ReadOverReels

Past, Present, and Pretense

2011-09-25T20:16:00.000+05:30

The American author F Scott Fitzgerald once wrote: ‘Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy’. Rachel Brener (played by Neta Garty), the protagonist in Assaf Bernstein’s debut feature Ha-Hov (2007), a Mossad agent, became a hero—to the Israeli Secret Service, in particular; and the people of Israel in general—way back in 1964, the moment she and her two fellow agents Zvi (Itay Tiran) and Ehud (Yehezkel Lazarov) emerged from an aircraft waving and smiling. For the trio had brought to culmination a manhunt that had lasted fifteen long years by killing Maximilian Reiner (Edgar Selge) , alias ‘The Surgeon of Birkenau’, the biggest Nazi criminal apprehended by the state of Israel.

Thirty-three years later, the elderly Rachel (portrayed by veteran actress Gila Almagor, who played Eric Bana’s mother in Spielberg’s Munich [2005]), still very much a national hero, who has recently published her biography titled My Mission, receives the first minor jolt to her conscience when a member of a military troop to whom she is recounting her famous exploit asks her ‘How do you know you’re doing the right thing?’

This is because for over three decades now, Rachel has been harbouring a secret from the eyes of the world, much the same way she has been concealing a scar on her left cheek—a memento from the dreaded surgeon—with makeup. That deeply guarded secret now threatens to disrupt the veneer that she has so meticulously maintained since the moment she landed on Israeli soil alongside her two co-agents. Rachel suffers the second—more significant—jolt on the night of a party to celebrate the launch of her biography, when Zvi (Alex Peleg), now bound to a wheelchair, pays her a visit and hands her a newspaper clipping. The news report is about an octogenarian named Nikolai Bazorov, who is bedridden at a nursing home in a town not far from Kiev. Bazorov claims to be Maximilian Reiner.

It is quite apparent from the conversation between Rachel and Zvi that what is perceived by all and sundry to be their most famous accomplishment is nothing but a big, fat lie. To continue this charade, the truth about the claim made by Bazorov has to be found out.

As the film effortlessly alternates between the 1960s and the 1990s, we find the younger versions of Rachel, Zvi, and Ehud in Berlin, preparing to set in motion the plan that has been entrusted on them. We find the ‘Surgeon of Birkenau’ is now an obstetrician. The same individual who had conducted unspeakable atrocities in the name of science on countless Jews and had sent them to their death is ironically running a clinic with his wife, where he aids in awakening lives growing inside wombs.

While most Hollywood directors would have found it difficult not to give in to the temptation of showcasing at least some spying techniques and gadgetry, Bernstein eschews such gimmicks (except in one instance, involving a hidden camera) and builds up the tension, instead, through interactions and conversations, especially between Rachel and the ‘doctor’. In scenes reminiscent of Lewis Gilbert’s Operation Daybreak (1975), we find Rachel, Zvi, and Ehud getting acquainted with the former Nazi’s daily routine in order to determine where, when, and how they could bring their plan to fruition.

Even though the kidnapping takes place smoothly, unforeseen hitches arise in deporting Reiner back to Israel; and the trio is assigned the job to feed, shave, and keep constant vigil on their bound and gagged captive. But, soon enough they find out that even though years have passed since he committed his last ‘experiment’ on hapless Jews, Reiner still possesses a seething disdain towards the race. Moreover, the skilled surgeon has an uncanny knack of finding the raw nerve in each of the three Mossad agents; and is equally adept at manipulative mind games as he is with a speculum. As days pass by, and reasons beyond the control of Rachel, Zvi, and Ehud keep stalling Reiner’s deportation, their frustration begins to grow. Seizing this opportunity, the shrewd surgeon plays on his captors’ weaknesses, until the unthinkable happens.

Rachel has always held herself responsible for what happened on that fateful night. So, even though age is no longer by her side, she takes it upon herself to finish what she should have over three decades ago. But as she embarks on her journey to Ukraine, little does she know that life will yet again pull a surprise or two on her.

Winner of four Ophir Awards (the Israeli version of the Academy Awards), Ha-Hov’s basic storyline—that of a dreaded Nazi living amongst us—has already been touched upon by films like The Odessa File (1974), Marathon Man (1976), Tras el Cristal (1987), and Apt Pupil (1998), to name just a few. But Bernstein’s endeavour differentiates itself from these aforementioned films simply by offering a much broader perspective to the ‘identity’ factor. While other movies dealing with the same subject have focused primarily on unmasking a German war criminal, Bernstein has not only weaved in the dual identity element in each of his film’s primary characters, but has also depicted how horrific events during World War II continues to forge the identity of Israel as a nation. Being an Israeli himself adds that extra bit of authenticity in what he has depicted on celluloid. It also helps that none of his three chief characters exhibit even a semblance of ‘heroics’ that we are so accustomed to when watching a film involving ‘secret agents’. In fact, they are as human as they come—replete with all the usual frailties, faults, and failings.

Although the history of cinema does present more than a few evidences to the contrary, it remains a fact that second-hand knowledge is often second-best to what has actually been experienced either at the personal level or as part of collective consciousness. And that is precisely why, the Hollywood remake of Ha-Hov, titled The Debt (2010) starring Helen Mirren, Sam Worthington, Tom Wilkinson, and Ciarán Hinds might not only feel like an infructuous exercise, but one that will, in all probability, fail to touch a chord, because it runs the risk of also being labeled as ‘pretentious’.

Camera, Creatures, and Conflict

2011-09-11T22:12:00.000+05:30

Every culture has its own mystical, mythical creatures. The English have their grindylow; the Irish their leprechaun; the Americans have bigfoot; the German their doppelgänger; the Greeks have their cyclops and gorgon; the Scandinavians their kraken; the Arabs have djinns; the Slavs have vampires; the Scots have the Loch Ness monster; the Jewish have their leviathan; the Japanese have oni; while we, the Hindus have our danavas, rakshasas, and icchadhaari nags.

In his second directorial venture, Trolljegeren a.k.a. TrollHunter (2010) the Norwegian director André Øvredal has brought to life a similar legendary creature from Nordic folklore—the troll, which is typically a hideous cave-dwelling being that is as old as the mountains and forests in which it dwells.

Narrated in a found-footage format—a genre pioneered by Ruggero Deodato in his notorious Cannibal Holocaust (1980); that includes The Blair Witch Project (1999), Paranormal Activity (2007), REC (2007), Cloverfield (2008), and Paranormal Activity 2 (2010)—we are informed via a disclaimer at the beginning of the film that what we are about to see is an uncut version of almost five hours of footage found in two hard drives. Unlike most other examples of this particular genre, which jar the senses and leave behind a feeling of motion sickness due to the epileptic seizures that seem to grasp the camera in a stranglehold every now and then, the found-footage style actually works for Trolljegeren. This is simply because it treats the narrative style not as a gimmick, but as a visual representation of its basic premise—fairy tales.

After all, in our childhood, those stories were brought to life by someone else—our parents or even our grandparents—who read them to us. We saw in our mind’s eye what they described while narrating the awe-inducing worlds hidden within those pages. In Trolljegeren, we see what three college students: Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterus), Johanna (Johanna Mørck), and Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen) encountered while they accompanied Hans (Otto Jespersen), an unsung hero of Norway—a hunter whose identity and profession are both a national secret—in his perilous missions aboard his UV-floodlight equipped, armoured with iron spikes Land Rover.

It is a classic fairytale set up. Three characters, who depict our mind (Thomas, the reporter), eyes (Kalle, the cameraman), and our ears (Johanna, the sound recordist) befriend an intrepid hunter of mythical creatures and embark on the adventure of their lifetime. As the trio gradually eases their way into Hans’ life and livelihood, we, too, find ourselves warming up to this gruff, physically scarred man, and beginning to buy into his eccentricities.

We learn how Hans, an ex-Navy man, is the sole troll hunter in the whole of Norway—a job he has been silently carrying out for over three decades. We realise how officials from the country’s wildlife advisory board are involved in creating a smokescreen about trolls’ existence, by hoodwinking the general public in believing that it is bears or tornadoes that are uprooting trees and shifting boulders. Most importantly, we get an insight into these centuries-old creatures. While tracking trolls with remarkable names such as raglefant, tusseladd, and dovregubben, Thomas, Johanna and Kalle find out that some trolls have three heads, while others are giants; the best way to avoid being sniffed out by a troll is to rub one’s body with troll stink; they love to chew on old tyres, though their normal diet is rocks; they are nocturnal creatures, who can detect Christian blood from afar; and that ultraviolet rays are fatal to trolls—a burst of it and they are likely to turn to stone or simply explode.

But such pedantic knowledge pale in comparison to the first-hand experience of coming face-to-face with a three-headed tusseladd. The initial fear of having a giant creature stomping towards the camera while uttering a blood-curdling roar soon makes way to the glee that follows the realisation that the bedtime stories one had listened in rapt attention to during our childhood were in fact true! We find this emotion writ large on Johanna’s face once Hans calcifies the monstrous creature using UV ray floodlights. Øvredal had, in fact, portended that the character who would be the first to embrace the fact that trolls could be around us had to be Johanna when he had focused on her playing with a stuffed tiger that looked like Hobbes. Surely, a girl who believes in a talking tiger would be more susceptible to a towering troll!

Like a seasoned storyteller, the two-film-old Øvredal, and his co-writer Håvard S Johansen are both aware that the spine of any story, fairy tale or otherwise, is conflict. While the clash between man and beast is evident in the title of the film itself—with a reference to the adverse effect of global warming on flora, fauna, and wildlife thrown in for good measure—there are other, more subtle, allusions, as well. Hans reveals he hates his job, not so much because the pay is meagre and he has to work nights, but because he regrets having to massacre pregnant, and even young trolls, who can barely walk. At a more broad level, the perpetual discord between fantasy and reality—and our preponderance to find a ‘natural solution’ to everything—is brought to the fore when Øvredal offers a faux-scientific explanation to why trolls cannot stand sunlight and any other source of ultraviolet radiation. It is as if sunlight is a metaphor for the light of knowledge and rationality that turns these walking mythical creatures into immobile rubbles of stone. And therein lies a similarity with us. While for humans it is ashes to ashes and dust to dust, these concrete-eating creatures return to stone.

In keeping with the fairy tale flavour, Øvredal has also peppered his film with humour. It is impossible to keep a straight face when a ghillie suit attired Hans burst out of the jungle screaming ‘Trolls!’ or when a Polish guy expresses in broken English his desire not to ask questions because it might lead to problems he would love to avoid by uttering, ‘Why problem make when you know problem have you don’t want to make?’ Perhaps, the best example of humour occurs at the fag end of the film. In sync with the essence of Trolljegeren, which mixes fantasy with reality, Øvredal takes an actual footage of a press conference by the Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, where he had mentioned the word ‘troll’. Though the context was different—the politician was actually referring to an oilfield beyond the Norwegian coast, which has the same name as the mythical creature—the innovative editing does elicit smiles.

As a filmmaking fraternity, the Nordic industry has been experiencing a second coming of late. In 2009, Norway burst into the limelight with the Nazi zombie flick Død Snø, or Dead Snow. A year later, the Finns turned the concept of Santa Claus on its head with the superlative Rare Exports. Now, with Trolljegeren, Øvredal has succeeded in something that has for a long time been the realm of directors like Spielberg—reliving our childhood, revisiting our infantile fantasies, and reaffirming our belief in them.

