transform from a childlike angelic personality into a strong-willed modern woman. She not only surprises her on-screen father-in-law but the audience who never expect the events that follow. Naruse and Hara are truly amazing as they weave magic.
Naguse’s peer Akira Kurosawa once stated “(In the films of Naruse,) a flow of shots that looks calm and ordinary at first glance reveals itself to be like a deep river with a quiet surface disguising a fast-raging current.” To some the film might remain as a great adaptation of a popular Nobel Prize winning Yasunari Kawabata's novel, which I have not read. But to others like me it is true cinema, the images, the acting and direction, which in combination makes the film a treat to watch.
I do wish that TV channels and DVD stores make films of Naruse, Ozu, Mizoguchi, and Kurosawa more accessible to viewers worldwide. Here’s a film on sex and marriage without any sex on screen. Here’s a film on character and morals. Here’s a film on true heroism—the story of an ordinary housewife, not a swashbuckling hero on horseback! Even in black and white, this 1954 film for me will remain a major work of cinema.
Cuban cinema does not often deal with religion; it is more at home with Leftist ideals. Its pro-Communist subjects have probably led prominent Western film critics to stay away from discussing major works of cinema by Tomas Alea and Humberto Solas. Cuban cinema rarely made waves in Hollywood circles. Yet Alea’s 1994 Cuban film Strawberry and Chocolate did manage to make the final Oscar foreign film shortlist, which is an unusual milestone for Cuban cinema.
Since many Cubans remain devout Roman Catholics, for any Cuban filmmaker working within the Communist regime any reference to any religion in a Cuban film has to first get official blessings. Tomas Alea, having already made two major films Memories of Underdevelopment and Death of a Bureaucrat, was widely accepted as a Cuban hero of cinema and could afford to play with religious themes without raising the ire of the Communist leaders in Cuba.
So Alea decided to make a film using the metaphor of Jesus’ Last Supper with his 12 Apostles by crafting an interesting feature film around a historical event that took place in Cuba at the end of the 19th century, where a white slave owner with a conscience decides to wash the feet of 12 of his black slaves and host a lavish dinner for them. The event is timed to coincide with the Passion Week Thursday (or Maundy Thursday). The film is broken into the segments--Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday. The real event was first captured in the historical book written a certain Moreno Fraginals, which I have not read. Alea used the book as the basis of this film. I am not sure how much of the intellectual credit of this cinematic work rests with Fraginals and how much with Alea and his co-scriptwriter Maria Eugenia Haya.
For the Communists, the entire film is a dark tale of slave owners and slaves, of black slaves toiling hard to make their owners rich and powerful. Alea uses the tale as a metaphor for the eventual escape and liberation of one slave on Easter Sunday in line with the Resurrection of Christ. But I found the film offers much more than the simple tale of the liberation of three types of the oppressed--one a slave, one a Spanish priest, and one a cross-bred colored sympathizer of the slaves who earned a living working for the slave owners.
Alea, just as another Leftist screenwriter Robert Bolt did in Rolland Joffe's Hollywood movie The Mission, is able to pinpoint the duplicity of the Church that gave implicit sanction for slavery to flourish. In The Last Supper, Alea seesaws between the somewhat contradictory portrayals of the priest first as a clown (the object of mirth for both women and slaves) and later as a more respectable individual, if he was to be compared to the slave owners. A similar ambiguity can be seen during the opening credits when Alea mischievously zooms in on a religious painting and gets the cinematographer to first show the religious figures in the clouds but later zooms in and lingers on the roses and thorns nearer terra firma. All this is shown with delightful negro voices singing a superb uplifting spiritual classical chorus on the soundtrack.
In the film, Alea presents three types of the Cuban population, the white slave owners, the black slaves and the colored cross bred population (represented by the sugar miller). Alea’s astute script shows the changes in the perception of all three communities during the Passion Week. A slave gains freedom and is able to resurrect in his own way on Easter Sunday. A religious Spanish slave owner who wants to emulate Christ and seek pardon for his sins, soon transforms into a monster when the slaves truly seek freedom that he granted days ago. A Spanish Catholic priest is buffeted between God and 'Caeser' (the slave owners who provide the Church its money). He is shown departing from the sugar estate, a broken man.
However, the real high point of the film is the brilliant dialectical conversations between the slave owner and the 12 slaves during the last supper on Maundy Thursday. It is a thought-provoking debate on what constitutes real happiness. One African slave talks of how he himself sold his father into slavery for the sake of money, and later how he himself was sold as a slave by others in his own family. Similarly, there is a trenchant reference to Judas and his treachery that could have deeper meanings as the slave who is liberated is the Judas equivalent in the film--a comment that would come close to the theological discussions of Martin Luther, Thomas Aquinas, and St Augustine of Hippo.
While many viewers will see the film as a slave vs. slave-owner tale, the film throws up more trenchant morsels that make you think. Why does an African tribal sell his own father for money? Why does money and wealth corrupt all of us so much that family relationships seem less important? Most tales of slavery put the blame squarely on Europeans and other wealthy races who subjugate others to acquire more pelf. But Alea's film/Fraginal's book shows the evil lurks in all of us, including the African slaves.
The film also encourages the viewer to look at freedom vs. slavery more closely. When a slave is given freedom he prefers his world of slavery--just as a long-serving prisoner is more comfortable behind bars than in the complex world of freedom and its constant demands on life.
Even more interesting is how the European slave owner switches from intellectual piety to extreme cruelty and intolerance. What is this dualism in each of us? The film will provoke many who care to reflect on the contents--the Judas question being the most profound one of all.
This Cuban film is arguably the finest work of Alea on par with his brilliant black comedy The Death of a Bureaucrat. And since Alea is considered the most important Cuban director, this film could well be considered as one of the the finest Cuban works on celluloid. The moot question is whether Alea was deliberately raising moral, theological, and psychological questions beyond the typical "revolution of the oppressed" Leftist chorus or did he stumble on a book/script that asked those questions? In the case of Rolland Joffe's The Mission, it is quite evident that scriptwriter Bolt was the astute thinker while Joffe was quite at sea at how to put together Bolt's vision. In this case, Alea puts across all the questions to the patient and perceptive viewer. But does the credit go to the filmmaker alone or to the historian or perhaps the scriptwriter?
