Movies: The Official "Movie of the Week" Club Thread III

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Floating Weeds
Ozu (1959)
“Audiences today won’t understand good plays.”

A traveling troupe of actors makes its way to a coastal town in Japan. This isn’t one of their every day gigs. The leader of the group also is visiting a former lover and his secret son (who thinks he’s just an uncle). He’s a young man now, working at the post office. This revelation angers his current lover, a member of the troupe. For revenge, she encourages a fellow actress to seduce the young man and break his heart. Alas, she cannot. She loves the young man. The leader and his lover break up. The son and the young actress, to the father’s chagrin, stay together. Meanwhile the troupe itself is struggling. Its work is no longer appreciated like it once was and finances are tight. The manager bails. The troupe falls apart. The leader considers staying in town to reconcile with his old lover and son, but ultimately decides against it. He reunites with his most recent lover and they hop a train into an unsure future.

To quote another poster from the running “Latest Movie ...” thread, if you’ve seen one Ozu movie, you’ve seen them all. No truer than with Floating Weeds, which was a in color remake of his own A Story of Floating Weeds from 1934. I haven’t seen all of Ozu. Only four (I think) and I can’t refute the claim. Not that that’s a bad thing. His low-key familial and personal dramas have pull. It’s just rare I’m in the mood to sit down and experience it. He’s a thoughtful and patient filmmaker. To my detriment at times, I’m not always a thoughtful and patient film viewer. This is a good one though and one I’d use as a nice introduction to Ozu to anyone who is interested (though, as I admitted, I don’t have the deepest pool of experience to pick from here).

The shifting alliances and relationships could be the stuff of farce (right down to a character sneaking around, picking up tidbits of information to share with others). This is a more serious affair. Well, there is a Toshiro Mifune joke. It’s a good story. It’s actually the sort of universal tale that seems ripe for adaptation. Of course any American adaptation would probably up the drama of the drama. The temperatures don’t rise too much here. There are real emotions and drama, but little to no hysterics. It feels about as classically classical as classics can get.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

My next choice will be David Mamet’s House of Games.

 

[Jevo]

Floating Weeds (1959) dir. Yasujiro Ozu

It's summer in a small seaside town. A travelling theatre troupe arrives to mild excitement of the towns residents. Most of the actors go around town promoting their play, and scouting out 'prospects' among the female population in town. Although they are not always getting the attention of those that they want to get some attention from. The leader of the group Komajuro though, visits instead an old acquaintance, Oyoshi, and her son Kiyoshi. Kiyoshi believes that Komajuro is his uncle, but infact Komajuro is his father after a brief affair between Komajuro and Oyoshi when the theatre troupe last visited this town 18 years prior. Komajuro now has an affair with his lead actress, who quickly becomes jealous of him visiting his former lover. So get back at him, she convinces Kayo, a young beautiful actress in the group to seduce Kiyoshi. Quickly Kayo develops real feelings for Kiyoshi, and he likewise.

I am not really sure what to think about the story in this film. The overall premise is a good one. But where I start to fall of the wagon is when "conspiracy" to get back at Komajuro starts, by having someone seduce his son. I just don't see why he becomes so mad. Sex outside of marriage? All Komajuro and his troupe do is whore around, and Komajuro himself got a son out of marriage because of it. So it would seem weird that he would get irrationally angry because of a romance between two young people. Is it because he doesn't want to risk them having an illegitimate child, which one of them can't see, which would cause a lot of pain, which he himself knows? Perhaps, but surely there are better ways to handle it than violence and anger. Maybe there's just some difference in morality between me and him that I am not seeing. It's something that keeps the movie from really striking with me. Because otherwise there's a lot of good stuff in this story. Komajuro's struggle with leading a troupe doing a dying theatre form, and him and his acting style being out of touch with what excites audiences these days. Kiyoshi even says directly to him that he hams it up too much, which Komajuro becomes very defensive about. The whole relationship between Komajuro and Kiyoshi is very interesting to watch because of the way they are trying to size each each other up. Just like the audience are trying to see what each knows about how much the other knows. Likewise the relationship between Komajuro and Oyoshi, it's a peculiar one, but they have a few good scenes together. There's of course also the bubbling romance between Kiyoshi and Kayo. I really liked the story in this film in general, but the last half hour left me a bit bewildered.

By this time in Ozu's career he's become so lenient that he allows his cameramen to stand still all day instead of moving about... Well that's partially true. I'm not sure if the camera ever actually moves in this film, but if it does it's very little and very few times. By this stage in his career Ozu hardly ever moved his camera any more, now it's all static. But static doesn't mean things can't be dynamic. You just need other things to move, like wind or water. One of the greatest scenes in this film is the confrontation between Komajuro and his lover outside Oyoshi's house. Each on one side of the street, separated by a monstrous downpour. The camera doesn't move, but the editing, the movement of the actors and not least the rain creates a very dynamic scene. The water coming down seems like an impenetrable wall which have come up between the two former lovers. All in all a great scene, acting, editing, the set, and the direction, all perfect. That scene also features Ozu's signature style move, the camera sitting below the actors, looking up at them. I can't recall many, if any at all, other than Ozu who really uses that. Maybe because it's hard to pull off right. But Ozu is fantastic at making it work, and it puts the viewer in a different position relative the characters than you normally have, where you are usually eye level with them, and I really like the effect it has.