Vérité, Viewer, and Violence

2011-09-04T21:02:00.000+05:30

Even though the option of shooting in colour was available as far back as 1908, throughout the history of cinema, filmmakers have reverted to black-and-white for myriad reasons. Hitchcock opted for it in Psycho (1960) because he believed the graphic violence depicted in the film would be too gory in colour. However, some critics believe the reasons were more practical than aesthetic—for instance, the difference between chocolate syrup (which was used in the much-celebrated shower scene) and blood is easily discernible in colour footage. There are still others, who are of the opinion the real reason behind shooting Psycho in monochrome was a tight budget. Ironically, it is colour that played a part in Scorsese deciding to film the gritty Raging Bull (1980) in black-and-white. It is said that when the British film director Michael Powell pointed out an anachronism—the boxing gloves being used was of the wrong tint—Scorsese chose to forsake hues altogether. Spielberg, on the other hand, followed the same logic as Hitchcock, while filming his Holocaust saga Schindler’s List (1993) in black-and-white. Evoking a sense of nostalgia might have contributed, too.

Aestheticity and authenticity aside, if there ever was a movie that needed to be made in monochrome, it, arguably, is the Belgian cult favourite Man Bites Dog (originally Cest arrivé près de chezvous, or It Happened in your Neighbourhood). Directed by three rookie filmmakers—Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel, and Benoît Poelvoorde; who co-wrote the screenplay and also co-starred in the production, while working on a shoestring budget—it brings to the fore the darkest side of human nature and makes an incisive statement on our obsession with televised tragedy, all the while lacing the bitter message with a generous dollop of black humour.

Shot in cinema vérité style— Rémy, André, Benoît, and quite a few secondary characters retain their original first names in the film, to add to the authenticity—there is however, a subtle falsehood in the opening credit sequence. From the perspective of a train rushing through a tunnel, we are given a glimpse of light at the end. Unfortunately, those who will be able to withstand the audacious affront and stinging satire interwoven in almost every frame of this 93-minute-long exploration of voyeurism, there will be no metaphorical light once the film is over.

For, as Man Bites Dog—the title is derived from a journalistic aphorism of what constitutes news—progresses along its runtime, we, the viewer, are slowly but steadily pushed deeper and deeper into the murky world of Benoît, a serial killer, who is the subject of a documentary being produced by Rémy and his crew. No matter how improbable it might seem, in Benoît, we find a character who steals the thunder from the immensely infamous Hannibal Lecter, who had made his first appearance on celluloid just a year earlier. While Lecter was really terrifying, Benoît and his atrocities are terrifyingly real.

To be frank, if our introduction to Benoît had been under different circumstances—within moments of appearing on screen, he drags a woman from the passageway of a moving train into his coupe and kills her with childish glee—we would have loved to hang around with him. After all, he does give the impression of a friendly guy with a goofy grin, who seems to know his F sharp from F natural; is equally at ease with topics that range from pioneering architects like Antoni Gaudi, Victor Horta, and Frank Lloyd Wright to expressionist painters such as Bernard Buffet and musicians like Charles Trenet; recites poetry impromptu; has an in-depth idea about the mating rituals of pigeons; can regale us by making any part of his body move on its own; and has an informed opinion on almost everything under the sun: from construction materials, man-woman relations, to movies starring the French actor Philippe Noiret.

Unlike most other serial-killer films that use the ploy of a mental malady like multiple personality disorder or at least offers a back story to explain the murderous trait being exhibited on screen, Man Bites Dog eschews any such ploys and makes it quite apparent that what we see in Benoît is what we get. Moreover, in contrast to others of his ilk, Benoît, a homophobic, xenophobic, racist individual who can ooze class in one moment and be utterly crass the other, is a compulsive exhibitionist, who grabs every opportunity that comes his way to reveal the tricks of his trade (for instance, the varied methods of ballasting a corpse to ensure that the body sinks and does not float when dumped into a stream) and basks in the warm glow of a sense of pride he feels in showing off as he smothers, shoots, and suffocates his ever-growing list of unfortunate victims.

One would be tempted to brand such an individual as a lunatic. But the manner in which he improvises his modus operandi (scaring an elderly woman to death by screaming at her, and thereby ‘saving one bullet’); the keen sense of observation he displays (realising that the aforementioned victim was a cardiac patient because he had immediately noticed a box of Sedocar: a drug for heart patients, in the room); the logic he provides behind going for the small fry (‘I work small and reap big’); and the unambiguous clarity he shows by asking the sound operator to bring the microphone closer so that the crunch of a neck being broken can be recorded on tape reveal that he clearly enjoys what he does and does not deny any sense of responsibility for his actions.

While the portrayal of dastardly dealers of death on film are a dime a dozen, what elevates Man Bites Dog above the usual fare of serial killer flicks is that it makes the media—via the film crew following Benoît wherever he goes—and, as a corollary, us, the viewer, complicit in his actions. While we identify with the reluctance and trepidation that Rémy (the director of the documentary), André (the cameraman), and Patrick (the sound recordist) show when Benoît invites them for a seaside dinner after having mercilessly snuffed out another life, we also find us scurrying in our minds for the answer to a quiz question that Benoît poses to Rémy later on in the film.

As the participation of the director and his crew members gradually increases from shining the spotlight in a dark alley and changing over to the zoom lens to help Benoît locate another victim, to getting actively involved in the gangrape of a woman in front of her naked and terrified husband; to our utter horror, we discover that we, too, have been stripped of our sense of morality as we keep staring at the screen.

Winner of the International Critics’ Award at Cannes in 1992, Man Bites Dog asked several significant questions almost two decades ago that are all the more pertinent in today’s day and age of round-the-clock news channels and reality TV: What exactly is the definition of news? In their misplaced enthusiasm in getting the next ‘scoop’, is the media acting as a partner in crime? And, most importantly, are we, the viewer, influencing media or is it the other way round?

Dinner, Drinks, and Dread

2011-08-28T18:24:00.000+05:30

As moviegoers, each one of us has our own dipstick for chaffing out films that are great from those that grate on our nerves. In my case, it is a simple matter of whether I am thinking ‘How will this end?’ as a film nears its dénouement or ‘When will this end?’ In other words, what I am watching has to be engaging enough to keep me guessing till its climax and well into it. Speaking of which, there is another hallmark for a memorable film, in my opinion. It either ends exactly where I thought it would (for example, Hitchcock’s Notorious [1946]) or it throws a curveball and floors me completely (for instance, Scream of Fear [1961]; The Ninth Configuration [1980]; Dead of Night [1945] among many others). What makes Nick Tomnay’s maiden feature film The Perfect Host (2010)—which he edited and wrote as well—based on his own short The Host (2001), tick is that it manages to tick all the right boxes.

The one-line descriptor for the film on IMDB: ‘A criminal on the run cons his way into the wrong dinner party where the host is anything but ordinary’, and the accompanying poster do both a service and a disservice to this unknown little gem. They give away the spine on which the story hinges. The trailer on YouTube is even worse. While viewing it, it will not take long for the discerning eye to spot a ‘twist’ in the tale.

Thankfully, The Perfect Host does not get affected by these inadvertent revelations primarily because it is not a one-trick pony. Like an offering from a gourmet chef, the film is multi-layered, with tantalising surprises galore.

The tone is set quite appetisingly, in one of the early sequences of the film, when John Taylor (Clayne Crawford), a career criminal on the run from the law after robbing a bank enters a departmental store to buy some medication for his heavily bleeding foot. At that precise moment, there occurs a stick up in the store by a revolver-wielding woman. In a darkly comic scene, when the thief asks the store owner to put all the cash in his register in a bag, the Chinese man asks ‘Paper or plastic?’ The woman settles for the latter—an obviously wrong choice, thereby auguring an incorrect decision that John will be making a few minutes later. Another important foreboding is weaved into the same sequence when John manages to outwit the robber, by pulling a gun on her, instead; followed by the store owner sticking a pistol at John’s face. Tables are turned, as they will continue to be, on quite a few occasions henceforth.

Desperately seeking a safe haven, armed with a lie, John manages to get inside the impressive house of Warwick Wilson (David Hyde Pierce, whose claim to fame is portraying Dr Niles Crane in the TV series Frasier). Warwick is an affable guy and a cleanliness freak with a curious gait, who is alone at home, busy preparing dinner for four of his old friends—Roman (Tyrees Allen), Rupert (Cooper Barnes), Chelsea (Annie Campbell), and Monica (Indira G Wilson)—when the doorbell rings.

Offering John an unlimited supply from his stock of red wine, while admitting ‘I’m a bit of a white man myself; red’s a bit heavy for my constitution’, Warwick ushers his guest in, in a manner in sync with the title of the film. But as times passes by, both John and we, the viewer, will learn that even though red wine is not to his taste, the colour red is something Warwick definitely fancies.

A film that effectively turns the ‘home invasion’ genre on its head—and is reminiscent of the Anurag Kashyap-penned, Ramgopal Varma-directed superlative Kaun (1999), sans Urmila Matondkar’s histrionics—The Perfect Host is one of those rare films that encourages us to listen carefully. For it peppers the dialogues—major chunk of the film is nothing but a tête-à-tête between Warwick and John—with clues. These clues pertain to both what is about to happen (‘Cleaning up your nasty mess’) as well as an insight into both their characters (‘You’re my guest and I’m glad you’re here, but you only got yourself to blame’). The essence of a dark comedy, laid down during the departmental store scene, is also kept intact with such classic lines (delivered to perfection by Pierce) as Warwick exclaiming ‘You can’t kill me, I’m having a dinner party’ while being threatened by John at knifepoint.

While deftly handling the minimalist setting of his film, Tomnay displays that he is equally adept at visual metaphor. In one scene, to hide John from the eyes of a prying neighbour, Warwick puts a mask on his guest—a mask of the creature from Jack Arnold’s cult-classic Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). As the masked John tries in vain to communicate with the lady, while being restrained by Warwick, we realise how the concept and depiction of the ‘monster’ has changed in the past six-odd decades. At the same time, we also marvel at Tomnay’s mastery in portraying how the face our next door neighbour wears can be a mask in itself.

It will be thoroughly unfair to review The Perfect Host without showering accolades on David Hyde Pierce’s performance. It is indeed difficult to point out, after Malcolm McDowell’s Alex in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971), another character on film who elicited so much dread while dancing.

At the same time, one does need to acknowledge that the film itself is not ‘perfect’. The barrage of twists that are infused into the last quarter of its 93-minute duration might appear to be an exercise in overkill for some. The prolonged flashback sequences, dealing with Taylor and his fiancée Simone (Megahn Perry) can also be labeled as mostly redundant.

However, what makes this under-seen, under-appreciated effort that flew under the radar a laudable one is that it relies largely on an intelligent interplay between two characters. It is a venture that reminds us and restores our faith in the fact that—in this age of CGI and ‘Bayhem’—there was a reason movies were labeled ‘talkies’ long time ago.

And for serving that sole purpose, if for nothing else, this is one host one would like to raise a toast to.

Illusion, Infatuation, and Ineptitude

2011-08-21T23:18:00.001+05:30

From the opening sequence—an animated one—of his second feature film L’autre Monde (Black Heaven), where white snow flakes shower down from a jet black sky, French director-screenwriter Gilles Marchand makes it quite apparent that his film will deal with duality. As if to drive home the point, a platinum blonde appears on screen, dressed in black, whose strands of hair are in stark contrast to the dark cityscape. From intra-sequence contrast, the director then deftly segues to the next scene—set in a warm, sunny seashore in the south of France; as opposed to the cold, gloomy setting of the preceding one.

