The Dancer (Maihime) (1951)

☆ ☆ ☆

The Dancer (Maihime) (1951) – M. Naruse

Just before his big successes with Meshi (1951) and Okaasan (1952), Mikio Naruse made this soapy family drama, scripted by Kaneto Shindo (who went on to direct films of his own).  We enter the story in the middle, with the professor father returning from time away to find the ballet teacher mother in the midst of an affair and the two nearly grown children distant and distracted with their own lives.  Mieko Takamine portrays wife/mother Namiko as full of angst and guilt, unable to decide whether to abandon her cold and angry husband for the gentle caring Takehara-san or to continue to suffer in order to support her children in the name of family stability.  Atypical for Naruse, this is a well-to-do family who have “high culture” tastes and don’t seem to be suffering economically (although there is talk of the war having interfered with their goals and dreams).  Daughter Shinako (played by Mariko Okada who went on to work for Ozu) is following in her mother’s footsteps as a ballet dancer, realizing that she may be the vessel into which Namiko has poured her crushed hopes and dreams.  A few minor subplots take us nowhere and at last there is a major confrontation at the dinner table – an unusual emotional eruption for Japanese families that makes it even more consequential.  And then the ending is happy/sad/perplexing.  It all feels slightly off-key for Naruse who, at his best, was a master of family melodrama and its emotional implications for women. 

  

Wendy and Lucy (2008)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Wendy and Lucy (2008) – K. Reichardt

Kelly Reichardt’s movies are probably an acquired taste.  Some use the word “minimalist” to describe them but I’m not exactly sure what it means in this context (anti-Hollywood, for sure).  If it signifies that there’s not much going on in her movies, just plainly told stories of everyday events, unfolding slowly and shot with a clear-eyed skill in observation, then OK.  However, less is often more, as they say and, if you give in to them, Reichardt’s mundane stories somehow become sublime.  Perhaps it is her eye for beautiful compositions that heightens the experience or the inner resolve that her characters have or need to muster.  Wendy (Michelle Williams) is on her way to Alaska in a junky old car with her dog, Lucy.  She seems to have very little money, sleeping in her car, washing up in gas station restrooms.  Her relations with other people seem strained.  And, of course, somewhere near Portland, OR, things go wrong (she loses Lucy among other trials).  Apart from Williams, many or most of the other actors seem to be non-professionals and the action takes place on the streets (or in the woods) in real locations.  What happens to Wendy could happen to you or me, if things took a wrong turn.  The desperation is real and Reichardt is wise not to sensationalize it. 

J. S. A.: Joint Security Area (2000)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

J. S. A.: Joint Security Area (2000) – C.-W. Park

No time like the present to watch this mystery-drama that takes place in the Joint Security Area between North and South Korea.  However, despite the apparent focus on the tensions between the two states, threatening to ensnare the whole world, the movie is actually a John Woo-styled look at male bonding across an insurmountable divide (political rather than legal).  Director Chan-Wook Park (whose biggest hit is the notorious Oldboy, 2004) plays with both time and truth, delivering us different versions of the pivotal event (the killing of two soldiers in the North’s gatehouse by a lone Sgt from the South) in flashback based on the legal depositions of those who survived and then on both memories and confessions.  A half-Korean member of the Neutral Nations investigation team (from Switzerland) interviews all of the men involved on both sides of the border; she follows the usual rulebook but is compromised in the end.  Park’s direction is always stylish and he uses a variety of camera moves to keep things interesting (such as a quick pan from character to character).  There’s less action than you would think but tension is maintained until we reach the requisite five-way armed stand-off.  Apparently, Tarantino loved this film and you can see why in the plotting (but not the dialogue).  Kang-Ho Song (excellent in Joon-ho Bong’s Memories of Murder, 2003) is charismatic as the North Korean Sgt but all of the four male principals are solid.   

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014) – R. Andersson

Great title.  Perhaps if this were the first Roy Andersson film that I watched, I would have been more exhilarated by it, but since it is the third (and stated to be last) film in a trilogy about being human, a bit of the novelty has worn off.  That’s not to say that the Andersson style isn’t still something wondrous to behold.  He meticulously sets up each shot with actors positioned statically around the frame with all elements of the setting perfectly colour-coded (in this case, heavy with beiges, greys, pastel greens, and browns) and the depth of field shot such that everything looks flat and characters in the background are fully in focus.  With everything static, very tiny movements (or splotches of colour) capture the eye and focus the mind – this gives an existential or humanistic flavour to the proceedings, asking us to consider the relevance/importance/uniqueness of the action in focus.  There are some really great set-pieces.  And, as in the earlier films, Songs from the Second Floor (2000) and You, the Living (2007), the film unfolds as a series of disconnected scenes, wry or absurd anecdotes featuring situations that we’ve all experienced or that elicit an emotion that we all know (such as embarrassment, awkwardness, shame).  The tone is dysthymic but affectionately comic – we’re let off the hook for having also been in these predicaments.  There are a handful of recurring characters, principally a pair of novelty salesmen trying to “help people to experience fun” by way of the traditional “laughing bag”, extra-long vampire teeth, and a horrible old man mask.  The joke is that these things never really work to bring fun to anyone’s lives.  Funny joke, right?  You get the point of the film then.  Worth your time, especially if you’ve also seen and enjoyed the earlier films in the trilogy.    