 

[Jevo]

His low-key familial and personal dramas have pull. It’s just rare I’m in the mood to sit down and experience it.

This very well describes my relationship with Ozu. I have liked all the three movies I have seen of him. And Tokyo Story is one of the very best I have ever seen. But I so rarely see myself drawn towards one of his movies, even if I know I'm gonna enjoy it.

 

[kihei]

Floating Weeds (1959) Directed by Yasujiro Ozu

I can think of no other single film that better reflects the genius of a master director than Floating Weeds. The tale is a simple one--the story of The Master, an itinerant actor. Both he and his troupe of travelling thespians are on their last legs when he returns to a village that holds deep meaning and hidden secrets for him. Essentially he is a Lear figure--old but not yet wise--and his little tragedy plays out as it must--but not so badly that he won't be able to bounce back again. What keeps this story going has everything to do with cinematic technique, something no director in history possesses more of than Ozu. The aspect of his technique that gets must noticed is that the camera only rarely, if ever, moves--in this particular film, it never does. Yet, Ozu is brilliant at communicating movement by use of fluid editing that allows the viewer's eye to time and time again predict the next shot. As the acting troupe's boat sails into the harbour and various personages wind their way through the streets of the small provincial town, the first 45 minutes of the movie are an absolute delight of visual logic and cinematic story telling. We watch as Ozu guides our eyes through careful editing--as a character turns a corner, for instance, there is the next shot waiting for him as his moves into the frame and is tracked until he comes to next turn where there is another cut and so on. Without once moving the camera, the resulting effect is one of steady, fluid movement. The camera may never move but the actors sure do. (The one obvious piece of movement in the entire movie--a shot of a lighthouse going by--is shot from a stationary camera on a passing boat. Like much in the movie, the shot is a carefully constructed illusion.

But Ozu is not merely a master of movement in spite of his stationary camera placements, his mise en scene is worthy of a PhD thesis. Pause on any single frame that portrays an interior dwelling in the film, and just look at it for awhile. Usually it will be full to overflowing with visual information. There are curtains and heraldic flags and rugs and posters and fans and wall hangings and flowers, all competing for attention. They are combined with a series of mostly black and white kimonos that come in seemingly a thousand different dazzling designs, no two people wearing the same design. Often this exquisite clutter forced me to concentrate on the actors' faces, but the chaotic overflowing of visual information also suggests a disorganization that mirrors the confusion in The Master's mind.

However when it comes to cutting down the frame, with Ozu rectangles--in doorways, windows, room design, staircases, and so on--do the heavy lifting. Japanese dwellings of this period are filled with rectangles and Ozu expertly accentuates these shapes to constantly cut down the frame and direct our eyes to exactly where he wants them to go. His camera placement in these internal scenes is impeccable; nothing is left to chance, yet the causal viewer might not even notice what Ozu is doing. He uses steps and stair cases to track his characters movement--very frequently in a sequence of shots--so that we always know who is on the move and where he or she is going. He does this a few times early to give us our bearings and then later cuts from the first floor to the second floor directly because he knows the audience is now familiar with the setting and won't be confused by the shift. But in nearly every shot, the actor is framed in such a way that are eyes can go nowhere else but to him or her. It is like Ozu deliberately discards that part of the frame (even when it is most of the frame) that he thinks will distract the viewer's attention.

Ozu is also great at using his characters' eyes to direct traffic and signal the next shot. An actress looks to the left and the next shot is the actor on that side responding to her comment. He looks over his shoulder--the camera cuts and follows. All of these techniques--his stationary camera placement, his sense of movement and setting, his editing, his use of rectangles to cut down the frame, his carefully constructed and elaborate mise en scene--all are there as cinematic devices that enable him to tell very human stories in a way that could never occur in a novel or a short story. His elaborately planned technical resolutions can have some very subtle effects that never draw attention to themselves until the third or fourth time that one sees his movie. For instance, in a key scene between young lovers near the end of Floating Weeds, the fact that they are now wearing matching kimonos of the same fabric design indicates a harmony that no two other characters in the movie ever possess. All of this gives the movie a particularity and a sense of place that help provide a foundation for the story while engaging our eyes in a wealth of meaningful visual detail. I don't think any of these things are intended as extraneous. I think this is the way that Ozu thinks through his movies and shows, rather than tells, his stories. In doing so, he engages his audience on a whole different level than most other directors in film history.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

I wish I could remember where I heard it, but I once heard/read someone say of Ozu and his technique -- no director has ever seemed so simple, but in actuality is quite complex.