It is here that we meet the young protagonist of the film, Gaspard (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet), his fiancée Marion (Pauline Etienne), and his two friends: Yann (Pierre Niney) and Ludo (Ali Marhyar). Frolicking in the sea, while jumping into the clear blue water, little do Gaspard and Marion know that soon they will find themselves knee-deep in murky waters. Inside a pool locker, the duo finds a cellphone. Their curiosity gets piqued when they pick up a call from the curiously named ‘Dragon’ and also take a look at a number of images stored inside the cellphone of a heavily mascara-ed blonde named Sam (Louise Bourgoin).

Deciding to play detective, Gaspard and Marion arrive at the place where Dragon had decided to meet Sam. They keep following the mysterious couple only to lose them at a quarry and rediscover them sometime later, trying to—what appears to be—carry out a suicide pact. While rescuing Sam, Gaspard also finds a DV camera, which, he surreptitiously slides into his pocket.

At home, while watching the video recording, Gaspard finds himself slowly getting enamoured by the beguiling blonde, Sam. He also learns of an online game called ‘Black Hole’, which seems to hold the answers to a lot of questions about Sam, Dragon, and their partially botched suicide ceremony.

After picking up the basics at a gaming zone, Gaspard buys a copy of ‘Black Hole’. Taking advantage of the anonymity that any such game provides, he decides to create an avatar for himself, named Gordon, which is diametrically opposite to him in real life. Slowly, but gradually, as he delves deeper into the virtual world of ‘Black Hole’ he starts picking up the tricks—how to survive and how to fight. A chance encounter with another character leads him to ‘Heaven’—a tall building that unsurprisingly touches the sky and is guarded by an all-seeing eye.

In the real world, by a quirk of fate, Gaspard meets Sam once again, only to find that she is called Audrey and has an over-protective brother named Vincent (Melvil Poupaud). In a perilous drag-racing sequence, involving an inebriated Ludo, Gaspard gets a glimpse of the violent streak in Vincent. Meanwhile, he is hopelessly attracted towards Audrey. Sourcing her out in ‘Black Hole’ he finds her avatar Sam is a singer. Under the guise of Gordon, he interacts more and more with Sam in the virtual world, who explains to him its ways. Gaspard is told that when a character dies in the ‘Black Hole’ s/he goes to a place called ‘purgatory’, from where it is extremely difficult to return but for which Sam has a particular fondness.

As Gaspard’s avatar finds himself bewitched by Sam, in real life he becomes more and more distant from both Marion and his two other friends. He even connives in the cyber universe to ensure that Audrey gets closer to him in the real world. Blinded by Sam’s lure, he is ignorant that there exists a truly dark side to the ‘Black Hole’. It is a game that its players use to have a fatal influence on other players in real life.

L’autre Monde had all the ingredients to be a true ‘breakout’ film (it was screened at the breakout selection of the midnight section of Cannes in 2010). But towards the latter half, the film simply falls apart. What could have been a searing indictment of the isolation, anonymity, and deceit that are so often associated with the gaming culture ends up being a hackneyed effort at intermixing real life with virtual reality. It fails equally in treading new ground when it comes to depicting our age-old fascination with the unknown and the unattainable.

While both Marchand and his co screenwriter Dominik Moll should share the blame for allowing a promising storyline to peter off into triteness, a part of the fault also lies with the actors. Like the game itself—which bears an uncanny resemblance to ‘Afterlife’ and has a visual aesthetic reminiscent of ‘Tron’—the major characters are all good to look at but have very little substance. Louise Bourgoin’s character had the potential of cementing its place in the film firmament as a neo femme fatale. Unfortunately, the similarities only remained superficial. Similarly, even though it would have been easier for us to sympathise with the jilted Marion, some of the lines she mouths (a particular gem was: ‘There are two kinds of people. Some are nice, others aren’t’!) make one balk.

The biggest culprit has to be Leprince-Ringuet. Where Gaspard should have been multi-dimensional as a character, Leprince-Ringuet paints him in really broad strokes, much like the way Gaspard uses a paintbrush on the walls of his apartment’s hallway.

Like any online game, the success of a film that deals with one, should also hinge on its replayability. That is obviously not true for L’autre Monde. Even more ironical is the fact that as a film dealing with duality, it succeeds in making the virtual space of ‘Black Hole’ more real than the flesh-and-blood characters that inhabit its real world.

Fear, Fiends, and Family

2011-08-13T21:53:00.000+05:30

In Wes Craven’s Scream (1996)—a simultaneous satire of and salute to the then-fledgling horror genre—a character prided himself of knowing all the unwritten rules of horror films. One of those principles should definitely be ‘Scare the audience precisely when they are feeling safe’. And if there is one place where every individual feels secure, it has to be his/her home. After all, there is even an idiom in English: ‘as safe as houses’.

The ‘home invasion’ sub-genre of horror films subverts this saying. While most haunted house films’ basic premise lies in the living violating the estate of the dead; in ‘home invasion’ films, the act of trespassing invariably occurs on the property of the living, and that, too, by the living. Also, more often than not, such films bring to the fore the latent beast within us all. It is as if to imply that a sense of territoriality is not a characteristic merely of animals, but of man, as well.

Each one of us, to some degree or the other, harbours a fear of burglars. There is even a scientific term for it: scelerophobia. But in ‘home invasion’ films, it is not a family’s jewels, which are at stake. In fact, the stakes are way higher. In Miguel Ángel Vivas’ second feature Secuestrados (2010) a.k.a Kidnapped; it is an entire family of three that is at peril.

Though we never really get to learn what he does for a living or his surname, it is quite obvious that Jaime (Fernando Cayo, who starred in Juan Antonio Bayona’s superb El Orfanato [2007], and will be seen very soon in Pedro Almodovar’s latest offering The Skin I Live In) is doing very well for himself. Along with his wife Marta (Ana Wagener) and teenage daughter Isa (Manuela Vellés), he has just shifted into an impressive house, replete with their own swimming pool, located within a gated community.

To celebrate the first dinner together as a family at their new residence, Marta has arranged for a bottle of champagne. But Isa has other ideas. Like most other eighteen-year olds, rather than spending time with her parents, she would prefer, instead, to go to a party with her boyfriend César. Moreover, as Jaime realises, Isa is having trouble adjusting to her new surroundings, which she labels as a ‘graveyard’—a term that, unknown to her, portends to what is about to follow.

During the first quarter of an hour of this 85-minute film, we observe an almost incessant argument between Marta and Isa. Marta is, we get to learn, quite fond of César. But just for that particular day, she would rather have her daughter stay with her than go out with her fiancé. When her initial cajoling and coaxing fail to have any effect on the adamant Isa, Marta sternly puts her foot down; even insisting that Jaime would side with her in this argument. However, to her utter chagrin, Jaime approves of Isa’s idea, and therein begins another squabble—this time between husband and wife.

In other words, we witness a mother trying to gather her family together for one ‘special’ dinner, and failing miserably to get across to her rebellious daughter. Her husband, on the other hand, is a lot more concerned with whether a gum boil is making its reappearance inside his mouth than playing peacemaker. Little did Jaime know that very soon he will have a lot more to be concerned about. Nor was Marta aware that her wish of Isa forsaking the party for the sake of her family will come true, but in a manner she could never have imagined.

As the couple find themselves drained out at the end of a really long day, and try to figure out apparently mundane but important issues like how to persuade the plumbers to ensure continuous supply of hot water in the bathroom or getting the Internet up and running soon, three Albanian men, with their faces hidden behind ski masks force their way into the house.

Now huddled on a sofa than at a dining table, the family members are forced to hand over all their debit cards and reveal the ATM PIN of each. When Jaime tries to outwit the leader of the burglars— when asked to reveal the whereabouts of his cell phone—we realise the masked intruders cannot be outsmarted easily. They put a plastic bag around Marta’s head and try to suffocate her as a warning to Jaime not to try such tricks again. If the opening sequence of the film was any indication, we know, but Jaime does not, that the trio are not amateurs—but pros in the act of breaking into houses and breaking the spirit of their residents.

‘I like to have things easy’ reveals the leader to Jaime. But, inevitably, things get complicated—both for the robbers and for the family. Complications arise when one of the three criminals, in a fit of rage, decides to disobey his boss’ orders. The goings-on get even murkier when a security guard arrives at the doorstep, acting on the neighbours’ complaints of hearing screams emerging from Jaime’s house. As the initial plan of the burglars begins to get completely messed up, Secuestrados builds up to a climax that is both depressing and disconcerting.

Forty-four years ago, Terence Young had a sinister and cold-blooded Alan Arkin and two other thugs terrorise a visually impaired Audrey Hepburn in her apartment in Wait until Dark, thereby sowing the seeds for a new tenet: ‘Home is where the hurt is’. Since then, this horror sub-genre has been visited by a number of famous directors (Sam Peckinpah: Straw Dogs [1971]; Michael Haneke: Funny Games [1997 and 2007]; and David Fincher: Panic Room [2002]). As they subvert one of mankind’s basic beliefs—that of the home being safe—these films are often unapologetically brutal. Cases in point are Angst (1983), a German film whose camerawork has had a profound impact on the notorious Argentine filmmaker Gaspar Noé; Hard Candy (2005), where Ellen Page went on a rampage; the Romanian film Ils (2006) and its Hollywood remake The Strangers (2008)—both of which had a brilliant twist in the tail; and the French film Á l’intérieur (2007) that pushed the envelope quite far when it comes to gore and violence.

There are shades of almost all these films in Secuestrados. The hooded intruders of Ils, the saving the honour aspect of Straw Dogs, the element of brutality towards an older woman of Angst, the mother-daughter relation of Panic Room, and the cowering bloodied image of a female from Á l’intérieur. Even an infamous scene from Noé’s Irreversible (2002) makes an appearance. While the ‘breaking the fourth wall’ element of Funny Games is missing, Vivas has tried to break new grounds in the subgenre by having only a dozen shots in the film, and by introducing interesting techniques like split screens to depict simultaneous action.

With Hollywood deciding to (yet again) unnecessarily remake Straw Dogs; it seems we no longer need to visit a haunted house to be scared. Because horror is making a lot of house calls these days.

Cops, Crime, and Clairvoyance

2011-08-07T22:39:00.003+05:30

The annals of world cinema are replete with examples of teaming ups between an actor and a director. From F W Murnau and Emile Jannings, Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, Ingmar Bergman and Max von Sydow, Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood, John Woo and Chow Yun-Fat, Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski, John Ford and John Wayne, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney; to our very own Satyajit Ray and Soumitra Chatterjee, Manmohan Desai/Prakash Mehra and Amitabh Bachchan, and Karan Johar and Shahrukh Khan—the list is always a work in progress. Equally rare are instances of director duos, who are not siblings. Johnnie To and Wai Ka-Fai from Hong Kong belong to that sparsely populated elite club of collaborating directors, who are filmically, and not fraternally, connected to one another.

Another interesting aspect of the To-Wai collaboration—as many as eleven out of the seventeen films that Wai has directed till date have To as co-director—is that more often than not, the films have had a supernatural element woven into the plot. Cases in point are: My Left Eye Sees Ghosts (2002), in which a young woman develops the ability to see ghosts after a car accident and Running on Karma (2003), where a monk-turned-bodybuilder finds he has the power to look into people’s lives.