I was viewing the film at the 14th International Film Festival of Kerala (within a section paying homage to the most important works in Cuban cinema) after a time lapse of some 30 years following its screening in Bangalore, India, in the1980 Filmostsav. Alea was present at that 1980 screening and I had the honor of interviewing him as a film critic. Alea kept telling me that as an Indian who who did not know the Spanish language, I was missing subtle innuendoes in the script with the differences in the Spanish spoken by the slave owners (European Spanish) and what was spoken by the others (Cuban Spanish) in the film. For me, the film remains a great work that offers considerable fodder for thought beyond the obvious storyline. It has not paled with time.
To appreciate Rivette’s cinema one has to look beyond the obvious show—in this particular case a traveling circus in France, a circus that attracts less than a handful of people each night. And they don’t even laugh at the clowns. So when some does laugh, the laugh itself is a show stopper!
At the 14th International Film Festival of Kerala, many viewers of the 81-year-old French film director Jacques Rivette’s latest work Around a Small Mountain trooped out midway. The die-hard Rivette fans, some 60% of the audience, remained in their seats to the very end. The film is not everyone’s cup of tea.
Rivette’s cinema, in the case of Around a Small Mountain and all the films that he has made in the past has a mix of comedy, romance and mystery. In Around a Small Mountain, the comedy is obvious even to a village idiot but its relevance is what one is forced to ruminate on. What make one laugh at a clown in a circus, and why does another person not react to the same clown for the very same action? Comedy for the French includes tragedy—there is a thin vein of that element as well in this work of Rivette as in all his earlier films.
In India, filmgoers are familiar with the theme, if they have watched Raj Kapoor’s Mera Naam Joker. The only difference was that Raj Kapoor spoon-fed his audiences with ideas he wanted convey. In contrast, Rivette does it with style and discretion for the audience to figure out the latent, subtle meanings.
Around a small mountain is also a tale of romance. A mysterious handsome Italian man (Sergio Castellitto) fixes the car of a stranded elderly retired French circus artist (Jane Birkin), while she is stranded on a lonely road. The Italian fixes her car without uttering a word. This sequence is amazing. The seeds of romance are thrown. One would expect the woman to fall in love with this knight in an expensive sports car. But the reverse happens. That’s Rivette’s cinema.
Birkin has aged and is almost unrecognizable, if one recalls her roles in the French New Wave film of the Sixties. (Birkin is the real life mother of the lead actress in The Anti-Christ), For Birkin fans, she walks on a tight rope, a foot above ground in a fabulous single shot. There are no stunt doubles for her!
There is mystery as well. The Italian stranger remains an enigma. Who is he? There is also a mysterious death in the history of the circus troupe, which is unraveled slowly.
It is also a tale of chance—chance encounters where two individuals meet by accident. There is the frumpy Kate (Birkin) wearing clothes that make her look older than she is and a younger Vittorio who is in elegant casuals. Rivette drives home the opposites.
But at the end of the movie, the viewer has to figure out the obvious question. The circus troupe with just three or four persons for an audience cannot be real or cost effective. So how real is the circus? The director is using the concept as he would use theatre as another tool to tell us another aspect of our lives. The English title of the film is Around a Small Mountain (the French title is 36 vues du Pic Saint Loup). There is a mountain captured in the film’s opening shots. Evidently much of the action takes place in its environs. But to an intelligent viewer, Rivette’s mountain is not the physical one. It is a metaphor for the leading lady’s dark memories.
This is an unusually short film of Rivette (under 90 minutes) in contrast to his other films that last 2 hours on average. One could argue at length if this is Rivette's best work yet. But one cannot deny that this is a significant contribution to cinema. It was nominated for the Golden Lion at Venice Festival.
There were cat calls during the show from viewers who would have preferred a Raj Kapoor style of direction. But Rivette’s cinema is to be enjoyed at a different level altogether. One has to remember the circus was a mere prop for a 81 year old master filmmaker to tell a tale of life, where one (here the Birkin character, Kate) runs away from realities but return to same place to recognize them anew. The film for me reflected T.S. Eliot's poetry “And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive at where we began and to know the place for the first time.”
Shirin, the latest work of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami is based on a love myth of Khusrow and Shirin, a literary 12th century love saga of a prince and a young woman named Shirin, a tragic tale cutting across the borders of Persia and Armenia. And then again, the film is not about the love saga because you don’t see the film, you only hear the sounds of an elegantly made film and see the corresponding light and darkness of the virtual film falling on the faces of 114 of the best actresses in Iran and of Juliette Binoche, a famous French actress of cinema. What you hear is what would be a delightful radio drama of the tale made into film that you never get to see. What you see instead is a canvas of beautiful women emoting to this virtual film.
The film Shirin is an audacious experiment, in which for 92 minutes you are subjected to watching the faces of different women in a movie hall watching a movie of the tragic love tale of Shirin and her two lovers Khusrow and Farhad, one is a prince and the other a sculptor. The interesting trivia you need to know is that during the packed screening of the film at the 14th International Film Festival of Kerala that the entire audience stayed enraptured in their seats for 92 minutes of the film without a single cat-call, totally in awe of what was happening. Earlier, delegates, like me, had stood in line hours in advance and many had to go back disappointed unable to enter the theatre.
For those who have not heard of Abbas Kiarostami--he is a 69-year-old poet, photographer, painter, graphic designer, screenplay-writer, film editor and an art director of films.
Two questions bounce at you while watching Shirin.
Are there any men in the film? There are two men Khusrow and Farhad, in the virtual film that we only hear voices of. However, in the filmed audience too there are men but you see them in rows behind the female faces. Kiarostami has made a film on the reactions of women towards a famous tragic epic poem. Tears flow, eyes look away and then back again, each subtle movement capturing the emotions of the viewer. Obviously, the director is not interested in the men’s reactions. He is interested in the women’s reactions. This becomes apparent towards the end when the virtual film is heard stating “There is a Shirin in all women..” or words to that effect.