 

[kihei]

I wish I could remember where I heard it, but I once heard/read someone say of Ozu and his technique -- no director has ever seemed so simple, but in actuality is quite complex.

Reminds me about what Liszt once said about Gabriel Faure. Explaining why he would not perform any of Faure's piano works in concert, Liszt said he wouldn't do so because the pieces necessitated "unrequited virtuosity." In other words they sounded simple but were difficult as hell to play. Though it sounds like a contradiction in terms, Ozu's simplicity is of a very sophisticated nature.

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

In recent years, while Tokyo Story has cemented its reputataion as an all-time Top Five movie on the critics' list aggregator They Shoot Pictures, Don't They, Floating Weeds has been in steady decline, reaching the point where it's now a bubble Top 1000 pick--checking in at #961 on this year's list. Yet would it be a major travesty if we switched them up? It's not like substituting Vertigo with Rope or The Godfather with Godfather III, to cite a few similarly-ranked comparables. A minor travesty at most, for Tokyo Story's sake. There's nothing second-tier about Floating Weeds, it holds up well against Ozu's masterpiece. Not suggesting that this was Ozu's intention, but I see Floating Weeds as the flipside of Tokyo Story: they are very different, but like different sides of the same gold coin.

Floating Weeds is as fun and colorful as Tokyo Story is grey and depressing. I get misty just reading a plot synopsis of Tokyo Story. But there's no modern malaise in Floating Weeds' story of the secrets, jealousies and vanities of a second-rate travelling theatre group. The plot is just filler, it tells itself and all ends well in the end. It's not trying to break our hearts, it is simply entertaining. Old-fashioned, even: despite the contemporary (1959) setting, we see everyone (except the youth Kiyoshi) still in kimonos and clogs. Whimsical, too: with its gentle accordion score I kept expecting Monsieur Hulot to wander into the shot.

But man, there's nothing traditional about its look. If I were a betting man I'd wager that this was Ozu's first colour feature because he plays with it like a kid with a new toy. [**checks Wikipedia**] OK, that's a bet I would have lost. Floating Weeds was in fact made a year after his first colour feature, but he's still having fun with it. The action takes place against a backdrop which--especially in the interior scenes--looks like a work of modern abstract art, with bright swatches of colour, right angles everywhere, a dizzying overdose of design. It never looks busy or cluttered though, just meticulously composed to please your eyes. There aren't many movies that can create delight from the placement of a mosquito repellent coil. Exquisite eye candy.

 

[kihei]

3 Women (1977) Directed by Robert Altman

For a director who made a lot of unsettling movies and was no stranger to taking chances, Robert Altman's 3 Women remains a work that is alternately strange, opaque, ambiguous, not quite real, and very challenging. The story focuses more on two women than three, Millie and Pinky, who are roommates and alter-egos whose dominance over each other shifts back and forth like a weather pattern throughout the entire movie. Pinky (Sissy Spacek) plays an innocent child of a woman (she still blows bubbles in her Coke), who the chatty Millie (Shelley Duval) first "adopts" at work and later offers shelter. They both work in a spa for the elderly and live in a nondescript Californian town that seems surrounded by desert. Millie is not necessarily the sort of person one would want to live with. She talks all the time, about nothing really, but there is more than a hint of instability about her. Her appearance is strange--she looks like a robot doll way before there were robot dolls. There is something a little oblivious about her and a little desperate, too. She isn't helped by the fact that her poolside neighbours at the condo where she lives first ignore her and then ridicule her to her face. She just motors on like nothing is happening, her delusions kept in place by a will she barely seems to have. Pinky is alternately innocent and annoying, quick to take advantage of subtle changes in their relationship, but not strong enough to sustain dominance when she has it. Spacek, who still at this stage of her life looks like a crocodile fetus (tip of the fedora to Rex Reed for that description), embodies her strange persona with a commitment similar to Duval's own, meaning the interchanges between the two actresses have a kind of intensity that is almost eerie. Meanwhile the third woman (Janice Rule) is the husband of a former Hollywood stuntman who is now a deadbeat lush. She is pregnant, seems almost Sphinx-like in her silence, and paints strange murals on the sides of the condo's pool. Lest her pregnancy be mistaken for a sign on new hope, it comes to a bad end.

