Happy End (2017)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Happy End (2017) – M. Haneke

Director Michael Haneke’s latest film, his first in five years, is a chilly look at the moral failings of the bourgeoisie (or perhaps the upper class).  Isabelle Huppert is the neurotic head of a construction company, hoping to bestow this role on her son, who she constantly berates for not being good enough (an accident at one of the sites heightens this tension).  Mathieu Kassovitz is her brother, a surgeon, whose 13-year-old daughter by a first marriage (Fantine Harduin) is suddenly added to the family when her mother attempts suicide; the daughter immediately senses that her father is having an affair (and investigates this on his computer; her smartphone is always near at hand, recording things).  Jean-Louis Trintignant (now in his 80s) plays the retired head of the family, alternatively forgetful and lucidly perceptive; he seeks escape in death after having euthanised his wife several years earlier during a chronic illness (a nod to Haneke’s previous feature, Amour, 2012).  There is no linear plot to reveal; we just see the family with its various players rolling through a series of events that show their obliviousness to the suffering of the world (made a bit more overt when the son invites a group of African refugees into a fancy engagement dinner).  We do feel the tension from these events but it is enhanced by the characters’ inability to communicate with each other, to confess their own true feelings or to recognise those of each other.  (Haneke uses some cinematic tricks, such as filming from a distance so that we cannot hear what is being said, to emphasise these failures). Our social pain may be even more acute when we observe the poor tween daughter and her own constricted emotions, clearly borne of the treatment received from those around her.  As always with Haneke, there are ideas to chew on here but they seem slightly less well digested than in some of his other films.

Gomorrah (2008)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Gomorrah (2008) – M. Garrone

Episodes drawn from the pages of Roberto Saviano’s exposé of the Camorra crime family (from which he now needs constant police protection), laid out unblinkingly in all their harshness and violence.  Little context is provided and apparently even Italian viewers needed subtitles to understand the local dialects here.  Basically, we are thrown into a world focused on a tenement slum where a brutal gang war is occurring, as the young turks aim to unseat the corrupt and greedy mob bosses.  There is a lot of collateral damage. Mostly, we follow kids caught up in the action, having fun modelling their behaviour on that of the men around them – and sometimes going too far.  When we aren’t seeing mobsters kill each other for revenge or over drug deals, we follow a subplot that reveals that the crime family also makes money by buying and illegally dumping hazardous waste (presumably for major companies).  Even more than the chaotically violent hoods, the crook in this scheme is intensely amoral/immoral; when one of his truckers is burned by chemicals and they protest, he gets a bunch of 11-year-old kids to drive the trucks full of waste instead.  Another subplot takes place in the fashion industry where the gang competes with the Chinese.  No one with a shred of decency seems able to survive in this brutal world (yet we do see cars passing on a local highway, suggesting the real world might exist a step away, unaware or turning a blind eye to the actions here).  Visceral and gripping with most of the plot arcs closed by the end but leaving the possibility that the ugly status quo continues. Later this apparently became a TV series.

Loving Vincent (2017)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Loving Vincent (2017) – D. Kobiela & H. Welchman

Beautifully animated by 100 artists creating more than 800 original oil paintings, often involving rotoscoping of actors playing the parts of Vincent Van Gogh and his associates.  Notably, all of the paintings are in the unmistakable style of Van Gogh – and some of his works are reproduced (of course).  So, the film is amazing to look at and takes me back fondly to my memories of the Van Gogh exhibit here in Melbourne last year (the wheatfields and the crows).  The plot follows the son (Armand) of Van Gogh’s friend and subject Postman Joseph Roulin who travels to Paris after the painter’s death to deliver a letter from Vincent to his brother Theo.  When Theo turns out to be dead, Armand travels to Arles to interview the people who knew Vincent at the end, including Doctor Gachet and Marguerite Gachet (voiced by Saoirse Ronan).  He comes up with a theory that Van Gogh might have been murdered rather than a suicide; however, I’m not sure this really adds enough tension to the plot to sustain interest.  Having recently watched Kirk Douglas as Vincent in Lust for Life (1956), I knew many of the details of the painter’s life and perhaps the plot could be less clear without this background knowledge.  The remake of Don McLean’s “Starry, starry night” playing over the end credits is a nice touch. 

Game Night (2018)

☆ ☆ ☆ 

Game Night (2018) – J. F. Daley & J. Goldstein

In the spirit of The Game (1997) (which saw Michael Douglas have the rug pulled out from under him as a birthday gesture), directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein try to fool Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams (and viewers) into questioning whether they are experiencing reality or an elaborate hoax (a murder mystery game night).  It’s fun, slick, and ultimately inconsequential.  I laughed a few times and I didn’t laugh a few times.  The comedy of embarrassment is always near at hand but the pacing of a thriller keeps things moving so that awkward moments and jokes are observed, accepted, and then quickly dispatched.  We are in good hands with Bateman and McAdams who have excellent timing and only rarely let things get cheesy.  The plot sees the competitive Bateman threatened by his older brother’s success (such that it affects his ability to make a baby), so when the opportunity comes to prove that they can win the murder mystery game night, he gives it his all.  Support is offered by a variety of familiar and unfamiliar faces who are either in on things or not.  Perhaps it all holds up but it may be best not to over-think things here.  Nice pulsating 80s synth soundtrack by Cliff Martinez (known for his work with Nicolas Winding Refn).  