As the opening credits of San Taam (2007) a.k.a Mad Detective—their latest outing together—start rolling, with all the letters appearing in an angular manner, we get the first impression that what is about to follow will be anything but straightforward. That feeling is fortified when we are introduced to the titular character, an inspector of West Kowloon’s District Crime Division, Chan Kwai Bun (portrayed by Lau Ching-Wan—a favourite of Johnnie To, who has featured in several of the director’s films, including A Hero Never Dies [1998]; Where a Good Man Goes [1999]; and Running out of Time [1999]).

Many films have a character who acts as a proxy or surrogate for the audience (Ariadne in Nolan’s Inception, for instance). In San Taam, inspector Ho Ka-On (played by Andy On), a new joinee in Bun's department, acts as the audience’s eyes and ears. It is via him that we are introduced to the oddball Bun, who, we are told is in the middle of an investigation that involves cracking the case of a student’s body being found inside a suitcase. To the utter dismay of both us and Ho, Bun climbs into a suitcase and requests the greenhorn detective to zip it and push it down the stairs. As soon as the suitcase reaches the end of the staircase, out emerges Bun, screaming ‘The ice-cream shop owner is the killer’, as if struck by an epiphany!

Flashes of newspaper headlines make it amply clear to us that irrespective of how zany and unorthodox his methods are Bun has an excellent record in solving criminal cases. But unlike other times, when his colleagues actually requested him to put his uncanny knack for the unconventional to use, the department decided he had gone too far the day he offered a farewell present to the retiring chief that—for want of a better term—can only be called ‘Van Gogh-ish’.

Five years pass by. Banished from the force, one day, the loon from Kowloon finds a visitor at his doorstep. It is none other than Ho. Initially reluctant to even speak with Ho, Bun’s interest gets piqued when Ho tells him that even though he had worked with him for only two days, he considers Bun to be his idol. In fact, when Ho’s gun developed a defect, he was given a new one—Bun’s. And it is a gun that forms an integral part of a case that Ho is now in charge of—a case in which he wants Bun’s help.

The extent to which Bun’s nickname suits him becomes apparent once he revisits the department that he was once the pride of. During the briefing session on the case for which his assistance has been sought, both Ho and us get to learn that Bun has a special ability—that of seeing the inner demons of a person.

It is here that To and Wai have displayed their finesse as filmmakers. What Bun sees in a person is different aspects of the same self, but as separate individuals—can even be of different sex—each with distinct nature and objectives. While this preposterous plot point is taken with more than a pinch of salt by both Ho and us, gradually, as the film progresses, we warm up both to this suited-booted-sans-socks oddity and his frequent ‘visions’.

And just when we find ourselves at ease with Bun’s philosophy (‘Apply emotions to investigate, not logic’) and the methods behind his madness (which includes using his index finger as a pistol as he recreates each crime scene, a request to be buried alive, and ordering the same dishes again and again at a restaurant), like master storytellers, To and Wai plant a seed of doubt in our minds. We are left to wonder if Ho’s quirkiness is nothing but evidence of a mind in complete disarray.

While some of us might point out ‘The more complicated the story, the better for us’—a line spoken by a character in San Taam as a description of the film itself; especially in the context of the convoluted climax that is equal parts The Lady from Shanghai (1947) and Enter the Dragon (1973), the film is a success in the sense that it makes us question where exactly sanity ends and insanity begins—a point brought to the fore by the translation of the film’s title. The literal English translation of San Taam is ‘godly detective’, while the international title is ‘mad detective’ proving once again that there is indeed a very thin line between being a seer and being sneered at.

Fate, Fascination, and Fortitude

2011-07-31T22:28:00.002+05:30

The renowned British playwright Tom Stoppard had once remarked: ‘A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar—you pretend it's not there.’ In Le Fils a.k.a. The Son (2002), a film by the Belgian director-writer duo, brothers Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne, the camera is more like the gaze of a smitten lover—unflinching and unwavering to the point of being almost unbearable.

With their grounding in documentary filmmaking, in the hands of the brothers, the camera seems to have taken a life of its own—prodding, prying, and perceiving the dreary, day-to-day dealings of Olivier (a role that fetched Olivier Gourmet, the perennial favourite of the Dardenne siblings, the Best Actor award at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival), a carpentry instructor at a vocational rehabilitation establishment in Liège, Belgium.

However, even though the Dardennes have filmed Le Fils using a handheld camera, their approach is not that of the ‘queasy-cam’; nor is it the point-of-view style, which is the current fad among filmmakers. Instead, the shots are mostly over-the-shoulder of Olivier, so that the camera sees what Olivier does, rather than acting as an expository element.

At the beginning of the film, during the few occasions that we get to see his face, we find the bespectacled Olivier to be an expressionless and sullen individual. Meticulous in his craft, as all good carpenters should be, he gruffly reprimands his four students—Raoul, Steve, Omar, and Philippo—whenever they fail to stick to the basic tenets of carpentry. The hammering of nails, whirring of power tools, and other ambient sounds of a carpentry workshop fill up our ears from the moment the film opens. To accentuate Olivier’s dull existence, the Dardennes have completely done away with a background score. It is as if to signify that like the unseen camera that hovers around his back or the wooden beams that he is sometimes seen balancing on his shoulder, Olivier is carrying a burden—a burden that has the potential to completely mess up the life of this otherwise careful, meticulous man.

While Olivier checks the measurements taken by his students, instructs them to plug gaps between pieces of wood, and shows them how to use the various tools of the trade, one gets the feeling that this ever-watchful individual is equally fastidious about not letting his guard down. One cannot but help think that the attention to detail is but a façade, cultivated to keep in place a secret simmering deep inside.

Always in motion, keeping his hands busy forever, Olivier’s continuous movement is quite akin to that of an animal in captivity. His only way of letting out steam is to do pushups within the confines of the four walls of his dingy apartment. But then again, that act might not be to alleviate the pain he feels deep within, but to soothe the muscles of his lower back.

A man who does not reveal an iota of emotion when his estranged wife arrives at his doorstep to tell him that she is getting remarried and is also carrying a child in her womb, suddenly springs to action when he is handed the file of a young boy, Francis (Morgan Marinne) who wants to join his carpentry section. Initially reluctant and dismissive, soon Olivier starts following Francis, both inside the vocational facility, and out of it. He steals his keys, breaks into his room, and even lies down on his bed. Little by little, we learn about the blow fate has dealt to Olivier. Slowly, but surely, we also fathom the reason behind the man’s growing fascination about who the boy is and what he does.

It is precisely then that every movement of this cautious carpenter takes on a completely different dimension. Contrary to the pre-determined method that determines how two pieces of wood fall in place, we, the viewer—now privy to Olivier’s secret—are left to wonder what the outcome of each of his moves will be. The total lack of any expository dialogue and the absence of any back story make the task all the more difficult for us.

Francis, though, is completely oblivious of how his life is connected to that of Olivier. This uneven equation is made even more apparent by the symmetry that is such an inherent aspect of the profession of carpentry. Francis is, however, in awe of Olivier’s acumen of using his eyes as a measuring tape. Even though Olivier is barely civil towards the sixteen-year-old—he refuses to pay for his food, nor does he shake his hand—an unspoken understanding starts growing between these two equally quiet individuals, step by step, in sync with the carpenter’s character.

Then, one day, Olivier extends an invitation to Francis to accompany him during the weekend on a long drive to a timber yard. The objective is to understand various types of wood, he says. But we, the viewer, because of what we know and Francis does not, fear for him. And we pray that for once this man, who has an innate ability to make the correct decision when it comes to a dead piece of wood, displays the same judgment in the case of life, as well.

A film that says as much with an actor’s body as one blow of a carpenter talks of his talent, Le Fils, while staying true to the ‘Belgian lower-class life’ template that the Dardenne brothers are famous for, has at its core a simple truth with universal appeal. Inevitably, most of us will not miss the obvious comparison between Olivier and the most revered carpenter of all, but the essence of this truly minimalist film lies in the carpenter’s rule: ‘Measure twice; cut once.'

Perception, Pretension, and Prevarication

2011-07-24T23:44:00.000+05:30

Filmmakers’ predilection towards exotic ailments has quite a long history. From Alfred Hitchcock (the eponymous Vertigo, 1958), Christopher Nolan (short-term memory loss in Memento, 2000) to our very own R Balki (progeria in Paa, 2009) various directors have portrayed mysterious maladies in movies with varying results. At first glance, Eugenio Mira’s second full-length feature, the Spanish film Agnosia (2010)—a similar bizarre medical condition in which an individual’s brain loses the ability to process visual, aural, and olfactory stimuli—seems to be a mere addition to this fascination of filmmakers. But curiously enough, drawing that conclusion would be a perceptual error on the part of the viewer. Because Agnosia treats the travail and trauma of a character suffering from the titular affliction merely as a plot point to drive the story forward. As a film it is a period piece, costume drama, triangular romance, and an espionage thriller rolled into one.

Even though the genre-mashing characteristic of Agnosia will become evident to the viewer when s/he is well into its 106-minute running time, the opening sequence makes it amply clear in an instant that what is about to unfold on screen is a sumptuous treat for the eyes. As the story comes to life, Unax Mendía’s (who was also the cinematographer for Mira’s debut feature The Birthday in 2004) camera opens on a valley enveloped within the Great Pyrenees mountains. The year, we are informed, is 1892. The setting, replete with a stage with curtains drawn, a ramp, and vacant chairs arranged in rows gives the impression of a performance about to commence—auguring an important element of the tale.

As the guests, all military officers, arrive in horse-drawn carriages, we find that they have been invited to witness the working of a new invention by an engineer, Artur Prats (Sergi Mateu), employed with the Holbien industries, which has been manufacturing ‘the best weapons’ for many years. The item on display is a catadioptric lens (a mirror lens known for its focusing capabilities) that can be used as a sniper scope. Helping Prats is his little daughter, Joana, who has been entrusted with the responsibility of releasing a bunch of black balloons, which the military officials shoot as targets while looking through the sniper scope.

A visibly distressed Joana becomes even more distraught at the cracks of the rifle, her anguish amplified by the neighing of a horse, which bolts at the sound of the gunshots. When one of the officials shifts his focus and shoots down the animal instead, Joana faints, hitting her head as she falls. As Prats’ assistant Carles Lardin (Eduardo Noriega, nicknamed the ‘Spanish Brad Pitt’, who has acted in films by Alejandro Amenábar, Brad Anderson, and Guillermo del Toro) comes to her rescue, to his utter dismay, he finds that Joana is having trouble distinguishing him from her father. This, coupled with the stage-drama like setting, are nothing but a foretelling of the tale that is about to unfold. If the bursting of the black balloons portended to the dark world Joana will be plunged into, the breaking of the glass of the sniper scope symbolised the shattering of Artur’s dream—both as a parent and a professional.

Seven years pass by. In the meantime, Artur has parted ways with his employer, Lucille Prevert (the prolific German actress Martina Gedeck, whose filmography includes The Good Shepherd and the Academy Award winner The Lives of Others—both in 2006; and The Baader Meinhof Complex in 2008) and has set up his own company, Joana Lenses, with Carles.