Will such a film ever make money? It is a minimalist film that would surprise even the most dyed-in-the-wool cineaste. Once you are inside a film hall watching Kiarostami, you are hypnotized. You would not leave the hall. I did not, nor did the hundreds who saw the film with me, some sitting on the aisles. But the moot question is would I have come to see the film in the first place, if I was aware of what I was going to see? Probably not, having assumed that it would be boring experience. Yet having seen the film, I would state otherwise.
Kiarostami is a genius, an audacious one. He has realized one fact. The audience matters as much as the story. Therefore, you need to look through the camera-eye at your audience. Through close-ups. In a way, the entire film is an ode to close-ups in cinematography. It is a also a formidable work of editing, one could point out the range of emotions do not include laughter and contentment. Theatre directors and film directors all know the importance of their audiences. After all they succeed or fail because of the audience. Here's a film that captures the all-important audience through close-ups. Kiarostami, the filmmaker, turns into a psychiatrist and a Svengali of the audience instead of the actor!
This work of Kiarostami is at a deeper level capturing the fears and hopes of the average Iranian through a catharsis of a movie watching experience. Had he used only the ugly faces of Iran’s women this might not have worked but actresses like Golshifte Farahani (Sepideh of About Elly) and Niki Karimi (The Hidden) are faces of the gifted beautiful women, whose faces never make the audience of Shirin look away.
Kiarostami and Dariush Mehrjui are great filmmakers on par with best in the world. Kiarostami set up a famous film institute when Mehrjui made his famous film Gaav (the Cow). That institute can take the credit of being instrumental in making Iranian classics like Naderi's The Runner. But these film-makers can never be taken for granted and have to work within a system that reduces the scope of what they can film as subjects. Documentary and fiction merge often in Kiarostami’s cinema just as it does in Shirin. So do themes of love and death. That too plays a role in Shirin.
P.S. Abbas Kiarostami's Tickets(2005)has been reviewed elsewhere on this blog. The above review of Shirin has been cited as a reference in the book "Film and the Ethical Imagination" by Asbjorn Gronstad, University of Bergen, Norway. 2016. (Publishers: Palgrave/Macmillan)
Try to catch up with this film—because it is a totally different experience you’re not likely to forget. It is on one plane a folk tale, on another a tale of what makes an audience react the way they do, on yet another the options of entertainment for a woman in Iran how she reacts to those limited options, and finally how a clever director can manipulate the audience.
P.S. Some major Iranian films including GaavandThe Runnerhave been discussed earlier on this blog.
Solitude is often craved for by individuals who are thinkers (and sometimes by misanthropes, due to their personal past experiences). It is a state that monks and people spiritually inclined love to enjoy at some stage in their lives. It is an accepted life stage in Hindu religious practice and certain Buddhist and Jain traditions. Gertrude Stein wrote on solitude "When they are alone they want to be with others, and when they are with others they want to be alone. After all human beings are like that." Nothing Personal is a very interesting film that reflects Ms Stein's thoughts. It begins with a woman who for unknown reasons gives away all her worldly possessions and leaves on a journey to nowhere. In a secluded spot in Ireland, another man--a widower--lives alone valuing his solitary life. Yet, he realizes that he could do with some hired help to tend his garden. The two individuals meet but do their lives change? The Irish-Dutch film directed by a Polish director explores the theme with remarkable results.
Polish director and scriptwriter Urszula Antoniak, currently living in Holland, is someone to watch out for in the future landscape of world cinema if Nothing Personal is an indicator of her capabilities. I have a soft corner for any talented debut filmmaker who relies on his/her own story and script. Ms Antoniak is one such director revealing her potential of greater works to come.
Actress Lotte Verbeek essays the fascinating character
Nothing Personal, a very recent Irish-Dutch co-production, making its Indian premiere at the 14th International Film Festival of Kerala, had its audience clapping away at some delightfully composed shots by cinematographer Daniel Bouquet and director Antoniak, conjured for the viewer. It is without doubt a nugget of a film. Ms Antoniak deservedly won the best first feature of a director award at Locarno Film Festival. The film has won an incredible tally of 10 awards already, 6 of which came at the Locarno film Festival itself in Italy.
Lotte Verbeek, a Dutch actress with a magnetic screen presence, plays a young attractive Dutch woman who discards all her material possessions in Holland one fine day and watches strangers pick up the material from the window of her apartment. She is shown wearing a wedding ring, which she is shown removing. Evidently, she was once married but there is no mention of her past or of her marriage as the film unspools. Ms Verbeek won the Silver Leopard best actress award at Locarno Film Festival portraying the main role of a young woman with no money, backpacking from Holland to an unknown beautiful desolate spot in Ireland with no apparent purpose with all the qualities of a misanthrope. During the film, Ms Verbeeck’s demeanor gradually changes from the unfriendly to the affable and then back to her old self. The changes in her character that are subtle are truly a treat to watch. Like Ms Antoniak, we can be sure that Ms Verbeek, too, will be talked about in the future.
Director and scriptwriter Antoniak presents an enigmatic character with minimal spoken conversations. But when words are spoken the carefully chosen words provide a lot of meaning. The woman is distrustful of men, who possibly mean her no harm, and rude to women who want to get know her or even help her. The woman feeds herself by checking out trash bins for left-over food. On reaching a scenic spot in Ireland by apparent chance, she spots a lonely house of rich owner. When the owner, a well-to-do genial old widower, returns to the house, he offers her food. She is initially rude to him as well. The two come to an arrangement where she would work for food, but refuses to reveal her name or speak a word of who she is. Throughout the film she is addressed as “You’ by the house-owner Martin after she says he can call her ‘You ‘ The deal is food for work, but no discussion on personal matters. Hence, the title of the film--Nothing Personal.