All the above is allegedly based on a disturbing dream that Altman had when his wife was in the hospital and seriously ill. With the exception of a few notable champions, the movie actually bombed at the time of its initial release, but you wouldn't know that now that people are calling 3 Women some sort of masterpiece (96% on rotten tomatoes, for instance--revisionist history, that). These sorts of movies,--personal, vague, dream-like--can work in a big way for me sometimes (Last Year at Marienbad; The Double Life of Veronique--both high up in my all-time Top Ten) but usually for me these kind of flicks just go thud. Because the associations are so personal, such films can be difficult toys to play with and I find that in most cases such films seem indulgent and tedious. Sort of: "This is your dream, Robert; why should I care?" At best, the film seems like a rather odd take on Bergman's Persona, a far more powerful film about two isolated women who share a shifting power dynamic. Also in its favour, there is one of the most abstract montages in film history near the end of the movie that nearly converted me to liking it, an all-in avant-garde move if there ever was one. And I did like the hard to define, subtly creepy atmosphere of the film that seemed one part David Lynch and two parts disguised horror movie. So I'm certainly not sorry that I saw 3 Women, but it does remind me that Altman, who I respect a great deal, made an awful lot of movies that I could never get into.

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

3 Women is the story of a twentysomething caregiver at a geriatric hospital who is tasked to show a new girl the ropes. They have something in common, the doctor says--they're both from Texas. They become friendly, become roommates, but frictions develop and a traumatic experience transforms them, practically leaving each with the other's identity. It's a Freudian field day.

Like Enemy, 3 Women does not at first appear to be set in a dream world. You won't find cows in the living room or dancing dwarves speaking backward, none of that obvious surreal craziness. We're in a nondescript California town, everything looks perfectly normal. It establishes a strange, uneasy atmosphere though in many ways--the ominous music which sound like a record at the wrong speed*, the chattering and whispering of Millie and Pinky's coworkers and neighbours which are in our ear although we can never match them to a face, the recurring visual motif of water, the waterline bisecting the screen, the virtual absence of male characters (but one--the first closeup of Edgar is a crotch shot of him pulling his pistol...that basically tells you where men fit into this world), the presence of men indicated mainly through sounds of guns and dirt bikes, the murals of half-human, half-dragon figures--what do they mean? The artist--woman #3--who is omnipresent but hardly says a word. And if this wasn't all surreal enough, there's a nightmare sequence to blow your mind. Like Enemy, we're not in the real world, we're in the inner world, in the mind of a possible schizophrenic (or, who knows, maybe the mind of a perfectly normal person).

I was willing to just let Enemy be, to not try to slot each and every detail into an interpretation of what it meant. But that video explaining the end got me thinking some more and I found myself ironing out the wrinkles because I felt if there was a "logical explanation" to be had then I felt obliged to find it for myself. In the case of 3 Women though, although it has a lot in common with Enemy, I think I will pass on trying to draw any definitive conclusions about what its trying to say. 3 Women successfully creates a dream world, its "meaning" a mystery. Like our dreams, the message may be unclear, but the images and atmosphere are powerfully evocative.

We can't revisit our dreams, but I'll be coming back to 3 Women. Partially to explore its riddles, but also to enjoy the performances of Shelly Duvall and Sissy Spacek acting not like real women but like dolls who became real. They are like their supermarket wine--Tickled Pink and Lemon Satin--not quite authentic, but that's the fun. It's also very funny at times, like the shot of Millie descending the apartment complex stairs in a bright yellow hooded robe--the grim reaper in lemon chiffon. Or Edgar: "I'd rather face a thousand crazed savages than a woman who's learned to shoot"--he says as he's teaching women to shoot. That's another mystery--Edgar's disappearance at the end. Hmmm...maybe not.

EDIT: that's a 70s reference..it means, in this case, that the music sounds slowed down!

 

[Jevo]

3 Women (1977) dir. Robert Altman

Pinky (Sissy Spacek) is a young transplant from Texas, who has just started working in health spa in small Californian desert town. She's timid and awkward. On her first day she is being trained by another Texan, Millie Lammoreaux (Shelley Duvall), who seems like a polar opposite of Pinky. Millie talks incessantly, mostly about herself, and often to no one in particular, because most people around her ignore her constant jabbering. Millie doesn't seem to notice this, and considers herself something of a social butterfly. Despite their differences, they become roommates, since Millie's old roommate just moved out. However tensions rise between them, when Pinky tries to tell a drunk Millie not have sex with their landlord, who has a pregnant wife. Distraught Pinky attempts suicide by jumping off the Balcony into the communal pool. She barely survives the fall. Millie calls for Pinky's parents to come and visit her in the hospital. But when the arrive Pinky doesn't recognise them and yells at them to leave. When Pinky is sent home with Millie, she starts changing her personality, and adopts more and more traits of Millie's personality. Millie in response becomes more timid like Pinky used to be.

