Silence (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆

Silence (2016) – M. Scorsese

How will Scorsese go down in film history (since this is one of his passions)? Will he be considered a director with a few great masterpieces (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas) who then tried his hand at everything with some middling results (e.g., John Huston)?  Or a great all-rounder (e.g., Howard Hawks)?  Perhaps he has higher aspirations? After all, Ingmar Bergman also called a film (The) Silence, 1963.  But this wasn’t the film in which a priest questioned God’s existence (that was Winter Light, 1963), as Andrew Garfield’s Rodrigues does here when he is witnessing the suffering of Christians in 17^th century Japan.  Garfield (and also everywhere man Adam Driver) is a missionary sent to spread the faith and to bolster the victims of Japan’s efforts to wipe out the religion, not unlike Liam Neeson’s Ferreira sent earlier and now presumed lost.  The story goes that Ferreira capitulated when the Inquisitor asked him to renounce Jesus/God by stepping on his picture.  However, Garfield and Driver won’t believe this.  Many trials later (this is a long movie), Neeson appears and offers a pragmatic solution.  The project seems near to Scorsese’s heart but he lets it drift along. He wants to portray men whose faith is strong enough to endure any hardship – and to characterise their internal struggle – but either Garfield is miscast (or hasn’t the acting chops) or Scorsese himself is ambivalent.  There are moments when the Japanese perspective, arguing that the colonizing efforts of the West must stop, seems to have his sympathy (not considering the bloodthirsty tortures that they wreak on all Christians here in some incredible set-pieces).  Or perhaps it is just my lack of faith that makes this particular cause seem in vain when other more important causes (social justice, more broadly) should dominate? Scorsese and his team create some shots of grand pictorial beauty in this film which must have been awesome on the big screen but he can’t match the transcendental and spiritual themes of his forebears (Bergman, Tarkovsky, Dreyer, Ozu). He’ll go down in history somewhere in the middle.

  

Summer Hours (2008)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Summer Hours (2008) – O. Assayas

The movie opens with Helene’s 75^th birthday and her three children (with spouses) and grandchildren are gathered at the country estate, about an hour from Paris by train.  Helene (played by Edith Scob, from Eyes Without A Face) is an art collector, or more specifically, the guardian of the art treasures of her uncle, a famous painter long deceased.  The atmosphere is relaxed but a little wistful and Helene wants to talk about her will with her oldest son (played by Charles Berling) who is reluctant.  Later, after Helene has passed, the three children (including Juliette Binoche as the daughter) discuss what to do with the house, the artworks, the memories.  It is melancholy but real, not difficult, manageable -- but existential.  A museum is contacted and a bequest is made.  Director Olivier Assayas is interested in these people but also in the stuff in which time and energy and love have been devoted.  There is a real sense of place and we as viewers also grow comfortable in the estate and feel a bit mournful as it is packed up.  But after all, it is just stuff and Assayas seems to know this (or he is willing to contemplate it).  Two out of three siblings have left France and their lives are elsewhere (as globalisation takes hold).  Then, there is a shift to the younger generation, living their lives, building new memories perhaps, instilling their will and emotions into objects, places, music, and more.  All that will later dissipate.  But the film is so alive that it makes it all seem worth it nevertheless. 

Doctor Zhivago (1965)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Doctor Zhivago (1965) – D. Lean

Falling back to the theme of “impossible love” that he examined in Brief Encounter (1945), director David Lean tries to situate his investigation within the epic drama that was the Russian Revolution.  But in doing so, he doesn’t quite manage to capture the political or philosophical dynamics at play in the context; instead, the communists are evil ideologues (or pragmatically partisan) and the deposed rich are sympathetic victims of the sweeping changes.  Omar Sharif’s Zhivago stakes out a detached middle ground, avoiding involvement – until he can’t.  He feels like the moral center of the film, using his medical skills to assist wherever he can, especially in contrast to the evil Komarovsky (played by Rod Steiger) who uses people whenever he can.  But then even Zhivago takes a wrong turn, falling for nurse volunteer Lara (Julie Christie) during a six month stay in an army hospital despite the fact that he is married (to Tonya played by Geraldine Chaplin) and has a young son.  Lara had been previously exploited by Komarovsky and then married to revolutionary Pasha (Tom Courtenay) who is reportedly killed in the war.  She also has a child.  After everyone is exiled to the Urals, the impossible love blooms again, for a short while. Zhivago writes poetry about it (which we never hear). All of this is told years later in flashback by Alec Guinness’s General Yevgraf (somehow the half-brother of Zhivago).  So, should the audience identify with Zhivago? Or with Lara? Is their love pure? I didn’t see it.  But the larger sweep of the staged historical events (many extras) and Freddie Young’s cinematography (gorgeous mountains) did capture my attention from time to time; I wanted badly for the style of the film to counteract the schematic nature of the script, but alas.  Yet, there is something about a 197 minute movie that demands respect and who can deny the film’s popularity at the time (boffo box office)? It struck a romantic chord as hearts broke when dashing Omar Sharif and winsome Julie Christie sacrificed their love (but to what end?).  

The Nutty Professor (1963)

☆ ☆ ½

The Nutty Professor (1963) – J. Lewis

I thought I should give Jerry Lewis a chance, seeing how he died and all, but you know, this was just too stupid for me.  I mean, this was the famous one, right?  Or is he better in other pictures that he directed? Or in those early films with Dean Martin?  I’d really only seen him in The King of Comedy (1982) and Funny Bones (1995) and perhaps random other places (that telethon).  I gave Bob Hope a chance and that didn’t work out so bad.  But here, despite the well-known premise (nerdy Professor Kelp drinks a potion that turns him into swanky egomaniac Buddy Love, a supposed rip on Dean Martin), everything was less than I expected.  I pondered a bit on Jerry’s direction of himself – he does “hold the beat” longer than expected, presumably to milk the laugh…or to create it.  Things feel a bit made for TV – sort of children’s humour – and the straight roles (i.e., Stella Stevens) are too credulous to accept.  Jerry might be slightly preferable in the Buddy role, but to what end? Am I being too tough?  We can agree to disagree on this one.  For the record, I don’t require all my comedy to be smart or sophisticated, but I do prefer it to be funny. Still, a couple of points for the concept, which might have been fresh once upon a time (and, no, I won’t be checking the Eddie Murphy version anytime soon).

