Gozu - a strange film from Japan

I am widely unfamiliar with the work of Takashi Miike. Browsing through the extensive list of his work, only one movie had crossed my way before, The Happiness of the Katakuris, but then I thought that that movie was inferior to the South-Korean original. So now Gozu. sometimes the UK Film4 has good movies, but they also present a wide range of rubbish. And Gozu indeed falls into that category.
It's about a Yakuza who has lost his grip on reality and has become unacceptable; he is to be killed. However, on the way to the disposal place, he is accidentally killed. His body disappears mysteriously and the supposed-to killer is ordered to locate the body.
What follows is a series of surrealist-dreamish-nightmare scenes. They include a somewhat aged hotel-owner with SM tendencies, nymphomaniac personality and the bull-headeg messenger. Not onl that yakuza has lost his sense of reality. The film end with one of the most bizarre inter courses.
I wouldn't have watched this movie, but it has a relatively good score on metacritic, so Ilet me fool, although my inner voice said: Stay away from this crap. I have no clue why some intellectuals think that this might be a work of art.

What You See Is What You Get

678 - fascinating new cinema from Egypt

Remember this name: Mohamed Diab - ladies and gentlemen, we raise from our seats and great a great and fresh new voice from Egypt. The name again: Mohamed Diab.

Watch the work of this man. The name again? Mohamed Diab!

678 is a bus line in crowded Cairo, just the perfect location for frotteurs or just plain gropers. They grope e.g. Fayza, a clerk in administration who therefore prefers to spend the money she doesn't have on taxi trips. There is Seba, who is raped after a football match. Her husband is devastated by this tragedy, maybe even more than she. It's not easy to be a macho in present-day Egypt. There is also Nelly , stand up comedian working in a call center.
The stories of these three women are interwoven. We see the reactions of the society (didn't they provoke the attack? better forget about the incidents .... )
Mohamed Diab makes it clear that sexual harassment is not a joke. At some points the good intentions might overshadow aesthetic considerations, but that didn't disturb me very much, as this film gave insight into aspects of Egyptian reality which I might never acquire as a traveler.
This is Arab Spring in the Cinema Hall -- a must see, which hopefully won't be just an incident in Egyptian cinema.

678 - a must see from Egypt!

 

The Banishment (2007) - gigantic failure by a giant

All the things that worked so nicely in The Return just don't work here. Symbols are not hinted at, but thrown into your face, either by reciting the Scripture or by showing a jigsaw puzzle. Everywhere the pointer, see - there is another symbol. Don't miss it.
Zvyagintsev is a great artist, so this film fails altogether on a high level, though it's potentially a timeless drama. Visually captivating, but dramatically misconstrued. Alex brings his wife Vera and their two children to his childhood home somewhere in the countryside. Vera reveals that she is pregnant, but that Alex is not the father of the baby. Alex is devastated, of course. At last they agree to abort the bastard child - Vera dies during the operation. It is later revealed that this abortion might have been assisted suicide. Yes, the marriage between them is not working out, we have understood that.
Even later it is revealed that Alex is the physical father, but not not the metaphysical father of that aborted child. And this is the main flaw of the script, when it transcends from mythical, mystical, existentialist to ridiculous. Come on, Andrey - you can do better than that.
I am looking forward to Leviathan in the new year.

The Flower Girl (1972) -- the real shit from North Korea

After the crappy Interview, I decided that I wanted to see another movie from North Korea. I watched before Oh Youth from 1995, a sitcom that was made during the time of the great famine.

This movie, the Flower Girl was shot in 1972, when the country was still supported by its neighboring Communist brethren and didn't anticipate a famine later.
This plot is located in the 1930s, I'm told. There are very few clues to place the plot in time. The signs are written with Chinese characters (it seems -- or are they Kanji); some seem to be in Japanese. Korean letters are not seen in the village. It's also hard to spot the Japanese. Would the Korean audience recognize their uniforms, do they reveal themselves through language -- I don't know.
Anyway: we follow the hardships of Koppun's family. Her mother  is terminally ill, she has worked herself up for the evil landlord. They have also blinded her little sister, meanwhile the brother is in prison. Mother wants to live on, for the sake of her daughters. They owe the landlord, who is miserably greedy. Koppun sells flowers and "edible grass", in the hope to make enough money to buy medicine for her worn out mother, also the blind sister gets this idea, but Koppun still has enough pride and doesn't want her sister to perform for the villagers. Private capitalism is the way, since Koppun indeed makes enough money to buy some medicine, but ... just then mother passes away. More misery, more tears.
O Brother - where art thou? He appears just in time and the revolution cleans out the evil landlords and the Japanese occupants.
Yes, the revolution starts all of a sudden. Just one brother is enough to mobilize the oppressed vllagers. But if all depends on one person, the leader, to ignite a revolution, can we then justifiably call this a popular movement? The message seems like this: when the situation is matured, the Leader just plucks the fruit like a ripe fruit. Or the revolution comes as deus ex machina.
This movie was an opera before, maybe that's why the characters are so far from life. The evil landlord is reluctantly evil, the suppressed heroine manages to preserve her granny perm.