The film is essentially about the relationship that is built over the days between the two. Both are individuals who, for their own reasons, like to be alone. Both, it is gradually revealed, are well-educated and cultured Europeans. The back-packer with no money is capable of making haute cuisine when she chooses and is well versed with good music and books. What follows is a gripping tale of appreciation of solitude, not because one hates people and their friendships, but because they value their own space and time without intrusions from others. Yet, even such people can value companionship when they find people of a similar vein.
This film will provide a great boost for Irish cinema. The film showcases yet another commendable performance from Irish actor of repute Stephen Rea, who had a major role in the award-winning film The Crying Game. It will also serve as a great advertisement for Irish tourism with its fascinating locales liile known to potential tourists.
Without revealing the end of the film, I would advise all viewers of this film to pay attention to the sound and visual details throughout the film. A perceptive viewer will truly enjoy the remarkable epilogue of the film, which tells an aspect of the story that the film does not reveal right up to that point of the tale.
Often filmmakers unconsciously choose subjects and scripts that they find interesting, unaware of links between the subjects. My guess is that the three films that I have picked to discuss--all made by a single film director--were never meant to be a conscious trilogy and yet these have all the markings of three separate films that present a similar theme from the same individual. The filmmaker under discussion is Stephen Frears and it is quite possible that he himself would be surprised at the pattern he drew in the three films.
Three films of British filmmaker Stephen Frears require to be reassessed decades after they were made and, arguably, forgotten by many. The most enigmatic of the trio would be The Hit (1984), followed by Hero (1992) with Dustin Hoffman in the lead role, and finally Mary Reilly (1996) with Julia Roberts, John Malkovich, and Glenn Close. All the three movies have a common thread that would be apparent, if they are evaluated closely as group or as work of an auteur of cinema. All three, written by three different novelists and three different screenplay writers are essentially Frears’ cinematic essays on contradictory personalities in an individual, and then the perception of this duality by various less important characters within each story unfolding on screen and, ultimately, by us the viewers. If one realizes that Frears is a law graduate from Trinity College, London, the approach he takes on the three distinct tales is similar to a lawyer’s arguments presented to you, the viewer, as the judge and jury.
Frears' Mary Reilly was the most obvious example among the three films examining the black and the white aspects of human beings, because it was based on Valerie Martin’s novel which in turn was revisiting the Robert Louis Stevenson theme of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, essentially presenting the Stevenson tale from the point of view of Jekyll’s housemaid, Mary Reilly (played by Julia Roberts). This tale was further processed by screenplay-writer Christopher Hampton, whose screenplays credits include Atonement, Carrington and Dangerous Liaisons. And Stephen Frears added his cinematic stamp in the opening shots of the film with Julia Roberts on her knees, with the not-so-innocent camera encircling her from above giving the viewer a starter dish to savor, of both the watcher and the watched, heralding the meaty story that unfolds. Towards the end of the film, the viewer would wonder who was ultimately watching whom in the story.
Mary Reilly is no ordinary dumb housemaid. She observes and grasps changes in her environment. She even contemplates on what she grasps as a philosopher. Note the words of Mary Reilly in the movie `Where does this come from, this rage?' which are strangely the lines echoed by director Terrence Malick in his mesmerizing film The Thin Red Line made just 3 years later. Mary Reilly is talking about the dark side of man; so is Malick, only in his case, the context is war.
The words of Mr Hyde to Mary Reilly: `Would you like to stay for awhile, or has my sense of smell betrayed me?' is an example of verbal sexual play in the film that makes the Hampton screenplay notable. It reminds you of another dark contemporary film: Perfume-the story of a murderer, another film made many years after Mary Reilly.
Or take this intriguing line from the same Frears film. Asks Mary Reilly: “He said you had an ailment. What sort of ailment is it?” Answers Dr Jekyll: “You might call it a fraction of my soul. Something that left me with a taste for oblivion.” 'Fraction of the soul' is indeed a great way to describe the three Frears films.
And some four years before Mary Reilly, Frears had made a film in the US called Hero that had uncomfortable questions thrown at viewers on the basic concept of heroism and the associated values and contradictions. Can a petty thief be a hero? That was the thought-provoking question asked by a threesome--Oscar-winning writers Alvin Sargent and David Peoples, and another distinguished Hollywood author Laura Ziskin--in Frears' Hero. Bernie, a pickpocket, played by Dustin Hoffman, anonymously rescues people from a plane crash site forcing the viewer of the film to come to terms with the subtle line dividing our perception of heroism and crime in the context of one individual. Another character, Bubber (Andy Garcia), more pleasing to the viewer’s eye than Bernie, is an otherwise noble individual who does the reverse by opting to impersonate the real hero. They are clever alter egos of each other. Another "fraction of the soul." It is like asking the viewer to choose between a Jekyll and a Hyde in either of the two individuals while the film is ostensibly a satire on hypocrisy on the media today.
But Frears’ fascination for the dichotomy of the human personality is arguably best portrayed in his earlier film The Hit. This Frears' film had the trappings of a conventional thriller or a road movie. However, Frears and the writer and scriptwriter Peter Prince delivered a jawbreaking punch at the viewer’s perception an individual's approach to inevitable death in the near term. Another "fraction of the soul" to quote the lines from Mary Reilly. The Hit is a film that could be dismissed as a mere thriller were it not for this cat and mouse game on screen revolving around mortal fear and the clever game between the filmmakers and the audience. Frears and Prince flesh out a character named Willie Parker (Terence Stamp), a hood who squeals on his mates and in return the British judicial system gives him a new life in Spain, complete with a fulltime bodyguard. The hood spends his days in exile reading books. The hood it appears has gradually transformed into a well-read philosopher. It is at this time that he is abducted by two hit-men (fascinating performances from John Hurt and Tim Roth) hired by the gangsters who had to go to prison because of Parker’s testimony.
To most viewers, the film would provide interest because of the excitement the film offers during the abduction and the various events that unfold as the prisoner is taken in a car from Spain to France for his eventual execution on Paris by those he had squealed on. But Frears and Prince present a film on a gangster, who by his recent exposure to books, can mock impending death.
Here is a sample conversation:
The young hit-man Myron (Tim Roth) “You've got nothing to smile about mate, if you knew.”