Artur treats Carles more as a son than a business partner, and has even promised Joana’s hand to him in marriage. When we first meet the adult Joana (Bárbara Goenaga), we hear her saying she is not comfortable wearing her mother’s clothes. It seems discomfiture has become a way of her life since that tragic incident at the valley. Fate has played a cruel game on Artur as well. A man who manufactures lenses for a living has been left behind with a daughter who cannot even perceive the faces of her close ones, even when they are at an arm’s length. The guilt-ridden Artur, disregarding the fact that his business is going through a rough patch, has employed a doctor, Meissner (Jack Taylor) to cure Joana, on whose methods Carles has very little faith.

The two ways in which we, humans, react to a disorder as strange as the one Joana is suffering from are expressed by two different sets of individuals in Joana’s household. While Carles, though outwardly devoted to Joana, is inwardly aloof; the servants, especially one individual named Mariano—begrudged by the fact that they have to wear different-coloured rosettes, because colour is one of the few stimuli Joana still reacts to—make fun of her.

But, Carles, Artur, and Joana are all unaware that a nefarious ploy is afoot, that will very soon engulf all three lives. It is a plan set in motion by Artur’s former employer, the ruthless Prevert, to extract the formula of the sniper scope—a secret, she believes, is in Joana’s possession. To attain her objective, Prevert plants a spy, Vicent (Félix Gómez), in the guise of a man servant in Artur’s residence. But when Vicent gets inadvertently fired from his job, he is sent back on his mission. Only this time, the plan is to exploit Joana’s malady in a manner reminiscent of Kurosawa’s Kagemusha (1980).

Three days are all that Vicent has at his disposal to coax the formula out of Joana—the period during which Joana will be completely isolated from all stimuli, while being cocooned inside a dark, sound-proofed room, as part of Dr Meissner’s last-ditch attempt to heal her.

But just like the darkest hour is always before dawn, a ray of light will invigorate Joana during those three days. She will, for the first time in a long time, feel as if those distant stars in the sky—the only thing in the world she could see in the same manner as any other individual—have landed inside that dark room, while being ignorant of the fact that she is, in reality, becoming a pawn in a game of deception.

Even though the perpetrators of this reprehensible charade take every precaution, they find themselves completely unprepared by the opposition they come face-to-face with. The adversary in this case is nothing but love—passion that arises from completely unexpected quarters and threatens to jeopardise their elaborate sham.

In an interview, Mira had stated that the reason he chose nineteenth-century Spain as the setting for his film is because modern technology has nullified many of the problems that Joana faces in the film as a result of her ailment. But it is quite apparent that there are certain aspects of human nature that is not bound by any era, period or millennium. Each one of us harbours a secret; our love for another individual is not holistic and all-encompassing, but pigeon-holed to a specific aspect of him or her; and that in the end true love is all about sacrifice—putting the other’s happiness before that of our own.

Love in the Life of a Lugubrious Loner

2011-07-17T22:05:00.000+05:30

The title of the young Italian writer-director Paolo Sorrentino’s second feature film, Le Conseguenze Dell’Amore (The Consequences of Love), released in 2004, does have a Bergman-like feel to it. But the ethereally beautiful opening shot is more Kubrick-ish, Tarkovsky-esque, and a la Leone.

In a sterile white interior, a lone figure appears on screen, in extreme long shot, riding a travelator moving in a snail’s pace, with a suitcase beside him. Even though we are yet to meet the film’s protagonist, that single long take presages a lot about him. In one deft touch, Sorrentino tells us we are about to encounter loneliness, an ascetic existence, and a life that appears to have transformed into an automaton so much so that it needs external assistance even in moving along.

When we do meet the protagonist, Titta di Girolamo (a brilliantly understated and restrained performance by the noted Italian theatre director and actor, Toni Servillo), seated at the lobby of a plush hotel in Lugano, Switzerland, a voice-over tells us ‘I am not a frivolous man’. That declaration can be considered redundant. For one glance at this stoic, scowling, sartorially elegant bespectacled and balding man, cigarette in hand, with his back half turned towards us and towards life, is all that it takes to make us realise the same.

Sorrentino also introduces us to Sofia (played by Olivia Magnani, granddaughter of the legendary Italian actress Anna Magnani, who had starred in films by Roberto Rossellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini, among others), who works as a maid at the hotel’s bar. When we first lay our eyes on the young Sofia, she has a shaker in her hand, symbolising that soon she will be shaking up someone’s placid personality.

For one brief moment, we believe that these two character’s eyes have met—thereby materialising a connection that we can feel palpably—only to find that she is staring at a horse-drawn hearse through the lobby window. While the shot at the travelator set the scene for the film, the hearse, as we shall find out, portends to its conclusion.

Titta seems to have little regard for the saying: ‘Solitude is a good place to visit, but a bad place to stay in’. While to most of us, a hotel is our temporary abode, for this non-descript, taciturn, insomniac from Salerno in south-western Italy, a hotel room has been his home for eight long years.

His routine is as unwavering as his suits are impeccable. For six days a week, he sits at a corner table in the hotel lobby, observing the various guests at the hotel, ignoring interaction with any other individual, except when forced to do so. Titta is a man who has become so unaccustomed to living that when he is forced to converse with someone else, he peppers his sentences with philosophical ditties, while avoiding any reply that would throw light on his life by stating ‘The truth, my friend, is boring.’ Only for a day every week, does he leave his gilded cage, carrying with him a bag full of money to the bank. Ironically, for a man who steers clear of all sort of human interaction, at the bank he insists that the money be counted by hand, and not by a machine, stating that ‘We must never lose faith in our fellow men’.

Rude to the point of brushing aside a chambermaid’s polite queries with stern silence, we find Titta in others’ company only when he is sharing the table with hotel hermits like him, playing a game of cards. Two of his fellow players are Carlo (Raffaele Pisu) and his wife Isabella (Angela Goodwin)—the former owners of the same hotel. Due to Carlo’s gambling habits they have lost it all and have now been relegated to only a room in the establishment.

Like every man, Titta, too, has a few ‘unmentionable secrets’ in his life. One secret is that every night he eavesdrops on the conversations of Carlo and Isabella—by placing a stethoscope on their common door—hearing Carlo lamenting the spectacular life they once led and wishing for a spectacular death. There are two more secrets—one regarding the origin of the suitcase full of money and the other about a particular habit that Titta has cultivated for more than two decades.

Titta’s monotonous, meticulous, and morbid non-life is shaken to the core the day a visibly upset Sofia approaches his table and demands an answer as to why for two long years he has refrained from responding to her ‘Arrivederci’s (goodbye). The question whether he even acknowledges the fact that she exists seems to rattle Titta’s own existence of anonymity. That is when we see a faint smile on his face for the first time. Later, when he perches himself on a bar stool and tells Sofia that it is one of the most ‘dangerous’ things he has ever done, we, too, like her cannot suppress a smile.

The two go out shopping, he buys her an extravagant gift with the sole purpose of taking their relationship to the next level, and they even have a lovers’ tiff. A man who firmly believes in the saying that once someone knows a secret, it isn’t a secret any more finds himself spilling his darkest secrets to Sofia without even batting an eyelid. As he and Sofia seem to be coming closer, we find Carlo and Isabella drifting apart after Titta catches him cheating at cards.

But like all great love stories, fate will intervene in Titta’s tale. In a turn of events that will involve a missing suitcase containing nine million dollars, the Mafia, and hit men, Titta transforms himself from a man devoid of any imagination to one who can outwit even a seasoned Mafia boss.

Though the preceding paragraph seems to indicate that Le Conseguenze Dell’Amore ultimately ends up being a clichéd Italian film full of stereotypical characters and scenario, it actually avoids any such pitfalls.

It is in fact, an existential tragedy, encapsulated by that shot of Titta looking through his hotel room window at a passerby below, who, while engrossed at staring at a female runs straight into a lamppost. It is also, as the title suggests a story of love. Not the usual ‘romantic love’ that we are spoon fed by soppy Hollywood romances, but the love ‘The Fab Four’ from Liverpool spoke about in their song called ‘The End’—‘…and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make’.

Interrogation, Investigation, and Impressions

2011-07-10T22:58:00.001+05:30

In one of his many interviews, Alfred Hitchcock had famously stated, ‘I enjoy playing the audience like a piano.’ The maestro would have loved the tune composed by the Australian film director Craig Monahan in his debut feature, The Interview (1998).

The film begins with a Kafkaesque nightmarish situation, with Eddie Rodney Fleming (Hugo Weaving, who played Keanu Reeves’ nemesis, Agent Smith, in the path breaking The Matrix, a year later), an out-on-the-dole individual, who has lost both his job and family, is rudely awakened from his slumber at five in the morning, when two armed policemen barge through the door of his unkempt, one-room apartment. Disoriented, dumbfounded, and distraught, Fleming’s repeated pleas of innocence fall into deaf ears as the cops ransack his apartment, physically and verbally humiliate him, and then at gunpoint, against his will, take him to the station for the eponymous interview (the Australian equivalent of a police interrogation, where questions are asked in order to find out the truth about an incident).

One of the cops who forcibly take Fleming into custody is Detective Sergeant John Steele (Tony Martin), who has been called in ‘to get results’. He is an official with a penchant for throwing away the rulebook—a habit, which has led to his having several run-ins with the Ethics Standard Department (the Australian equivalent of the US’ Internal Affairs) over the past few years. His younger aide is Detective Senior Constable Wayne Prior (Aaron Jeffrey, who portrayed the character of Thomas Logan in 2009’s damp squib X-Men Origins: Wolverine), who has a tendency to burst into unprovoked violence.

The clueless Fleming is shoved inside a dank, dingy room filled only with a couple of chairs and a table with a tape recorder on it—a fishbowl scenario portended by the very first shot of the film. As the interview commences, to his utter amazement, he finds he has been charged with stealing a car and forging documents. With Steele frequently interrupting the interview, making the fidgety Fleming sweat even more, the situation looks grimmer with every passing minute. Knowing fully well that the police department are within their rights to detain him for a ‘reasonable time’, which can extend to five to six hours, the famished Fleming pleads, prods, and tries to pursue the two nattily dressed policemen in vain about his lack of knowledge and role in the events he is being accused of.

As the interview proceeds, the allegations start piling up and Fleming finds himself facing questions on crimes much more serious than merely a stolen vehicle. While the two cops fish for answers, playing the ‘good cop bad cop’ routine, a reporter is on the prowl inside the station, brought in by ‘the hierarchy’, supposedly to gather material for a story on crime squads. But Steele is too world-weary to know the real reason behind this presence. As pressure mounts on him to conclude the interview, we, the viewer, find ourselves right in the centre of a cat-and-mouse game, with enough twists, turns, spirals, and snares to make us realise that nothing is quite as it seems.

Of late, the term ‘Hitchcockian’ has been used so copiously that the essence of the term is at the risk of getting diluted. Rarely does a film come along that does justice to the term. This little-known, rarely-seen, hardly talked about film from Australia falls into that miniscule category that goes by the name ‘The best films Hitchcock never made’.

The opening sequence of The Interview, when the police break into Fleming’s apartment, clearly plays on our innate disdain for men in uniform and harks back to the ‘wrong man’ trope, which Hitchcock borrowed from the Scottish author John Buchan, while filming his thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps (1935). Theoretically speaking, the theme of a man accused of a crime he did not commit was present even in one of Hitchcock’s earliest films, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), and prominently featured in many of his subsequent films like Saboteur (1942), I Confess (1953), The Wrong Man (1956), and North by Northwest (1959).