The Flower Girl - North Korea's Titanic - features on the oine won money bill

The Interview - crap by teenagers in their 30s

There has been a lot of debate around this film. The so-called DPRK sees it as act of war and threatens with retaliation. Then SONY canceled it - and got into even more trouble, as now it is a matter about Freedom of Speech. Yes, this movie should be shown, to make the point that Freedom of Speech will not give in for threats, even though it is an extremely bad movie.
It seems to be like Borat meets Dumb and Dumber. Every fart needs to be heard, no crapping is left unmentioned, every dick has to be presented. Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen are like kids in puberty, testing the limits of what still goes. And let it be said from the beginning: anything goes, more mentioning of poop and peep doesn't constitute a good, or transgressing movie.
It starts as a media satire: the people of the talk show Skylark Tonight create pseudo-news. This is maybe the best part of this concoction. It turns out that the dictator of North Korea is a big fan of this show, he even is prepared to give a staged interview, i.e. an interview according to the dictator's manuscript. The CIA thinks this could be a good chance to kill that dictator and they agree to that plan.
When they come to Pyongyang, the team of Skylark Tonight behaves themselves as American idiots. They realize that all they see is a big Potemkin scenery, but at the same time Skylark feels an affinity to the dictator. They both have father issues.
Well several slapstick situations occur and at the end it turns out that the propaganda officer is less than a fan of the dictator. Yes, the dictator shows that he is not a divine emanation, but a pathetic creep - and is replaced by the propaganda officer after the revolution.
This could be satirical, this could be poignant, it could even be vitriolic, but it is just plain embarrassing.  Nothing, repeat: nothing is disturbing in this so-called satire. No unsettling facts about the probably most repressing political system in the world. no empathy for the more than 20 million North Koreans and their hardships, just some jotted remarks and that is all. But it is not enough - the suffering of the people in North Korea will go on after this movie. And The Interview does not contribute to higher awareness about the catastrophic human rights situation in that country.
It gets 0,1 of 10 stars.

Another perfect movie - The Return (2003)

Yes, the title says it all: I liked also this movie directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev, the second movie I saw by him. It's about coming of age and partially also some kind of  road movie.
The plot is divided in consecutive days, starting on a Sunday. A bunch of youths is standing on a platform and jump into the water as test of courage. Remain Andrei and his younger brother Ivan. Who won't jump is a coward and a sissie. Andrei jumps and leaves Ivan, who at last is fetched by his mother. Ivan refuses to climb down, as he doesn't want to be labelled coward.
Next day, the gang mocks Ivan, even his brother - although under press - joins the mockery. They fight - and Ivan runs away. Whenever he is under extreme pressure, he runs away. At home, their mother announces that their father has returned. They think that he works as a pilot on a busy schedule and therefore never visits them. They look at him and then they compare the view with an old photo they keep in a Bible stored in the attic. Yes, it seems to be their father indeed.
Andrei, the conformist, needs a father figure. Ivan immediately reacts in a negative way, distancing himself from the father. The father treats the boys as almost grow ups, e.g. he allows them to drink some wine for supper. He takes the boys on a trip, as he has to order "something" within the next three days. The father treats them harshly. Seemingly they have to pass some rites of passage during the trip. At last they arrive at an uninhabited island. There is a watch tower, which Ivan doesn't climb because of his vertigo. There is also a house where the father digs a hole and finds a box. Then he announces that they will return, however the boys want to catch some fish before leaving. The father gives Andrei his watch and tells them to be back within a hour.
They come late and Andrei is beaten by his father. Ivan's hatred now breaks out completely and he threatens to kill his father. As his under pressure again, he runs away and climbs up that watch tower, threatening to jump down. The father wants to get him, but a rotten plank breaks and the father dies after the fall from the tower.
Andrei takes the command and they row the body back to the shore. (Ivan accepts his authority without rebellion.) While the boys are recovering for a moment, the boat with the dead body of the father drifts back into the sea and drowns. Ivan runs after the boat and shouts 'Papa, Papa'. Ivan would have needed a father - however their communication was an absolute failure
The story is relatively simple, but everything seems to be enriched with meaning  which give way for existentialist, psychological and theological readings of the plot.
The absence of any male authority is striking. The Bible - the word of the heavenly father and the memory of the earthly father are not present in everyday life.
The gang at the beginning forms a hierarchy with a Darwinist peck order, like the boys in The Lord of the Flies do.
When the father returns, he tries to enforce respect, not considering that respect has to be earned. The father is so much old school, that his communication with his sons ends in complete disaster. Yes, he tries to transfer responsibility to his eldest son, but he doesn't realize that the circumstances have changed during his absence. There is still room for a father figure, but not one that is issuing random orders, as the boys have manages to live their lives without male authority until now.
The two boys - Vladimir Garin (as Andrei) and Ivan Dobronravov (as Ivan) give a supreme performance. The range of feelings these kids can express is admirable. (Yes, of course also Nadezhda Markina in Elena was OUTSTANDING.)
While the usage of symbols and the illustration of communication failure here seem to be perfectly fitting and brilliantly applied, the same didn't work for me in The Banishment. What is well-balanced in The Return, seems to be  is overcharged in The Banishment. Thus the same recipe is not good for two different movies. Maybe I want to write about The Banishment later.