Willie Parker:”If I knew?”
Willie Parker to the senior hit-man Braddock (John Hurt): “He thinks I don’t know”
And much later Parker tells young Myron about his views on death “It's just a moment. We're here. Then we're not here. We're somewhere else... maybe. And it's as natural as breathing. Why should we be scared?”
Answers young Myron: “I think you're crazy, but I admire your attitude.”
Now it is this attitude that makes his otherwise cold-blooded captors defer killing him. Early in the movie it is the youger hit-man Myron who wants to kill the cool Parker and Braddock intervenes.
It is this attitude that makes the audience gradually admre Parker. Frears and Prince transform a hood into a hero not just for the hit-men on screen but for us the viewers. There is an awesome shot captured by Frears of Parker enjoying the view of a waterfall, seemingly at peace with himself as would a Tibetan monk, not characteristic of a man about to be executed. It is definitely one of the finest performances of Terence Stamp on screen. Even the senior hit-man Braddock is shaken by Parker's demeanor.
The trouble is that Frears and Prince have made a film that makes it almost impossible to admire Parker, except for two pivotal instances in the film which can be missed out, if you the viewer even blinks. Frears development of the character of Willie Parker is as distinguished as another British filmmaker John Boorman’s character Walker (played by Lee Marvin) in his US film Point Blank (1967). Both characters, Parker and Walker, are goons--yet the two directors presented us with characters larger than life, admirable for limited screen time.
The Hit is more than an interesting study of the personality of Parker. Three other characters in the film also exude elements of dual personalities themselves. The only woman of note in the film, Maggie, is a woman, who states that she does not know English sufficiently but this lie is exposed through a trick. The two hit-men are not made of steel either--each present vignettes of their characters that contradict the obvious veneer.
If you evaluate the three Frears’ films, each provides value beyond their screen time as the viewer can reflect on the subjects presented on screen. Each film presents two sides of a coin. Often these individuals are not likeable individuals but there is a certain magnetism that they exude on screen. And each film has a moment or two where you realize that what you see and associate with goodness or braveness can be deceptive. It could bother a perceptive viewer, and perhaps that is one reason these films did not make the box office jingle.
One wonders if Frears is continuing to build on the same theme in more films.
P.S. The film is not just an important collaboration between a director and scriptwriter but a film that offers three memorable performances from Terence Stamp, John Hurt and Tim Roth. John Hurt’s performance as the hit-man Braddock won him the best actor award at The Evening Standard British Film Awards and shared the honor with Terence Stamp and Tim Roth at the Mystfest (Italy) awards for The Hit. Two films mentioned above--The Thin Red Line and Perfume--have been reviewed earlier on this blog.
If I were to state that the most interesting filmmaker alive and making films today is an American named Terrence Malick, the statement is likely to be met with stares, dead silence, or some incredulous query like “What, not Steven Spielberg?”
Who is this Malick? Unlike his American peer Spielberg, who has made over 30 well-received movies, Malick has only made four. By the number game, Malik is a loser. Unlike Spielberg, whose bearded face and personal details are splashed all over countless newspapers and magazines, even the resourceful Time magazine had trouble locating a recent photograph of Malick, notorious for eluding journalists and for including “no personal publicity clauses” incorporated in his contracts with movie studios. And unlike Spielberg who dropped out of his Long Beach University course, Malick has attended Harvard University, is a Rhodes Scholar and has even taught philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). While Spielberg has won a clutch of Oscars, his fortune at Cannes, Berlin and Venice film festivals has been dismal. Venice finally gave him a lifetime achievement award. On the other hand, Malick has never won an Oscar but has won the prestigious Best Director award at Cannes for Days of Heaven and the Golden Bear for The Thin Red Line in the respective main competition sections. Arguably Malick is better received in Europe than in his home country or perhaps he is the toast of the cognoscenti rather than the Hollywood studio regulars, who vote at the Oscar polls. And, agewise, both Malick and Spielberg are in their sixties.
But why compare Spielberg with Malick or chalk with cheese? In 1999, the two directors’ works seemed to converge briefly when Malick’s The Thin Red Line and Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, both films on the Second World War, competed for the Oscars. While Spielberg’s film picked up many Oscar statuettes, Malick’s work had to remain content with the seven unsuccessful nominations for the statuette. (Seven Oscar nominations for a single film indicates a substantial following even within the Hollywood system.) All of Malick’s films have won critical acclaim internationally and, not surprisingly, had to be content with a remarkably slow but gradually encouraging response at the box office. Why is that? While the studios were initially aghast with the poor reception from the general public, the latest data indicate that The Thin Red Line picked up over a 60% profit world-wide to date, quite in contrast to the initial assessments.
Many viewers paid good money to view Malick’s The Thin Red Line with the implicit expectation of enjoying the typical Hollywood war movie, replete with heroics and muscle-flexing. Many walked out of a film that had the flow of a meandering documentary, without a gripping plot, heartwarming heroics or even an explicit closure, associated with an average Hollywood product. It was never marketed by the distributors as a different type of war film. In contrast to the regular war film, Malick’s film presented a metaphysical perspective of war, a haunting evocation of man’s existential woes and the philosophic human condition of incomprehensibility, relegating the James Jones novel as a mere tool to present a movie that seemed to use a new film grammar that is rarely taught in film schools. This film unfolds with voice-over commentaries, often with the commentator never appearing on screen. Malick uses voice-overs, music and natural sounds heard in the outdoors to provide entertainment that urges audiences to think and react in timed dosages, somewhat like time-release medication. For instance, how many war films from Hollywood could have these philosophical lines spoken as voice over: “This great evil, where is it come from? How did it steal into the world? From what seed, what root did it spring? Who is doing this?” or this "Maybe all men got one big soul everybody is a part of, all faces are the same man. One big self. Everyone looking for salvation for himself. Each like a coal drawn from the fire."