The Brood (1979)

☆ ☆ ½

The Brood (1979) – D. Cronenberg

Very strange, very strange.  In fact, it is the ideas that writer-director David Cronenberg came up with that make this worth watching – the execution is lacking.  Sure, the effects are creepy/disgusting, as we all came to expect from this auteur, but the acting (even from legend Oliver Reed) is a bit flat and the slow slow build to the final climax is too dreary.  Yet, there is something in the idea that our anger might become manifest physically, either as sores or actual projections, that links this to other Cronenberg films and perhaps to the man’s deeper metaphysical or psychological concerns.  Frank Carveth (Art Hindle)’s wife is isolated in a sanatorium under the watch of psychiatrist Hal Raglan (played by Reed); he brings their 5-year-old daughter Candy to see her on the weekends.  However, when Candy returns with scratches and marks on her back, Carveth seeks answers.  A few bloody murders later and the truth is finally revealed (in the final 15 minutes) and it is very strange, very strange.  Next up for Cronenberg: Scanners (1981) and Videodrome (1983) which expand on these themes with even more panache.

Mrs. Miniver (1942)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Mrs. Miniver (1942) – W. Wyler

Melodrama-cum-propaganda piece created by Hollywood but purporting to show the British coping with the onset of World War II.  Wyler was already a masterful director (The Letter, Wuthering Heights, and Jezebel were under his belt with The Best Years of Our Lives, Roman Holiday, and more yet to come). He controls the action well and allows Greer Garson to take an affectionate star turn as the title character, a mum coping with a war that sees her son off to the RAF and her husband (Walter Pidgeon) contributing as a civilian at Dunkirk (not to mention her house and community bombed).  However, this is a fantasyland England where everyone bonds together and gets on with it; Garson’s family is significantly well off (with a maid) – moreover, they simply shrug off the hardships (less “stiff upper lip” and more impossible cheerfulness) until they really can’t.  But as I said this is melodrama and the major subplots involve a romance between the Minivers’ son Vin (Richard Ney) and the granddaughter (Teresa Wright) of the local aristocrat (played curmudgeonly by Dame May Whitty) as well as a flower competition that sees humble Henry Travers taking on Whitty.  Still, there were some tear-jerking moments and the rousing rallying cry, though undercut by the failure to depict the brutality of war in real terms, still comes through.  This won six Oscars (including for Garson, Wright, Wyler, and best picture) after being nominated for 12.       

Happiness (1935)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Happiness (1935) – A. Medvedkin

One of the final silent features from the Soviet Union, ultimately banned but rediscovered in the 1960s by SLON (Society for Launching New Work), a group of leftist filmmakers led by Chris Marker.  In fact, Marker was so impressed by this film and by director Alexander Medvedkin that he ultimately made a striking essay film about him and his life (The Last Bolshevik, 1993).  Judging by Happiness, Medvedkin did have a flair for the comic and surreal; the film is spiked with a few bizarre images (polka-dotted horse on a roof, a shack being stolen from within/underneath, long-bearded clergy wrestling for a lost wallet) inserted into a rollicking tale of a peasant and his journey into communism.  Initially, he envies a neighbouring rich man, despairing his own predicament enough to want to commit suicide (comically), but, ultimately, he and his wife find that happiness lies in the collective farm (kolkhoz).  I wouldn’t say the plot is as straightforward as that sentence makes it sound.  If there is a message here, selling the idea of the kolkhoz, it didn’t come across; perhaps this experiment backfired, as did Medvedkin’s “cine-train” which travelled around the USSR filming actual kolkhoz workers and showing them footage of themselves, apparently griping.  But as a picaresque and comic oddity from a very different time and place, it succeeds.

The Ax (2005)

☆ ☆ ☆

The Ax (2005) – Costa-Gavras

Black comedy that wants badly to be “delicious” but instead sputters along, dragging out its point long after we “get it”.  Not that Costa-Gavras has made a bad film here, just one that could have been punchier and more incisive.  José Garcia plays a paper company executive who is let go when his company downsizes and relocates to Romania; after being out of work for 2 years, he stumbles on the brilliant idea of collecting résumés from the competition (other unemployed ex-paper company execs) and then killing the best of the lot.  We see several of these murders staged for presumably comic effect.  At the end of the line is the current occupant of the coveted job played expertly by Dardenne Bros. favourite, Olivier Gourmet.  Along for the ride are spouse Karin Viard (trying her best to hold things together) and two kids, one of whom seems to be following in criminal footsteps.  (The family drama unfolds around the central action and sometimes distracts from it). Costa-Gavras wants us to see how inhumanely people are treated in the age of corporate competition but that joke isn’t funny anymore.  Still, there might be a sharper film buried here somewhere; Garcia is a Jack Lemmon-like figure and he carries the weight of the picture fairly well.