 

Elena (2011) - capitalist realism in Russian cinema

Some films just manage to avoid my attention. This is not bad, as there is always something good left to be admired. Some of my few friends have mentioned repeatedly how much they like Elena, so I watched it also and I liked it also.
The story of the movie is flowing quietly - maybe too quiet for certain people's taste. We see in the first frame a tree, in the tree a bird (as dummy in the world of animals I cannot be more specific, maybe it's a crow, but it doesn't matter). After some time this bird makes a noise and the camera looks into an apartment. Elena is waking up, goes from one room to the other, from her room to kitchen, from kitchen to living room, goes from living room to her husband's sleeping room and wakes him up, goes back to kitchen and prepares breakfast. Elena walks a lot, while life stands still. Elena is married to Vladimir. She used to be his nurse, but two years ago they married and now she is his house maid and occasional lover.
At the breakfast table they talk about their doings. Vladimir plans to go to the gym, Elena will get her pension and then visit his son.
At this point I thought that the plot was going to be too constructed, too much like written by some student of manuscript teaching class. He has a useless daughter, she has a useless son. One day the scene is shot from Elena's perspective, then from Vladamir's perspective, but this uneasiness with the screen play and the cinematography soon disappeared.
While Vladimir is working out - alone (the absence of friends is striking), Elena cashes her pension, walks to the bus stop, goes by bus, changes to train, walks to the grocer's shop, walks to the flat where her son and his wife live with their two kids. They don't do anything, apart from drinking beer and playing video games. Her grandson Alexander has a little business with pirate CD's and that's it.  Alexander wants to enter university, however his characters seem to be far from brilliant. He could get an education in the army, but this is dismissed as an unattractive alternative. He could be admitted to the university, if they paid someone in administration, but from where to take the money?
Vladimir is rich, but unwilling to support Elena's family from a former marriage, who to him are "practically strangers". Much in this script feels like an updated Greek tragedy. The peripeteia would be the heart attack Vladimir suffers from while working out.
Vladimir is now depending on Elena. He is beginning to like his daughter and  wants to bequest the flat to her. However, Elena is not ready to be shunt onto a siding. When she discovers Viagra pills in her husband's cupboard, a quick glance in a medical dictionary tells her what to do.
On IMDb someone asked, if she really killed him. This is a surprising question, because even the  most superficial viewer can - imho - not fail to catch this detail, even without having the "additional information" they are begging for in that forum.
In the end we see a beautiful mirroring of the beginning: Elena's grandchild is on the bed, trying to get up; the family is watching some rubbish ob TV and the crow still sits outside. Maybe this end is a glimpse kind of hope, indicating that the present and even the next generation are corrupted by Post-Soviet Russia, maybe a new generation will break the cyclical structures? Or should I see it pessimistically? Everything is 'back to start'? As opposite to the socialist realism? Moscow still doesn't believe in tears?
In the classical tragedies we need to have a chorus, commenting on the plot. Here this role is attributed to banality shows on TV, giving trivial advice on anything. And TV seems to be babbling all the time.
Elena is a fascinating look into present-day Russia, however the plot could - mutatis mutandis - happen at any place where Darwinism rules.