Malick’s The Thin Red Line invites the viewers to move away from the James Jones novel and gently encourages them to reflect on many wars, one on screen, the wars between different types of individuals, and the war between man and nature, first through the minds of the individuals on screen, and subsequently nudging the minds of the viewer. This is best captured by the evocative poster of the film--an eye that peers through helmets of soldiers at the enemy. Though this war movie has guns and gore, it transcends guns as it focuses on the minds of men wearing those helmets just as the final shot is of a coconut seedling on an empty beach arguably signifying re-emergence of life and hope after man-made wars.
To the impatient viewer, The Thin Red Line would appear to be an unfinished film. In contrast, the same film is a wonderful experience for the reflective, patient viewer. I am reminded of my favorite Will Durant quote that the “more and more we know, we realize we know less and less.” Part of Malick’s unfinished flourishes, I believe, comes from his philosophic perspective, in contrast to regular Hollywood cinema that spoon-feeds the viewer with images of heroism or cowardice, ensuring the viewer leaves the movie hall gratified that the film ratifies the core values the viewer holds. European cinema on the other hand very often tends to either question the accepted norm or present a different view
Malick’s film is a radical departure from the accepted norms of cinema. There is no room for sentimentality. The film looks objectively at heroes and cowards, victors and vanquished, flora and fauna, life and death, the developed world and the underdeveloped world, hierarchical subservience/values at work (here of soldiers) but most of all different approaches to life by different people. This mosaic can be enjoyed or rejected by the viewer. Before the studio's and distributors' names appear on screen we see a flame as from a matchstick lighting up the darkness. Much later in the film, the same flame appears before the imprisoned AWOL US soldier (played by Jim Caviezel) has a philosophical verbal sparring with his avuncular superior (played by Sean Penn).
Malick’s film is less about action and more about atmosphere. Early in the film we are shown an alligator slithering into water. Conventional cinema will revert to the reptile’s role in the film within the next five minutes at the most. Malick’s film shows the alligator much later strung-up by soldiers as meat. Malick presents the alligator and soldiers as killing machines, and prods the viewer to review the necessity of killing or eating one another. Visually, the men prove more deadly than the alligator at the end of the film.
Halfway into the film, Malick presents an American soldier extracting gold teeth from dead and dying Japanese soldiers. Much later in the film the American throws the gold into the rain and mud. Asks a captured Japanese soldier to an American: “Are you righteous? Kind? Does your confidence lie in this? Are you loved by all? Know that I was, too. Do you imagine your suffering will be any less because you loved goodness and truth?” Films like The Thin Red Line are unusual to find among the piles of films made in USA.
The Thin Red Line is not about why there should be no wars. It is a film about the genesis of wars and why human beings get embroiled in wars. It is replete with quotations from the Bible, the Bhagvad Gita, the Illiad, and Steinbeck’s novel Grapes of Wrath and presents an argument that individuals are less in control of nature than they think they are. Philosophy and nature are important facets of any Malick film.
Malick has studied the works of philosophers like Wittgenstein and Heidegger. It is, therefore, not unusual that his films always capture the metaphysical aspects of man’s relationship with nature. After making his second film Days of Heaven, Malick took a 20 year sabbatical from movies to watch birds. In between he avoided journalists like plague and then decided to make The Thin Red Line. Interestingly Hollywood had already made an earlier black and white film on the James Jones book. Malick’s version perplexes some but gains admiration of many. Repeated viewings make the film seem more valuable an experience than before. While the book was based on the real action of World War II in the Pacific front, Malick’s film goes beyond the World War. At the start of the film—a question in the voice-over gives a clue to what follows “What’s this war in the heart of nature?”
Nature is the real star of Malick’s films. Those who saw Days of Heaven will never forget the harvesting sequences and the attack by locusts—reminiscent of the finest documentary traditions of Flaherty’s cinema in the 1930s (e.g., Man of Aran). Documentary traditions get interlinked with fiction in Malick’s The Thin Red Line, too. Waves of 5 feet tall green grass camouflage crawling soldiers, where harmless grass snakes appear less fearsome than armed humans. Nature unfolds forth waves of memories and feelings in the soldiers preparing for battle. Says one soldier, “Look at this jungle. Look at those vines, the way they twine around, swallowing everything. Nature’s cruel.” Water, too, plays fascinating roles in Malick’s cinema. In Days of Heaven, the death of the Richard Gere character Bill is captured by placing the camera underwater not merely as a gimmick but suggesting water as a cleansing symbol or a baptismal facet of nature.
Conventions are broken when Malick deals with music. In Malick’s films, music often unleashes verbal comments or drowns sentences that are yet to be completed, quite unlike traditional cinema where music underlines the spoken word or violins stress tragedy. In Malick’s movies music intentionally intrudes into the dialogue. Ennio Morricone (the wizard who contributed to the spaghetti Westerns) in Days of Heaven, and Hans Zimmer in The Thin Red Line provide powerful musical counterpoints to beauty and serenity of the landscapes captured on screen. In Malick’s cinema music is often more profound and moving than the spoken word. Zimmer’s work with Malick has been compared to the works of Shostakovich, the Russian composer.
Malick put together a fascinating ensemble of actors for the film The Thin Red Line, where the individual “disappears in the collective” to quote a critic. Actors like John Travolta, Adrian Brody (Oscar winner for The Pianist), and George Clooney stride the screen for less than a few minutes. Long footages of the film with actors Viggo Mortensen, Billy Bob Thornton, Mickey Rourke were dropped on the editing floor. The director instead chose to give long exposure to Sean Penn and Nick Nolte. Malick propelled the then unknown stars like Jim Caviezel (Passion of the Christ) and Ben Chaplin into significant roles. Caviezel has been quoted as stating that he would have left the acting profession had Malick not picked him for the role. Malick’s reputation have made good actors queue up to work on his projects.