I don't think I've read enough Freud to come up with a great interpretation of this movie. But there certainly seem to be some sort of Freudian elements in the relationship between Millie and Pinky, and also Willie, the landlord's wife, who is the 3rd woman of the title. Especially in the last half. The first half until Pinky's suicide, seems more like a sort of satire of certain environment. The Florida Project isn't a satire, but in same way that it looked at the kind of people who live in these motels just outside Disney World. 3 Women look at the type of people who in the Sage Apartments in a small spa town in the Californian desert, and who like to go to Dodge City for shooting and drinking, preferably at the same time. It is somewhat of satire, but in the way that Robert Altman does satire, which as this point in his career after Nashville, is probably unlike the way any other does it. But after Pinky's suicide attempt, it becomes a sort of sexual horror instead, which sounds like a bigger change of pace than it really is when you are watching the film. Because there has been a really awkward uneasy feeling about the film the entire way through.

Sissy Spacek does a really good job as Pinky, she plays both versions of Pinky equally well, from timid teenager to sexual tiger. But Shelley Duvall really overshadows her. You don't for one single second doubt why no likes Millie. She is that annoying a person. She reminds you way too much of that person on the bus who decides to share their opinions about everything with the entire bus. Yet Millie, in big part thanks to Duvall's performance, is also a big reason why you keep watching the movie. I'm going to go out on a limb and compare Duvall's performance to Duvall's face. I have always thought Shelley Duvall had a weird face, but it's also a face I can't look away from. She's not ugly, even if she doesn't look like Brigitte Bardot. But her eyes and teeth seem to big for her face, which is weirdly elongated. But it's these peculiarities which makes it fascinating. In the same way Duvall gives Millie a lot of peculiarities, which also means you can't really take your attention away from Millie either. When you watch the movie you wonder why Pinky is sitting big eyed and attentive while Millie talks of her horrifying culinary exploits, but then you realise you are looking at Millie the exact same way Pinky is, probably for different reasons, but she still has all your attention.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

3 Women
Altman (1977)
“You’re the most perfect person I’ve ever met.”

Though our recent run of personality melding movies like Performance and Enemy seems to have led to the selection of 3 Women, it actually wasn’t those movies I was thinking of while sitting down with this. It was Holy Motors. While there’s definitely some trying on of different personas in that film as well, it came to me more because both of these films are ones I watched once years ago and didn’t care for, but upon rewatching, found the experience much more enthralling. Why? Sheesh, I don’t know. I’d like to say I’m older and wiser (one of those is irrevocably true), but maybe its more a matter of mood. Right headspace, right time. So, I started 3 Women somewhat reluctantly, but wound up taken with he experience. I’ll crib from myself (which already was cribbing from someone else) and point back to the comment in my Enemy review about the difference between a movie being obtuse for obtuse’s sake and one that, while maybe not offering answers, at least has a backbone. So too is 3 Women.

I’m not an Altman scholar, though I’ve seen about 60 percent of his work and this strikes me as an outlier. While he had his quirks and peccadilloes, he’s never struck me as a trippy/surreal type, as he is here. Maybe I just haven’t seen the right ones. Quartet sounds weird, for instance. But I dig this and the slow ratcheting of “something ain’t right.” What that is and why? Well, that’s the stuff of dreams. The nightmare, as noted by all, is a nasty bit of filmmaking and one that sticks with you. It really does all add up to a horror flick in my mind and I’m sure there is plenty of college student writing on the topic.

Just rambling here, snatching from my notes and rolling. Did you know that Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek are the same age? Spacek has always seemed so young and frail, especially here. Testament to her work that she conveys that naive youth so well before shape shifting into her final form, so to speak. Duvall’s Millie is quite the creation too. She’s a sad, deluded soul with a perma-smile, though that is a pretty weak defense against the indifference thrown her way throughout. She pushes Pinkie around a little simply because she’s the only person less significant than her. Of course, she steps up in multiple times of need. If people won’t love her for who she is, maybe they’ll love her for her actions, I suppose.

I’d steer pretty clear of all these women, especially the one painting the well-endowed monsters on the pool walls.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

I don't have the patience anymore to write about film, but 3 Women to me is the second best Altman film, only behind Images. Two lesser known films but way above anything else he's done.

 

[kihei]

A Prophet (2010) Directed by Jacques Audiard

A Prophet is the kind of gangster/prison drama that the word “gritty” was coined to describe. Malik is a 19-year-old Muslim sent to prison for six years, a harsh sentence given his youth and relative inexperience. He seems like a lamb thrown to the lions, but he comes under the care and attention of Caesar, a Corsican con with important connections and the toughest shark in a tank full of sharks. Caesar's fellow Corsicans remain highly suspicious of Malik and the Muslims in the prison yard view him as a traitor. Malik responds to his precarious position by learning fast and he eventually develops his own power base. Soon he and Caesar will be on a collision course but Malik will no longer be as overmatched as he first appeared.