A solitary incident during Hitchcock’s childhood, when he had to spend a night in jail, had led to a life-long aversion towards the police—an aspect that we find him revisiting time and again by portraying law enforcement officials as incompetent individuals (Young and Innocent, 1937). In The Interview, too, we find that in their eagerness to elicit a confession from Fleming, Steele and Prior made at least one crucial mistake that could jeopardise their entire investigation.

Possibly, one of the foremost examples of audience manipulation (‘playing them like a piano’) occurs during a pivotal scene in Psycho (1960), the film Hitchcock is most famous for. There, during a conversation over dinner, we find our sympathies gradually swaying from Marion Crane towards the bumbling, stuttering Norman Bates. Similarly, in The Interview, when after repeated requests Fleming is granted a meal, Monahan deftly fiddles with our feelings to an extent that we start questioning on whose side we should be on.

One of the biggest gambles Hitchcock took professionally was when he released Rope (1948). An experiment in single-setting, single-shot moviemaking, initially it did not go down well with either the critics or the audience. He did venture into a single-setting endeavour on a previous occasion (Lifeboat, 1944) and would revisit it in Rear Window (1954). What makes Monahan’s efforts—of structuring his film almost completely within the confines of a police station, and, in turn, within the four walls of a room—laudable is the fact that unlike Hitchcock, who had almost two decades of filmmaking experience under his belt before he embarked on this experiment, The Interview was the Aussie’s first feature!

Besides these obvious references, The Interview is also replete with other nods to the ace director. Monahan refers to Hitchcock’s fascination with staircases, which frequently symbolises impending danger (Psycho, 1960) in the opening sequence of his film, when he focuses on the feet of two men climbing up a flight of stairs, guns in hand. In Stage Fright (1950) Hitchcock had taken the element of the unreliable narrator a step further by presenting a flashback as a lie—a decision he later regretted. Here also, we find us facing a narrator whose reliability can be questioned; and a flashback, whose authenticity is in doubt. The leit motif of a platinum blonde, too, makes an appearance in The Interview, in the form of Fleming’s solicitor.

A true disciple of Hitchcock, Monahan knew a tribute to the master would be incomplete without a Mcguffin (an element that drives the plot). In this case, the alleged crime for which Fleming is brought in is the Mcguffin, created with the sole intention of pointing out our propensity towards attaining closure or as Fleming so eloquently states: ‘Just goes to show how the mind works.’

For a film that depends solely on a question-answer format to propel it forward, Monahan’s masterstroke comes in the form of a freeze-frame shot—where via a single gesture, he speaks volumes and initiates conversations and dialogues among viewers that would last long after the lights have dimmed in the theatre.

An ending that reminds us of that of The Birds (1963) but impressive in its ingenuity—Hitchcock would have smiled.

Rejection, Responsibility, and Redemption

2011-07-03T21:53:00.000+05:30

For fans of world cinema, the radar seems to be hovering around South Korea a lot these days. And for a very good reason, too. It will not be an exaggeration to state that over the last decade or so not only has the country given us some exciting new talents, who have turned many a genre on their head by rewriting the rules, but has also given birth to a few new genres of filmmaking, as well. The ever-growing list of luminaries that include Chan-wook Park (The Vengeance Trilogy), Joon-ho Bong (Memories of Murder), Jee-woon Kim (I Saw the Devil), and Hong-jin Na (The Chaser) now includes the name of Jeong-Beom Lee.

Lee burst into the scene in 2006 with Cruel Winter Blues, a slow-burn, bleak, gangster-flick-meets-revenge-drama. Those who were impressed with his directorial debut had to wait four long years for Lee’s next: Ajeossi (a.k.a. The Man from Nowhere).

These two offerings from this young director share a lot in common, but are also quite dissimilar in certain other respects. Both have two central characters between whom an unlikely relationship develops; a large dollop of gangsters; and an underlying theme of revenge. However, while the action in Cruel Winter Blues was subdued, it got ratcheted up quite a few notches in Ajeossi. If the element of revenge in the former was low key, it explodes in the latter. And, if the crime bit in his first feature was understated, Lee more than made up for it in his second outing.

At its core, Ajeossi is about a bond that ties two individuals—Cha Tae-Sik (Bin Won, who in 2009 played the role of the simpleton son in Joon-ho Bong’s brilliant Mother), a pawnshop owner, who has rejected society because of a tragic incident that occurred three years ago, which left him both physically wounded and mentally shattered; and his neighbour, a little girl So-Mi Jeon (Kim Sae-ron), who is nicknamed ‘Garbage’ and is treated likewise by her schoolmates. Like a flicker of a lit cigarette in darkness, So-Mi brings light into Tae-Sik’s bleak existence. Like the cactus plant that Tae-Sik waters everyday, So-Mi seems to have seen through the thorns of his gruff exterior. Tae-Sik, too, responds to So-Mi, but in his own subtle way. Aware of her fondness for sausages he buys a roll and then keeps it near his pawnshop window so that when So-Mi arrives to borrow a portable music player from him, she can spot the roll.

When we are introduced to Tae-Sik, we see his ragged knuckles first, foreshadowing a struggle that is forthcoming. Similarly, we get the first glimpse of So-Mi as she emerges from the darkness underneath a flight of stairs, when Tae-Sik calls out to her. This, too, is nothing but portending to the dark world that the little girl will be thrown into as the film progresses, and presaging the fact that it will be in Tae-Sik’s hand to rescue her from a murky fate.

Ignored by her drug addict mother, Hyo-Jeong (Kim Hyo-Seo) who works as a dancer in a nightclub, So-Mi spends as much time as she can with Tae-Sik, the only person in this world who she confesses to like; turning a deaf ear both to the gossiping neighbours who think Tae-Sik is in hiding because he had done something bad, and the warnings of her own mother, who believes the pawnshop owner is a child molester. Desperate to attract attention, the little girl, who used to steal things before now seems to be slowly stealing the brooding man’s heart by leaving behind notes and doing nail art on his finger while he is asleep.

But when Hyo-Jeong steals a consignment of drugs that belongs to a ruthless gang and puts it under Tae-Sik’s safekeeping without his knowledge, things get from bad to worse. The gang tracks her down, kidnaps both mother and daughter, and tells Tae-Sik that if he wants to see So-Mi alive he must do the gang a favour first. Although, earlier Tae-Sik had refused to play along when So-Mi had wanted her to don the role of her father to get out of a sticky situation, this time round Tae-Sik assumes the responsibility of a father figure and relents to the gangsters’ request only to find himself turned into a pawn in a feud between a gang leader and one of his scorned associates.

Pushed into a corner, as the secret behind Tae-Sik’s real identity comes tumbling out, the police chase after him as he embarks on a mission to save little So-Mi from drug peddlers, organ-traffickers, and a Vietnamese assassin, in whom Tae-Sik finds a formidable adversary.

Intermixing dark humour with awesomely choreographed action scenes (the climactic knife fight between Tae-Sik and the aforementioned assassin is an instant classic) and some brilliant camerawork (a particular shot of a jump through the window would have put a smile on Stanley Kubrick’s face), the crux of Ajeossi does remind us of films like Leon: The Professional (1994) and Man on Fire (2004), but it desists from being derivative. Lee has interwoven a lot of Oriental tradition and culture in his second feature—and by that one does not imply portraying Filipino martial arts, though it is present, but the depiction of a sense of respect that one individual has towards another with a better skill set and the notion of instilling a desire to excel in the upbringing of individuals.

Korea’s highest grossing film of 2010, Ajeossi is much more than a vehicle for a handsome leading man, who has shaken off his soap opera roots. It goes beyond being just another tale of retribution by showing not once, but twice, that an effort made towards redemption is never a lost cause no matter when it is attempted.

Injustice, Imprisonment, and Intent

2011-06-26T21:54:00.001+05:30

Way back in the 1940s, inspired by the American film noir, the French developed a genre of crime thrillers of their own. They called it films policier. Just like the central character of noir is a morally ambiguous, skeptical, and disillusioned male; films policier, more often than not, revolves around a similar cynical male’s struggle against a stronger opponent. With time, like every other genre, films policier, too, has evolved and has even branched out into several sub-genres such as the daintily named polar (policier with a dash of mystery), neo-polar, and post-noir.

Recent French filmmakers, like Fred Cavayé, in his debut feature film Pour Elle (2008), a.k.a. Anything for Her, have added to the broad policier template by intermixing the thriller elements with an in-depth character study—that of a man on a mission against an act of injustice. The relentless ‘no-time-to-lose’ element that characterises a thriller is set in motion immediately with Pour Elle beginning to unfold even before the opening credits start flashing on the screen.

Divided into the classic three-act structure, the first of which is ‘The last three years’, the film introduces us to Julien Auclert (played by Vincent Lindon), a high-school French teacher, and his small family comprising his diabetic wife Lisa (Diane Kruger) and their toddler son Oscar (Lancelot Roch). Theirs is an idyllic life, which is turned on its head in an instant one morning when the police barge into their apartment and take Lisa into custody, on charges of murder—an accusation that astounds Lisa as much as it baffles Julien. Even though a detective is assigned to the case, and Julien believes wholeheartedly in Lisa’s innocence, as days pass by chances of Lisa’s acquittal become as distant as the mental gulf broadens between her and Oscar.

Then, the day of reckoning arrives. With not enough new evidence that could prove Lisa’s innocence, accompanied by the considerable amount of old evidence that was stacked against her, the lawyer informs the dumbfounded Julien that Lisa has been sentenced to twenty years in prison. With that pronouncement, the unassuming French teacher finds the flicker of hope that he had harboured for three long years get smothered.

Like any other common man, initially, Julien sees no other option but to accept the court’s verdict. But when news reaches that Lisa had attempted to commit suicide, he decides to take matters in his own hands and attempt the apparently impossible— snatch his wife from the clutches of law.

At this juncture, one would expect the evolution of an individual into a hero, armed with an outrageous plan and an arsenal at his disposal to boot. But Cavayé’s (he co-wrote the screenplay) protagonist is anything but an action hero. He is the quintessential ‘average man’, who, when facing extraordinary odds does not perform a volte-face character-wise, but reacts the way any other man-on-the-street would. And in this he is helped by Henri Pasquet (portrayed by Olivier Marchal, director of the superlative films policier of 2004, 36 Quai des Orfèvres)—an ex-convict who had escaped from prison as many as seven times, and is now the author of a bestselling book My Life on the Run.

While laying down the ground rules of engineering an escape from prison, Pasquet underlines the basic tenet: ‘Escaping is easy. The hard part is staying free’. He also warns Julien that those who do succeed in the attempt are born criminals. Since there is no chance of improvisation, others, like Julien himself, are advised not to walk that path simply because they will end up getting ‘burned bad’.

In the second act of the film, titled ‘The last three months’, we find that Julien has already progressed so far down the path Pasquet had warned him about that there is no turning back for him. Always distant from his father, he has now grown even more detached not only from him, but also from the other members of his family, including his brother Pascal (Thierry Godard) and even Oscar. His life now has only one focal point—that of trying to devise a plan of his own to get Lisa out of prison. Knowing fully well that he will not be able to share his secret with his pragmatic wife, Julien carries the burden quietly, not succumbing even when Lisa misinterprets his growing aloofness. Meanwhile, little Oscar tries in his own way to reach out to his Dad, by imitating his father’s actions, which mainly involves converting his apartment into an operations room, replete with maps, photos, newspaper clippings, graphs, schedules, and numerous notes.