How does The Thin Red Line compare with the other three films directed by Malick? Badlands (1973), I have always felt, was appreciated because it was the closest amongst his four movies to established Hollywood aesthetics. Days of Heaven (1978) was Malick’s major attempt to capture the magic moments of nature and meld them with music and natural sound, coming closer to the early masters of documentary such as Flaherty and even the few magical films made by the French stage wizard Ariane Mnouchkine (of Theatre du Soleil fame) or the German filmmaker Hans Jurgen Syberberg. In The Thin Red Line, I consider Malick attempted and achieved more than his earlier films because of the gravitas of director’s treatment of the subject that rejected conventions of cinema by almost rejecting the importance of predetermined scripts and throwing the established concepts out of the window. Malick broke new ground making some characters in the story more prominent and others less imposing, if not trivial upsetting top notch actors who were promised prominent roles that were eventually discarded by Malick. Malick was underlining his all powerful role as director, scriptwriter and editor. That is why James Jones recedes into the background while the "invisible" Malick plays Svengali to the chosen few actors/characters in the story. Malick apparently discusses the philosophy of the characters with his actors, which goads them to give their memorable best but gets staggering quality output from his cinematographers and composers of music. Unfortunately, his fourth film The New World (2005), though bearing Malick’s stamp of great performances, music, sound and photography could not match the brilliance of his previous two efforts. Meanwhile, I await with anticipation the release of his fifth film Tree of Life later this year.
How I wish I could meet and interact with this "brahmin" among filmmakers alive today!
P.S.: Parts of this post were published earlier by the author in National Review, New Delhi, Vol 2, no.9, in 2004. A review of Malick’sDays of Heavenwas published earlier on this blog. A review of Malick's The Tree of Life appears later on this blog, exploring the connections between that film and The Thin Red Line.
The emerging cinema of mainland China offers quite a different whiff of fresh air compared to the new winds of change in cinema that one encounters from Iran, Korea, Spain, Turkey, or Mexico. Filmmakers of China are classified by a particular generation--each generation espousing a particular political and social viewpoint under the watchful eye of Big Brother. The resulting impact of the cinema of each Generation on the filmgoer, of course, is by all accounts distinct. Catching international attention are specifically the Chinese filmmakers that belong to both the Fifth and the Sixth Generations of the Chinese mainland filmmakers (as distinct from the Hong Kong and Taiwanese brand of Chinese cinema), most of whom are products of formal Chinese film institutes. The Fifth Generation filmmakers are associated with the Eighties and the Nineties and their typical cinematic works capture the socio-political configurations that emerged on the heels of the Cultural Revolution in China. Their productions exhibit rich production values, matching the best in Europe and Americas, with unorthodox methods of storytelling. These movies captured the hearts of film-festival enthusiasts, beyond the shores of China. The Sixth Generation of filmmakers, associated with the late Nineties and the current decade, unlike the Fifth Generation, have made their mark by adopting documentary-like approaches to realistic fiction, capturing the social changes of the day while seeming to consciously reject the high quality standards of the Fifth Generation while infusing a streak of individualism. The director of Tuya’s Marriage, Wang Quan’an belongs to this Sixth Generation.
Tuya's Marriage, which won the highest honors (Golden Bear) at the Berlin film festival in 2007 and the Special Jury Prize at the Chicago film festival 2007, was shot in China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region (which some viewers seem to confuse for the neighboring Mongolia, an independent nation). Director Wang Quan’an (or is it Quan’an Wang?) has done a rare feat in Chinese cinema—making a film that is centered on an individual rather than a group of individuals. Tuya is a woman—a herdswoman taking care of 100 sheep, two children and a husband Bater, crippled while trying to dig a well for his family. Water, we learn, is a scarce resource—Tuya has to travel a great distance on her two humped camel. She is young and attractive but resolute that she has to take care of her family for ever in spite of her tough life. It is important for non-Chinese viewers to note that the state only allows one child per family in China, yet Tuya has two!
Of course, even though Tuya's Marriage centers around one individual Tuya, director Wang has an escape clause that would please the Chinese authorities, if the question were to ever crop up—the principal character is constantly caring for others, kith and kin. For his third feature film, Quan’an ropes in a major collaborator on the project. That person is Lu Wei, who wrote Chen Kaige’s Farewell, My Concubine (Golden Palm winner at Cannes and Golden Globe winner in Hollywood) and Zhang Yimou’s To Live (Cannes winner of the Grand Prize of the Jury). Lu Wei and Wang Quan’an present a tale that might make occidental viewers wonder if such dedication to family life exists today—it’s a tale of a woman who seeks a divorce merely because she loves the family intensely, and hopes she can win a new spouse who will take care of the entire divorced family. It is an amazing love for the family by an individual that is presented by the filmmakers that bewilder the authorities depicted in the film, then the suitors of Tuya, and finally, the audience.
Typical of the Sixth Generation filmmakers, many characters such as Tuya’s crippled husband Bater and Tuva’s neighbor-cum-suitor Senge in the film are local habitants of Inner Mongolia without amy acting experience picked up by the director, quite in line with original neo-realist traditions. In contrast, the lead character of Tuya is played by Yu Nan, a professional actress, who has acted in all the three films made by the director and has won best actress awards for all three performances at three film festivals in succession (the French Deauville Asian film festival for the first, the Paris film festival for the second, and the Chicago film festival for Tuya’s Marriage). It is not surprising that the Wachovsky brothers’ (of Matrix fame) cast her in their recent film Speed Racer (2008).
Any ordinary filmmaker presented with Tuya’s story would probably have opted to end the film with a finite conclusion to the unusual tale. The director and scriptwriter begin and end the film with the scenes of a wedding of Tuya—while the film is specifically about the married life of Tuya. Wang Quan’an ends the film with tears flowing down the face of Tuya. Who are Tuya’s tears for? That is the question the film asks of the viewer. Are they for her divorced crippled husband, who loves so her intensely? Are they for her children constantly getting into trouble? Are they for her true lover that Tuya recognizes at last? Or are the tears for her new husband waiting in another tent to marry Tuya, accepting all her conditions of marriage? Or are the tears for the no-win situation that Tuya finds herself in? The last few minutes of the film remind you of the quiet, soft power of the end of another film: Tony Gilroy's Michael Clayton.