As a genre work, A Prophet has just about everything one could ask of a prison drama—vivid characters, an interesting story that focuses on the making of a super criminal, fine performances and a suitably hard-edged mise en scene. There are some real surprises, a lot of suspense along the way, and few set-piece action sequences that are of just the right scale for this sort of movie. Malik and Caesar are indeed compelling characters and we come to root for the amoral Malik simply because he seems the least unsympathetic character among a bad lot. Fine performances by newcomer Tahar Rahim and veteran character actor Niels Arestrup give the movie a depth that similar genre pieces often lack.

Though I am not sure the movie intended to do this, A Prophet also provides a lucid demonstration of how the best way to make a man into a criminal is to send him to prison. The prison, its power dynamics and unwritten rules, its function as a testing ground for survival, is Malik’s university. He is smart and learns quickly—the name of the game is not merely to survive but to flourish and flourish he eventually does. A Prophet may be a relatively modest undertaking, but it knows how to tell its story very well. While survival may come only at a high moral cost, the problem is mitigated by the fact that for Malik, the moral cost isn’t exactly a deal breaker.

subtitles

 

[kihei]

My next pick is Valley of Shadows (2017), available on Amazon's streaming site.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

A Prophet
Audiard (2009)
“The idea is to leave here smarter.”

Malik is a young Arab Muslim who is earns a six-year stint in a French prison for attacking a police officer. He tries to keep to himself, but he’s soon targeted by the gang of ruling Corisicans led by Cesar who essentially run the joint. They need a Muslim killed before he can testify in a case. Fresh-faced Malik is recruited for the job with an offer he really cannot refuse — do it and earn their protection or die. After (somewhat) learning how to conceal a razor blade in his mouth, Malik carries out the task. It’s sloppier, messier far more gruesome work than his trainers have let on. It’s a bad death and it quite literally haunts him throughout. But the favor is earned. He builds the relationship with the Cesar and his crew, though it’s always clear his race and religion will be a divider. A few years into his sentence, his good behavior earns him short furloughs from prison life. Cesar taps into this freedom for his own purposes, but this Malik is older and wiser and begins a criminal enterprise of his own. Cesar sees the conflict with his business and threatens Malik, who eventually makes friends with an outside Muslim group who helps him set the various Italian factions against each other. In the end, Cesar is abandoned, alone and unable to even get audience with Malik. And Malik, he is released into the arms of his (now dead) friend’s family, followed slowly with SUVs of willing soldiers. The new boss. The system seems none the wiser.

This sort of rags-to-riches, soldier-to-kingpin sort of story has been told many, many times before (the biggest blurb on the DVD case makes the direct parallel to The Godfather), but when done well, as it is here, it’s always a grabber. Similarly, the thought that the system can spit out not rehabilitated individuals, but rather bigger, bolder, better criminals isn’t quite fresh either. But it’s still compelling. This is one of the better examples. Malik is a nobody at the beginning who committed a crime, but a fairly minor one in the scheme of things. He becomes not just a murderer multiple times over, but a shrewd operator and businessman, albeit of an illegal sort. Both Ryad and Reyeb encouraged education while he was behind bars. Boy did he get it. The fact that he does this mostly from prison beneath eyes and a system that should keep tabs on him, is all the more impressive. And damning. Actually, in fairness to the prison, they at least think they know what he’s doing, but man there probably should be some other checks in there. Authority, in that sort of traditional sense, never comes into play in this story. That’s some dark humor right there and that final shot of him walking off into the future with Ryad’s family and the trail of SUVs. I admit, I laugh. (EDIT add: Oh and that cover of Mack the Knife!)

There’s plenty of pulpy genre here, but it’s smart genre with a pulse on issues of race and class. This might seem like an odd leap, but it had me thinking of Steve McQueen’s Widows from last year which walked a similar line between entertainment and commentary with a equal deftness. Audiard gives every scene both an intimacy and an urgency. The camera is often not far from the subject’s face. Quarters are small and tight and that compression is constantly conveyed visually.

The two performances at the heart of this — Tahar Rahim as Malik and Niels Arestrup as Cesar — are pitched perfect, neither tipping over into an extremity. Seeing them again here I’m sad that I haven’t seen either actor more since.

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

They say life isn't fair (and they're right!), and after seeing A Prophet it seems prison life apparently is even less so. Somewhat surprising too, since I'd think given the restrictions, the lack of freedom and choices, the enforced routines, prison life may well be miserable and depressing but at least it would be somewhat fair considering prisoners are after all in the custody of the justice system. But no. Think the warden would like to know about the murder plot that Corsican gang is forcing you to participate in? He'll never know, because the Corsicans control access to the warden. Still, you do have a choice: be the murderer, or be the victim.