‘The last three days’ is the dénouement of Pour Elle when an unforeseen event threatens to jeopardise the plan that Julien had so meticulously drawn up over the past few months. Not only that, a violent act committed by him puts the police hot on his trail, which leads to an edge-of-the-seat climax.

Prison film itself is one of the most clichéd of all film genres. Within its sub-genres, wrongful imprisonment and planning an escape rank quite high. Pour Elle could easily have just been one more entry into this seemingly endless churning of old wine in an old bottle, but for one important difference. It emphasises more on the planner than the ingenuity of the plan itself.

In fact, in hindsight, irrespective of the time and effort that Julien spends on hatching a way to get Lisa out, his plot has nothing innovative in it. And this is exactly where those of us expecting an action-packed ‘rescue mission’ will be sorely disappointed. In all probability, this lack of action, except in the last quarter of an hour of the film, must have been the reason Hollywood decided to remake Pour Elle into The Next Three Days (2010), starring Russell Crowe and Elizabeth Banks in the lead, and directed by the Academy Award winning director and screenwriter Paul Haggis.

However, if one is not averse to shift focus in a film belonging to a done-to-death genre and ponder more on the psyche of an average-Joe, who wants to right the wrong done to someone he cares for not by transforming himself into a one-man army or masterminding a complex plot; or if one is open to a film where emotions are underplayed, reactions to adversity are subtle and not of the chest-thumping variety, and the protagonist is most of the time clueless of his next move than being a know-it-all—then Pour Elle is pour vous.

The Penalty, the Profession, and the Pain

2011-06-19T19:27:00.001+05:30

In her book Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean, one of the foremost American proponents for the abolition of the death penalty, wrote: ‘Government ... can’t be trusted to control its own bureaucrats or collect taxes equitably or fill a pothole, much less decide which of its citizens to kill.’ But in the 1960s, under the feared dictator Francisco Franco’s regime, capital punishment was very much in vogue in Spain, as we learn from the opening sequence of the acclaimed Spanish director and screenwriter Luis García Berlanga’s criminally underrated and unfairly under-viewed tragicomedy masterpiece El Verdugo (1963) a.k.a. The Executioner a.k.a. Not on Your Life.

As the film begins, a prison guard has his breakfast interrupted with the arrival of a mortician and his assistant, the latter carrying a coffin on his shoulders. Through a second door emerge a handful of government officials, including the counsel of defence, and an aged, affable man, carrying with him a case. He is, the mortician tells his assistant, the eponymous executioner. The duo and the coffin now enter through the same door, only to re-emerge a moment later. Only this time, they are holding the casket up at both ends, indicating there is a body inside. Thus, subtly, the spectre of death enters the frame, and will hover around the main characters throughout the film. However, like the morbid act of the execution itself, it will never really come out in the open.

The elderly, genteel executioner is Amadeo (played brilliantly by the renowned Spanish actor José Isbert). As the mortician’s assistant, José Luis (portrayed by the Italian actor Nino Manfredi) tells his boss, ‘…he looks like a normal person’, the first of the many wrong impressions that we harbour about an executioner gets snuffed out. A veteran of forty years in the gruesome profession of garroting, Amadeo has a long time ago come to terms with the reality that ‘executioners are misunderstood people’. That is why, he does not take it as an affront when the prison guard looks distastefully at his case containing the tools of his trade that he had mistakenly placed on the same desk where the guard was having his breakfast. Nor is he shaken by the obvious irritation his innocuous query about when the first streetcar arrives is met with.

A chance visit to Amadeo’s residence reveals to José Luis that he is not really popular among his neighbours, either, who consider themselves ‘respectable people’. But when the young undertaker meets Amadeo’s spinster daughter Carmen (Emma Penella), something starts brewing between the two hearts, and it is not just the coffee that Carmen dutifully offers him.

As the two start coming closer, they find that they share something in common. Carmen confides to José Luis that all her fiancés have run away the moment they had learnt that she was an executioner’s daughter. José Luis tells her in return that every girl has left him when they had realised that he earns his bread by working as an undertaker. While death parts other couples, in this particular case, it brought two hearts together.

Coaxed by his boss, who is also Amadeo’ friend, and browbeaten by being unfortunately caught in bed with Carmen when Amadeo had barged into the house unannounced, the unassuming undertaker has no other option but to abandon his dream of going to Germany and become a mechanic, and get married to Carmen, instead. But surely, there is no place in his own house for his new bride, which is already bursting at its seams as a result of the presence of José Luis’s younger brother Antonio (curiously played by an actor named José Luis López Vázquez)—a tailor by profession—his shrewish wife, and their two children. Moreover, on the day of the wedding, disgusted that his brother had taken an executioner’s daughter as a bride, Antonio had proclaimed that he would be parting ways with his elder brother.

But good news arrives in the form of a missive that declares that in recognition of his four-decade-long service, Amadeo has been granted a three-bedroom flat. However, as fate would have it, the soon-to-be-retired executioner is told that he will lose the flat the moment he is out of work. Hence, the future of the family, which is on the verge of welcoming a new addition, seems to hang on whether an individual, who is an expert at interring, can now become equally proficient at garroting.

The very idea of earning his livelihood by taking someone’s life is unimaginable to José Luis. But his feeble protests stand no chance while facing the incessant haranguing of his father-in-law, who keeps insisting that he take the job and make the flat theirs simply because ‘…they sentence people, but, in the last moment, they're going to pardon them!’ Begrudgingly, the undertaker, who has always believed that ‘People should die in their own beds’ accedes to Amadeo’s request, while dreading the day when he will be called to ‘work’. To his utter dismay, his fear soon becomes reality, when he is summoned to Mallorca to execute a condemned convict.

A close scrutiny of all timeless comedies will reveal a common thread. If one scratches their funny, frothy façade, one will invariably find pain and pathos running deep. Berlanga’s El Verdugo is no exception.

The film is full of both wry, satiric humour as well as laugh-out-loud moments. Take for example, the scene when José Luis visits Amadeo’s house for the first time. On the wall, he spies a framed photograph. Noticing his gaze, a nonchalant Amadeo tells the young undertaker that it is one of his ‘clients’, and then goes on to show him the wristwatch that the man had gifted the executioner. A horrified José Luis now turns his attention to another wall, this time adorned with more than one portraits. Pre-empting the unasked query, the aged man replies, in an equally casual manner: ‘No, those are just my relatives!’ Or the scene when Carmen wants to buy a new shirt for José Luis., and Amadeo takes one look at his son-in-law’s neck to announce: ‘It’s a size forty-one!’

While peppering his film with such smile-inducing moments (the wedding scene is uproariously funny), maestro Berlanga and his frequent collaborator, co-writer Rafael Azcona, have not, for a moment, allowed the subliminal anti-capital punishment message of their film to get diluted. By condemning the duplicity of governments that proclaim they want to protect the lives of citizens, and at the same time sentence them to their deaths, Berlanga and Azcona state their message aloud through Amadeo, when he suddenly grasps the hand of his would-be son-in-law and brings it near a lamp socket to say: ‘ That is only 250 volts! They make me laugh when they say public garroting is inhuman. Is the guillotine better then? Do you think it’s fair to bury a man in pieces?....The Americans they use the electric chair, which leaves them carbonised, scorched’.

The director-screenwriter duo also delivers the same message subtly, in the unforgettable penultimate sequence of the film, by raising the all-important question: Who really dies and who gets killed at the garrote, gallows or guillotine?

Single-shot Scare Show

2011-06-12T22:29:00.000+05:30

‘Cabin in the woods’ is a horror sub-genre that has been covered in debut feature films by directors like Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead, 1981), who went on to helm the three Spiderman films; and Eli Roth (Cabin Fever, 2002), who gained notoriety with his ‘torture porn’ duology, Hostel (2005) and Hostel II (2007). The recent entry into this field comes from a country better known for its soccer than scary cinema—Uruguay.

Like his illustrious predecessors, first-time director Gustavo Hernández’s La Casa Muda (2010), or The Silent House, while playing within the rules of the sub-genre, still manages to carve a niche for itself. On one hand, while Hernández has succumbed to a time-tested marketing ploy, namely, the ‘Based on true events’ gambit—used to varying degrees of success by films ranging from The Amityville Horror (1979 and 2005) to The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)—on the other, he has displayed an innate confidence in himself by adopting a format that is as rare as ‘true story’-based horror films are a dime a dozen.

What we are referring to here is the single-take, single-shot film that takes place in real time—the first example of which dates back to 1948. In that year, Alfred Hitchcock introduced the long-take approach to filmmaking in Rope (interestingly, Rope was also based on a real-life event—the Leopold-Loeb case), with mixed results. Purists will point out that Rope was not really a film with a single continuous shot, and they are right to do so. Hindered by the technology of the time, which only allowed film rolls that could shoot for a maximum of ten minutes, Hitchcock masterfully masked the cuts and other edits simply by blocking the screen (having a character walk in front of the camera, for example). Developments in camera and storing devices have now made the single-shot film more of a possibility, as can be seen in Mike Figgis’ experimental Timecode (2000), Aleksandr Sokurov’s awe-inspiring Russian Ark (2002), and Spiros Stathoulopoulos’ gritty PVC-1 (2007).

While the technique adopted by Hernández is novel, the same, unfortunately, cannot be said of the tale he tells (the screenplay was penned by Oscar Estévez based on a story by Hernández himself). The plot, based on an unsolved incident that occurred in a small village in Uruguay in the 1940s, unfolds with a young woman, Laura (Florencia Colucci) arriving at a dilapidated double-storied farmhouse with her father, Wilson (Gustavo Alonso). Néstor (Abel Tripaldi), the owner of the house, who is acquainted with both father and daughter, have entrusted them with the job of fixing it, so that ‘it looks nicer to prospective buyers’. The inquisitive Laura starts looking around the moment she arrives, only to find that all the windows of the house have been barricaded from the outside—to keep others out or to keep something in, one wonders.

As the father-daughter duo settle down on armchairs to pass the night, knowing that they will have to get up early in the morning if they are to finish refurbishing the house within the next two days, Laura’s curiosity is piqued when loud, heart-thumping noises are heard from the first floor. As her father goes up to investigate, Laura is left behind, armed only with a scythe and a lantern at her disposal (the electricity connection had long been cut off). And so she shall be, alone and afraid for almost the entire runtime of the film.

A temptation for the filmmaker must have been to go the ‘point-of-view’ way, as seen in other horror flicks like The Blair Witch Project (1999), REC (2007), Paranormal Activity (2007) and Paranormal Activity 2 (2010). But, Pedro Luque, the cinematographer of La Casa Muda, instead of allowing the camera to become Laura’s perpetual eyes, gradually shifts perspective, and makes it an accompaniment, instead, as she delves deeper and deeper into the bowels of the house in her desperate bid to get out. Moreover, unlike most other films of the genre, here, the protagonist behaves in a rational manner once she finds herself in mortal peril. She keeps looking for the house keys, tries the phone, and even barricades a door. That is why, when she breaks down and keeps sobbing and whimpering, we empathise with her predicament.

Hernández succeeds in gradually upping the ante as far as the creepiness of the atmosphere is concerned by resorting to some well-established norms in horror that most of his renowned counterparts tend to shun. Majority of the film is without any dialogue or even monologue because the only character on screen is Laura. When sounds do occur, other than the loud thumps, like those made by the clinking of a can or an ominous child’s rattle, they add to the overall sense of claustrophobia and disorientation. Mention must also be made of the eerie score by Hernán González that is far more effective than cheap ‘jump scare’ and ‘boo’ tactics.