The Ninth Configuration (1980)

☆ ☆ ½

The Ninth Configuration (1980) – W. P. Blatty

Here we have the directorial debut of writer William Peter Blatty, who had his biggest success as the author (and subsequently the screenwriter) of The Exorcist (filmed in 1973).  Supposedly, this film extends that horror film’s themes (roughly a battle between good and evil) and forms a loose trilogy as the middle film between The Exorcist I and The Exorcist III (The Exorcist II was written by someone else and disowned by all involved).  But trying to figure out how this film relates to the Exorcist thematically seems a nearly impossible challenge (there is some discussion about whether God exists, I guess that’s it).  The plot involves a castle purportedly in the Pacific Northwest of the US (but really in Hungary – and impressive) that is being used as an institution to house those members of the armed forces who have been declared mentally unfit for service.  The medical doctor in charge is played by Ed Flanders (St. Elsewhere) but he defers to psychiatrist Stacey Keach (Fat City, Mike Hammer) when he arrives to determine whether the inmates are truly insane or just escaping duty.  It is, perhaps, a meta-physical question but not really addressed here.  The general feel of the film is a sort of cross between M.A.S.H. and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – but more pretentious, less naturalistic, and more forced.  Scott Wilson plays an inmate/former astronaut who was unable to go to the moon, flaking out on the launching pad (and imdB claims that he is the astronaut for whom Regan in The Exorcist claimed “you’re gonna die up there” – the only link to the other movie, I could see).  Anyway, Keach is entirely vague and subdued in his part until a cryptic late “reveal” results in a violent bar-fight – perhaps he has been possessed by a demon or demons (or it is the evil influence of war and trauma).  Hard to say.  But by that point I had lost my patience with the film which ultimately seems amateurish and ham-fisted.  If there is something of value here, it is hard to discern.

Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965)

☆ ☆ ☆

Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965) – F. Francis

The first of the many omnibus horror films from Amicus Pictures, following the great tradition of Ealing Studio’s Dead of Night (1945 and highly recommended).  Amicus was clearly drawing from the EC Comics playbook (another of their films is called Tales from the Crypt) and the five tales told here are alternately silly and (trying to be) scary.  For example, one tale features a plant that has evolved to be smart enough to defend itself from humans who might want to prune it.  Another sees a disembodied hand determinedly pursuing and killing Christopher Lee, a rude art critic.  On the less silly side, we are treated to somewhat routine werewolf and vampire tales (well actually the vampire one is pretty silly too but it is notable for featuring a young Donald Sutherland).  Oh and in the fifth tale, a jazz musician tries to steal a tune from a voodoo ceremony and, of course, the voodoo gods catch up with him. The framing device for the stories is that the five men are in the same train compartment with Dr. Schreck (a.k.a. Dr. Terror, played by Peter Cushing) who then reads their fortunes using the tarot cards.  The cards reveal what will be happening to each of the men unless a fifth tarot card helps them to avoid that end – but for each of them the fifth card is Death (and then the train crashes).  Director Freddie Francis was cinematographer for some great films (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, 1960; The Innocents, 1961; and later David Lynch’s The Elephant Man, 1980, and The Straight Story, 1999) but there is nothing really distinguished about the photography here.

  

Anvil: The Story of Anvil (2008)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Anvil: The Story of Anvil (2008) – S. Gervasi

A couple of times, toward the beginning, I had to check to see whether this was a mockumentary (a la Spinal Tap) or an actual documentary.   It was the latter and although at first I thought the “joke” about dumb heavy metal dudes was too old or dated – it turns out that the deeper truths available in the story of Anvil became palpable and were more important than the failed tour or unmarketable album that this old metal band experienced.  The deeper truth probably resonated more with this 50-year-old because it is about keeping the dream alive after many years, about living with your past success (they played with Bon Jovi and others in Japan in the 1980s) even as your present success pales in comparison.  It is about rejuvenating yourself in your 50s and giving it a go, even if the world has changed and maybe passed you by.  It is about coming to terms with yourself and your context.  Of course, these lessons can be applied to all of us but for those of us who thought about music (if not metal) across these years, there are other insights to be had here from Lips and the Anvil gang.  I think about my friend who gave up his psychology career, post-50, to get his old band back together and put out CDs and tour Europe multiple times.  Surely, he’s enjoying himself a hell of a lot more than being stuck in the bureaucracy of academia.  So, is it worth it to take a risk to follow your dream, even if it is obvious that it won’t pay off in dollars and cents? I’d say yes.