A Prophet takes us into a world that we would never want to enter willingly and leaves us there, like it or not. The movie is set almost entirely within the prison walls and even on Malik's few day passes he's bound by "prison business". It's like a nightmare Wonderland with Malik as Alice trying to navigate his way through a series of strange situations. Where his enemies are his protectors, where a spoon can be a deadly weapon, he will need to call on his wits and guts to survive. He is a hero, but not your usual hero. He's the ultimate underdog, illiterate, alone, a minority who has hit bottom after falling through every crack. Perfect candidate to be an expendable footsoldier in the prison mafia. Yet, as he commits one unsavoury task for his boss after another, he always maintains that he's working only for himself. And the only way he can put himself in position to defeat his oppressors is to gain their trust and respect, which he does by being the best damn prison mafia footsoldier he can be. Despite his own reluctance he performs every assignment with gusto, his survival depends on it. Marveling at his quick rise through the criminal ranks, an underworld associate asks Malik "how do you do it? Are you a prophet?" Nah. Malik's just an Arab kid thinking with his balls. A Prophet is practically an inspirational success story.

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Sorry, forgot my pick last week. Let's go with Morris Engel's Little Fugitive.

 

[Jevo]

Un Prophete (2009) dir. Jacques Audiard

Malik El Djebena (Tahar Rahim) is a young small time crook, who gets sentenced to six years in prison after having attacked a police officer. At first he intends to stick to himself and stay out of trouble, and just let the years pass by. However he is sharing a prison with hardened criminals. Among them are members of the Corsican mafia, and members of arab gangs. When an arab who is supposed to witness against members of the Corsican mafia arrives at the prison. The Corsicans need a way to dispose of him, and in a way where they don't do it personally. So Luciano (Niels Arestrup), leader of the imprisoned Corscians give Malik an offer he can't refuse. Malik does the deed, and gains protection from Corsicans, and he does various odd jobs for them around the prison. When most of the Corsicans leave prison, Malik gets more and more responsibility and trust from Luciano. When Malik gets allowed day long leaves from prison, Luciano sees it as an opportunity to have Malik do some jobs for him on the outside. But Malik also sees it as an opportunity to do some work for himself, which eventually puts him in conflict with Luciano.

I remember watching Un Prophete 10 years ago when it came out, and I was impressed by it, but not blown away. This time I am quite close being blown away. It has to be one of the very best mafia movies I have seen. It is not as slick as many of it's American counter parts, like The Godfather or Scorsese's mafia movies. Instead it is gritty. There's no honour system here, there's no "being made". This is every man for himself. Luciano knows this, and he rules with an iron fist because of it. He knows that if he lets up for a second, there's a risk he goes down. However he ends up underestimating Malik, believing he can control him. But when he realises there might be a problem, Malik has already gained too much power. Malik isn't a born killer. He only reluctantly kills Reyeb to save his own skin. But he learns what it takes to survive in prison. Over time he only grows more and more ruthless in his business dealings. Malik however does not turn into an outright monster. The murder of Reyeb continues to haunt him, and he's a compassionate friend to the wife and kid of his deceased friend Ryad. But being in prison being with the Corsicans ended up as his ticket to survival. And to survive in that environment requires continuous upwards movement in the organisation, and to do that you have to become cold and ruthless, otherwise someone will be it to you. Malik transition from small time crook to leader of a gang, is in many ways him being a victim of his extended prison sentence in the company of gang members.

Niels Arestrup and Tahar Rahim are a wonderful couple to watch act against each other in this film. Arestrup is often a treat to watch in his movies, but he is rarely allowed big roles. But when he is allowed to get a big character like he is here, or in his previous collaboration with Audiard in The Beat That My Heart Skipped, he really delivers. His Luciano is scary and unpredictable. You are always a little bit scared about what he's going to do next whenever he's on screen. The same feeling that those close to him feel in his presence. Even those that believe they have his trust. Rahim sadly doesn't seem to have done anything of note since this movie came out. He was rightly lauded with accolades and awards due to his performance. But for some reason he hasn't found success since then.

I have seen a small handful of Audiard's movies by now. They have all been good. But I have often felt that lacked a little something, apart from Un Prophete. Perhaps because this was the first Audiard movie I watched, and I've always known he had potential for more, but there was always just a few things lacking from his other movies to bring them quite up to the level of this one.

 

[Jevo]

La Libertad (2001) dir. Lisandro Alonso

A lone lumberjack walks around the forest chopping trees, cleaning and organising the trunks. He takes care of his bodily functions. Supplies it with sustenance, and excretes waste. His foreman comes and picks him and his lumber up, and tells him go and sell it. So he does. He comes back and continues doing what he did before.

We've had quite a string of movies with identity issues and convoluted plots. Safe to say, there's nothing of that here. It's probably a bit of a stretch to say there's a narrative in this film. But there is forward progression in time that is pretty easy to follow. So I guess there are movies out there that are less comprehensible than this. But La Libertad is very slow, and there's very little narrative and character development, we don't get any insights into the mind of the lumberjack, because he hardly ever talks, and when he does it's not about what's on his mind. It's certainly a challenge, and perhaps a bit too big one for me. I really liked Lisandro Alonso's latest movie Jauja, which seems like a straight action fare compared to La Libertad. I also liked Liverpool from him, which is more like La Libertad, but it has people talking in it, which certainly helps with comprehension. But La Libertad is a bit too incomprehensible for me. I am just not sure what I am supposed to get intellectually from it.