The film succeeds in capturing the Sisyphean existential dilemma of the sensitive and ethical individual eclipsed by society’s demands of different hues. I have subsequently learned that Wang Quan’an’s mother came from the region shown in the film, where economic development is fast displacing the shepherds of Inner Mongolia. I have also learned that the non-professional actor playing the taciturn Bater (who had the best lines to speak in the film) was a herdsman who after doing the role in the film was forced to become a peasant following decisions made by the State. I also learn that the film is made in Mandarin language and not in Mongolian, the language spoken in those parts of China shown in the film, a decision possibly take to help the lead actress who speaks most the meager spoken lines in the film. Much more than spoken words, the film communicates through the documentary feel of the film helped by the German cinematographer Lutz Reitemeier, who has worked with the director on the last two films.
It is indeed difficult to classify Tuya’s marriage. Is it a docudrama? Is it a love story? Or is it an existential query?
P.S.Films of three Fifth Generation filmmakers have been reviewed earlier on this blog--Zhang Yimou'sNot one less (1999), Zhang Yang'sGetting home (2007), and Gu Changwei'sPeacock(2005)--all internationally lauded works of cinema looking at aspects of family values in modern mainland China.
Many cinematic memories flashed in my mind as this Russian film, set in Asia, began unspooling. “Wind man” was the nick name of Akira Kurosawa, the great film maestro from Japan. Kurosawa was called the wind man, ever since he made his debut film Sugata Sanshiro/Judo story (1943). It had a powerful end, cinematically capturing the role of the wind as much as the human actions. And one of my favorite movies of this Japanese Wind Man is not a Japanese film but a Russian Oscar winning film called Dersu Uzala (1975), also set in Asian parts of Russia.
Set in the glorious natural expanses of rural Kazakhstan, Khuat Akhmetov’s Wind Man is an obscure Russian film that offers great value both in style and substance. Although I did not spot any reference in the movie’s credits to Nobel Prize winning Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the story is evidently adapted from his popular short story called A very old man with enormous wings. Those who have not read Marquez' story would be enthralled by the magic realism that the story/movie offers. Even those who have read the story, would find the Russian film enthralling and try to re-read the Marquez tale (the translation is available free on the Internet) because the film and story are considerably similar at the start and yet so very different towards the end. That is the likely logic for Akhmetov to avoid mentioning Marquez by name in the credits. For me and many others, such films are important not just as cinema but because viewers are driven by curiosity towards the finest writers of this world. Wind Man will remain a fine example of good cinema encouraging people to rediscover the pleasures of the written word.
Akhmetov and co-scriptwriter Odelsha Agishev metamorphose Marquez’ fictional character of a poor Christian fisherman into a marginal Muslim Kazakh villager. The Kazakh ekes out a living raising horses and chickens. Both the fictional characters have a wife and a sick child. Both are visited on a balmy night by an old man with enormous wings who falls down from the skies. However, Akhmetov’s tale ends in a tragic fashion (Russian novelists and filmmakers seem to be at their best with tragedies) while Marquez offers a more spiritually oriented alternative end (in line with the Roman Catholic upbringing of the Colombian rural folks). Both tales offer the reader/viewer many moral perspectives to reflect upon and even have a hearty laugh.
Akhmetov and Agishev are able to transform the tale into satire in many parts of the film, with an old aircraft serving as a “supermarket” that moves around not of its own power but because it is tugged by a land vehicle. If you view the scene critically, you will chuckle at the fact that the words “supermarket” is written in English, not Russian—when not even one character in the village is likely to speak English. There are obvious barbs at Communist era thinking processes of individuals who try to figure out how an old man with wings could be “socially productive” for the commune. The sycophants and imbeciles, with power thrust on them that such societies are likely to produce, are well fleshed out. Corruption in such societies is naturally captured by the filmmakers. One of the corrupt sycophants ends up as an “angel” in a freak show and there is a fine sequence in the film of the two "angels" evaluating each other's predicament.
The movie’s real strength comes from the original Marquez concept—goodness of the strange angelic creature that is no longer young but finds camaraderie in young children and uncorrupted minds of the adults. We are happy to see old angels when they make the sick children healthy. But how do we react after they outlive their immediate social/moral value? The Russian film provides, intentionally or unintentionally, an alternate ending to the Marquez story that fits like a glove for the Muslim mindset—which even adds an imaginary contrapuntal Satanic character Madar, representing death, that never existed in the Marquez story. Ironically, the local Mullah decrees that the winged man is not an angel because the creatures does not speak Allah’s language—Arabic. (Interestingly, even the priest in Marquez’ story writes to the Pope--through proper hierarchical channels--to figure out whether they should call it an angel!)
The movie will open up considerable insights into typical thoughts of the people of Central Asia today with its population often seeking refuge in religion after surviving corrupt political despots of earlier eras. The film cannot be compared to the power of Dersu Uzala. Yet Wind Man is representative of the wide variety of good cinema that Russia continues to produce decade after decade, even though this is the first regular film made by 60-year-old director who had made one TV film prior to this fine feature debut. Akhmetov's trump card for the viewers of Wind Man is the choice of the actor Igor Yasulovich who does not speak a word in the entire film. He reminds you of the latter day thespian Yuri Jarvet (Kozintsev's Lear and Tarkovsky's Dr Snaut in Solyaris/Solaris) of Russian/Estonian cinema, being able to meld respect and aloofness to the strange character he portrays. The only time he makes an audible stamp in the movie is when, under pain of being poked with a red-hot iron, he screams in pain (an event common to both Akhmetov and Marquez versions of the tale) resulting in an unusual storm that is definitely not of man-made proportions.
The Wind Man is no ordinary tale. It forces the viewer to look as politics, social anomalies, religion and humanism. It does not matter whether the Wind Man is an angel or not. It does not matter whether or not children's lives can be saved by extra-terrestrial angelic forces. What the film seems to ask the viewer is to focus on the relationships and values of individuals and families--not far removed from what Marquez intended. Even Mozambican writer Mia Cuoto walked the same road as Marquez and Akhmetov. And cinema brings them closer to us.
P.S.Another example of magic realism in contemporary cinema is the Portuguese/Mozambican filmSleepwalking Land(2007) built on the novel of Mia Cuoto. That film was reviewed earlier on this blog.