Five Women Around Utamaro (1946)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Five Women Around Utamaro (1946) – K. Mizoguchi

Having just seen the Katsushika Hokusai exhibit at the National Gallery of Victoria today, I thought the time was right to check out Kenji Mizoguchi’s film about another contemporaneous ukiyo-e woodblock print artist, Kitagawa Utamaro.  Utamaro was famous for his bijin ōkubi-e "large-headed pictures of beautiful women" of the 1790s (according to Wikipedia) and was a denizen of the red-light district of Edo, although the film shows him sublimating any erotic impulses into his art.  Even so, the women (and men) around Utamaro do nothing but give in to their passionate desires, causing endless intrigues.  Kinuyo Tanaka plays Okita, the most impetuous of local courtesans who drinks too much and chases after young Shozaburo who instead runs off with Takasode, the courtesan with the Utamaro drawn tattoo on her back.  Utamaro himself gets into trouble, first for boasting that his art is better than that of the local traditional painting school (which earns him a duel and then an acolyte) and second for making prints that displeased the shogunate (resulting in 50 days in handcuffs).  As a director, Mizoguchi had not yet reached his mature period of masterpieces (Ugetsu, Sansho the Bailiff, The Crucified Lovers, and more) but this film has some lovely outdoor (location) shooting and some complex camerawork.  The story itself contains too many minor characters, not always clearly delineated, and therefore loses some impact.  But surely the vision of the artist consumed by their art was a deeply personal one for this director.

Age of Consent (1969)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Age of Consent (1969) – M. Powell

Director Michael Powell’s final film follows on the heels of his previous Australian venture (They’re a Weird Mob, 1966) moving from Sydney up to Brisbane and North Queensland. It stars James Mason (with tenuous accent) as an Australian painter who leaves New York to return to his roots on a remote tropical island near the Great Barrier Reef.  Although he’s burnt out, the relaxed environment starts to bring back his creative streak.  A cheeky teenager (played by young Helen Mirren) soon becomes his muse; Mirren spends a lot of the movie in a state of undress as a result.  This is a bit jarring if you only know her from Prime Suspect and her late career superstardom (possibly Calendar Girls, 2006, which I haven’t seen, brings things full circle).  Similarly to Weird Mob, there’s a bit of comic relief here as well, poking fun at Aussie stereotypes and slang, when Mason’s insufferable friend Nat Kelly (Jack MacGowran) comes to visit and gets into trouble.  But overall the tone is laid back, as if the gentle rhythm of the waves was setting the pace of the picture. Plenty of shots of the lush locations and underwater photography of the reef do not disappoint. Mason ultimately gets his mojo back, although the May-September romance that eventuates does have an ick factor. The paintings on display don’t strike me as particularly notable but an early shot of a Sidney Nolan artbook suggests that Powell does have better taste.  It’s a shame (after his masterworks with Pressburger) that his career ground completely to a halt after this, due to lack of funding, aged 64.  

The Executioner (1963)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Executioner (1963) – L. G. Berlanga

Luis García Berlanga’s black comedic attack on the death penalty (and Franco’s rule more broadly) apparently evaded the censors of the day and is now heralded as a masterpiece in Spain.  Well, it isn’t a laugh riot but it does subtly lampoon the practice of execution by showing the lengths that the main character (José Luis Rodríguez played by Nino Manfredi) will go to try to avoid the job of executioner and the norms and pressures that hem him in.  Moreover, there are bureaucratic advantages to holding the job (a plum apartment, higher wages, other perks) if one can only look the other way at the horror and avoid the stigma applied by society.  The comedy arises from a) the oblivious nonchalance of the retiring executioner (and father-in-law by shotgun wedding of the protagonist) and b) the various indignities and embarrassments suffered by José Luis throughout the film.  The payoff (and darkest moment) comes when José Luis has to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to perform an execution while the actual prisoner is calmer and more resigned.  In the end, of course, the caustic bite of the film comes from the choice to tackle an issue this serious in a light comedy of manners rather than addressing it head-on. So, instead of challenging Franco’s government for its inhumanity, we get a bit about a prisoner who was offered champagne for the first time but turned it down to the shock and surprise of the prosecutors.  Jokes about the garotte and electric chair may be in extremely bad taste but they drive the point home. 

Monkey Business (1931)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Monkey Business (1931) – N. Macleod

The Marx Brothers allow their fluid chaos to infect a cruise ship (upon which they have stowed away).  Unlike later features, there are no definable characters to speak of (no Rufus T. Firefly etc.) but instead Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo running amok.  They are chased everywhere by the Captain and First Officer (after being discovered in barrels, singing). They run into two mobsters having a feud and conveniently become bodyguards for both sides. Zeppo romances one mobster’s daughter while Groucho has a playful relationship with the other mobster’s wife (Thelma Todd).  There are musical interludes (piano and harp, naturally).  There is a Punch and Judy show that Harpo takes over.  No real famous bits (that I was previously aware of) seem to have come from this film, their first written for the screen rather than adapted from a stage play.  But their greatest hits were just about to happen (next up: Horse Feathers).  Still, well worth a look!