I don't think La Libertad is a bad movie. It manages to bring that sense of comfort and calm, where you are just there in the moment, watching someone do something quite tedious. It's a feeling that is quite hard to explain, but it's one that I often get from these very slow movies, when I just let myself go with it at it's own pace. Many times this is really what I am looking for in a slow movie. But despite getting that feeling, I think La Libertad is just a bit too extreme for me in it's slowness and complete disregard of narrative and intellectual stimulation. At least nothing in me is stimulated.

 

[Jevo]

From an Argentinian film with a glacial pace to a blaxploitation spoof, my next pick is Black Dynamite.

 

[kihei]

La Libertad (2001) Directed by Lisandro Alonso

Well. La Libertad is about as minimalist as you can get. It is a movie that is an observation without comment, and it is up to the audience to figure out whether this observation has merit or not. The vast majority of movie goers wouldn’t give this film the time of day. After all, it does nothing that normal movies do. There is no narrative; there is no drama; there is hardly any spoken word. All we are presented with is the day in the life of an isolated woodchopper as he goes about his toil, from morning defecation (if you are keeping score, nowhere near as graphic as the dump taken in Wim Wenders’ King of the Road) to a snack of tasty barbecued armadillo at the end of the day.

So what to make of this? Whatever anybody makes of this movie will be their own take on the situation. Alonso leaves it all up to the viewer—he presents his film without a point of view, or mostly so. The title La Liberdad (Freedom) might be a giveaway if meant ironically but there is no way to be certain that is Alonso’s intent. Slow cinema is all about accepting the rhythm of these sorts of films and going with the flow, though most such works, including Alonso’s more recent films, give the viewer a lot more to go on than we get here. Basically we make up the significance as we go along and that requires taking the film on its own terms.

Here were some of the thoughts that stuck in my mind for more than a few seconds or so (obviously these thoughts are going to be very idiosyncratic). I thought of The Beatles A Day in the Life. Here is this guy basically just existing—he does his job competently, shows little emotion, and just basically gets on with it. He seemed like an everyman figure to me—or perhaps an example of the kind of life that most middleclass people never even think about. Which made me inordinately fascinated by his New York Mets baseball cap. What’s the story there? The cap suggests a dimension of a particular personality that is nowhere else in evidence of the film. It also suggests that the woodcutter’s isolation isn’t as extreme as it’s presented. That what we see is not all there is to this man’s life. I didn’t find that earth shaking, but I did find it interesting. On the other hand, he might have found the cap on the ground somewhere and it has no greater significance than that.

I’ve had this theory for a long time that any person’s life if turned into a film is potentially compelling, potentially fascinating. While La Libertad is not my preferred brand of slow cinema, I didn’t mind it in the least. Perhaps the movie is saying something about simplicity; perhaps it’s saying something about isolation; perhaps it is saying something about how the poor are trapped in a Sisyphean world where they repeat the same labour day after day until they drop. I don’t know if the movie is intending any of these things. But it made me think about them—and that seems justification enough.

subtitles

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

He cuts down trees, he eats his lunch, he goes (figuratively) to the lavatory. Meet the star of La Libertad, an Amerindian woodcutter eking out a third-world living in rural Argentina. Spend a day with the guy. Then look him in the eye.

What is La Libertad about? Heck, what isn't it about? It is definitely not a love story...our hero is too solitary a figure. But it is nevertheless about relationships: man's relationship to nature, man's relationship to society, man's relationship to his work, art's relationship to its audience, fiction's relationship to truth, truth's relationship to technology, technology's relationship to man's works of art...and so on. It's about colonialism, consumerism, and it may even be about freedom. But watching our hero go about his daily routine would all be pointless were it not for the audacious final shot where he breaks one of the cardinal rules of fiction filmmaking: don't look at the camera! Sure, Ozu does this constantly, as do others where the camera represents another character's point of view. But there is no other character here, our woodcutter seems to be looking directly to us, the audience, for a response. Or to look away. But once engaged, it's not so easy to dismiss La Libertad. We feel obliged to consider more deeply what we've just seen. We're not detached observers anymore; we're involved.

Although its runtime clocks in at just over the minimum required to be considered a "feature", La Libertad is essentially a short film. It's not really concerned with narrative or character development in the way a fiction feature film would be; rather it's about capturing a mood, a time and place, revealing a situation, and what we take away from the encounter is really up to us. It's an epic short film.

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

I think I'll scratch Kings of the Road off my "most wanted" list...

 

[kihei]

I think I'll scratch Kings of the Road off my "most wanted" list...

Good call.