However, La Casa Muda is not without its flaws. Certain parts of it remind us of films as varied as the Thai spook fest Shutter (2004), the French-Romanian home invasion flick Ils (2006), and even Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954). Then, there is the obvious gripe as to why a self-professed ‘real time’ film should have an editor (Hernández himself) credited. The biggest issue has to be the film’s conclusion that raises more queries about what preceded it than provides an answer to. There is a post-credit sequence, as well, but it appears more as a tagged-on device to attain the duration requisite of a feature-length film than serving as any value addition.

Having said that, La Casa Muda is still a commendable effort, which should not be adjudged based on the fact that even though most of the film-going fraternity is still to watch the original, Hollywood has already bastardised it in the form of a remake that has premiered at the Sundance Film Festival; but on the basis of the point that on a miniscule budget of $6,000 a greenhorn director had decided to try his hand at something that can be a daunting task for even the most accomplished of filmmakers.

Bullets, Brotherhood, and Bonhomie

2011-06-05T22:03:00.001+05:30

On the eve of the Chinese government's taking over the reins of the former Portuguese colony of Macau, the island’s residents are going through a tumultuous time. Those who are rich and powerful are leaving Macau at the first occasion that arises; while those who are staying back are suspicious and antagonistic towards people from Hong Kong, who are labeled as ‘outsiders’. And with the onset of the new regime imminent, the triad (the myriad Chinese criminal organisations) takes this opportunity to settle some old scores once and for all.

It is to extract revenge that in the Hong Kong-based director Johnnie To’s Exiled (2006), mob boss Fay (Simon Yam of 2008’s Ip Man and 2010’s Ip Man 2 fame) sends two of his henchmen, Blaze (played by Anthony Wong, who shot to fame with the Infernal Affairs trilogy, on which Martin Scorsese’s Oscar winner The Departed was based) and Fat (Suet Lam) to take out a renegade gangster Wo (portrayed by Nick Cheung, who also acted in To’s critically acclaimed and commercially successful 2005 film Election and its sequel Triad Election that was released a year later).

The reason behind Boss Fay’s wrath was a foiled assassination attempt on him that was masterminded by Wo three years ago. Since then, Wo has been on the run, and has only recently returned after turning over a new leaf—forsaking the path of violence and opting for the family way instead. The news of Wo’s return has also reached Tai (Francis Ng, from Infernal Affairs II), who also arrives at his former gang mate’s doorstep alongside Cat (Roy Cheung). Since the botched assassination attempt on Boss Fay was as much Wo’s idea as it was Tai’s—but Wo ‘took the rap’ for it—Tai now considers it his duty to protect Wo, his wife Jin (Josie Ho) and their one-month old son. Very subtly, To tells the viewer that the two groups are at loggerheads with each other—Tai knocks with his left hand, while Blaze uses his right.

This opening sequence of Exiled, when the two duo—Blaze and Fat, and Tai and Cat—knock on Wo’s door asking for him, bears an uncanny resemblance to the bravura opening sequence of Sergio Leone’s magnum opus Once upon a time in the West (1968). There, too, a gang (of three) lay in wait at a decrepit railway station for someone they were sent to kill. However, the stylised, choreographed, and visually sumptuous Mexican stand off that follows, once Wo returns to his apartment in a van carrying furniture, is pure ‘noodle’ rather than ‘spaghetti’.

A former gang member mending his ways is hardly a novel concept in mob-based crime dramas. Nor is fate’s intervention preventing him from doing just that. However, by ushering in a divide among the same gang on the question of eliminating an exiled member, To gives a new spin to an old yarn. After all, not many films can boast of scenes where after a shootout, those who pulled the trigger are seen replacing shattered mirrors, mending broken doors, and helping their ‘target’ in moving furniture, before settling down to have dinner together. It is then, with the help of a faded out photograph we get to know that Wo, Tai, Fat, Blaze, and Cat had not only been in Boss Fay’s gang together, but had also grown up together. As events unfold, Wo’s future becomes inextricably linked with whether or not the five friends succeed in pulling off a heist involving an armoured car carrying a ton of gold.

Knowing fully well that friends who have spent a major portion of their lives together say as much with their silence as with their speech, To does not make the characters speak about themselves, nor does he delve into a back story for any of the five characters. Instead, living up to his reputation of being a director who sifts through genres in his movies in a ‘chameleonic’ manner, To laces Exiled with a generous dose of darkly comic sequences. So, we have street-smart gangsters arguing among themselves regarding how many kilos make a ton; haggling with a surgeon in an underground clinic over the fees for an operation when one of the gang members gets shot; four fully-grown gangsters turning tail in an instant when a woman points a gun at them; giving up the idea of ganging up on a gold-carrying vehicle simply because a flipped coin landed on the wrong side; Boss Fay and the five ‘traitors’ arriving at the same location for medical treatment; spitting up a bullet that got lodged inside a vessel, while drinking from it; asking for driving directions from compatriots who are equally clueless; a guard getting help from unexpected quarters during a raid on his vehicle—the instances are many.

Hong Kong’s official submission in the Best Foreign Language Film Category at the 80^th Annual Academy Awards, Exiled as a Johnnie To vehicle might not be as satisfying as some of his earlier films like Running out of Time (1999), PTU (2003) and the aforementioned Election and Triad Election; or the offerings that he followed up with such as Mad Detective (2007) and Vengeance (2009), but it still is a spectacularly shot film with a rich palette and a memorable score. Even though the film will, possibly, never make it to the top five list drawn up by any To aficionado, but the very fact that a trick with a soft-drink can in the introductory sequence of the Ajith starrer Billa (2007) was ‘inspired’ by the last sequence of Exiled, just goes to show that certain aspects of even not-so-good films by this prolific director are good enough for members of his ilk residing in another part of the globe.

Loss, Longing, and Loneliness

2011-05-29T22:50:00.001+05:30

El Hierro, the smallest and south-westernmost of the seven Canary Islands of Spain, is also known as Isla del Meridiano, or the Meridian Island, because since time immemorial, its location has been serving as the pointer to cartographers to mark the Prime Meridian. In Gabe Ibáñez’s debut feature film, Hierro (2009), the island drives a wedge into the life of single mother María (portrayed by Elena Anaya, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Julia Ormond, and will next be seen in the acclaimed Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar’s much-anticipated The Skin I Live In) much the same way the Prime Meridian slices the globe into two halves.

María and her five-year-old son Diego (Kaiet Rodríguez) board a night ferry to El Hierro. While Diego is busy playing, María drifts off to sleep and wakes up to a living nightmare. To her utter dismay, she finds no trace of her child. A thorough search is organised both on the ferry and into the inlands, but to no avail. It appears as if the island, which is known to assist us in pinpointing our own location is, for once, at a complete loss when it comes to locating this particular five-year old.

Six months pass by. Like the island itself, María finds herself more and more cut off from those around her—be it her work or her sister Laura (Bea Segura), who has recently given birth to a baby boy. Ironically, she also realises that ever since the incident on the ferry, she has developed a phobia towards water, even though her job involves dealing with various aquatic species. With every passing day, she feels more and more like those fishes in her workplace, swimming inside huge water tanks made of glass. Her grief makes it difficult for her to reach out to others, and starts manifesting itself in frightening drug-induced hallucinations. No matter how much she tries, María just cannot come to terms with her loss and seems equally unable to forgive herself for not living up to a promise she had made to Diego. Many a time she had assured him that in a game of hide-and-seek if she fails to find her son at first, she will keep on looking for him.

Then, one day, comes a phone call telling her that a body of a young boy has been found in the waters surrounding El Hierro. The age and the approximate date of death match those of Diego. There, at the morgue, once she sees the body, María is as relieved as the coroner is surprised. It appears that the officials were, for some odd reason, convinced that it was indeed Diego’s body, but María proved them wrong. To be absolutely certain, they request a DNA testing to be done. Since that would require the presence of a judge, and the judge is currently off the island, María is requested to stay behind for three more days—a request she begrudgingly acquiesces to.

With nothing to do to pass the time, María and Laura, who had accompanied her, hire a car to tour the island. On an isolated beach, while taking the first step towards overcoming her phobia of swimming, María thinks she spots Diego playing near a travel trailer. Hoping against hope, she begins investigating on her own. Soon, she finds out that her is not the only child to have gone missing in El Hierro. But what are her chances of getting to the root of this mystery when the people on the island are a closely-knit community and it is quite apparent that there are times when she cannot trust her own eyes?

A child gone missing is a common trope in thrillers. The various facets of this particular sub-genre have more or less all been covered in some memorable outings like Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), Bunny Lake is Missing (1965), The Wicker Man (1973), Without a Trace (1983), The Orphanage (2007), and Changeling (2008); as well as in some not-so-memorable ones like The Forgotten (2004), Flightplan (2005), and Vinyan (2008). Hierro falls somewhere in between these two extremes.

While the premise itself is as worn out as the traditional usage of El Hierro’s location, the film is not an abject failure for more than a couple of reasons. An animator by profession before he made a foray into feature filmmaking, where Ibáñez has stumbled as a storyteller, he has more or less made up the lost ground when it comes to the visual elements. Aided admirably by his cinematographer Alejandro Martínez, Ibáñez’s vision comes alive in a sumptuous treat for the eyes. Ibáñez also uses his experience in working with miniatures to bring about a sense of stark contrast. This is apparent from the very first sequence of the film itself, when a toy car tumbles down beside an upturned vehicle. This big-small comparison is threaded throughout the film. We see a tiny Diego seated in front of water tanks containing huge fishes; tiny insects that lie trapped in the water of a swimming pool; a single individual on a sprawling beach…the instance are many. It is as if to depict that the magnitude of any incident is relative to the point of view—a fact that comes to light when María overhears her sister over the telephone and realises that the mishap that changed her life in an instant like a chameleon changing its colours is not that significant to her own sibling.

Another refrain that runs through the film is the leit motif of water, as exemplified by fishes inside tanks and in the ocean; Diego being asked by his mother about ‘What lives in the sea’; water spilling out from an upturned glass and bursting out of a tap; water seeping from under a corpse; a painting of waves; María’s fear and eventual victory over fear of swimming; and so on. In a sense, water, too, acts as a contrasting element that brings out how desiccated and barren María’s life had become the moment she lost her only child.

Water just as well might have another implication here. In Spanish, ‘hierro’ means ‘iron’. As the film progresses, we find how armed with only an iron will, a dejected, depressed, and disconsolate mother embarks on a journey to uncover the truth in a terrain as desolate as her own existence. However, like the effect of water on iron, as time passes, she finds her willpower gradually losing the battle against forces that are way beyond her control.

Pals, Peril, and Playing God

2011-05-23T23:17:00.002+05:30

There exists unanimous agreement among film historians that 1939 was ‘the greatest in Hollywood film history’. The watershed year witnessed the release of such landmark films as Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Stagecoach, Of Mice and Men, Dark Victory, Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Wuthering Heights, and Ninotchka. What made 1939 all the more fascinating was that these films encompassed a wide array of genres—historical romance (Gone with the Wind), musical (The Wizard of Oz), western (Stagecoach), literary adaptation (Wuthering Heights), drama (Of Mice and Men), social commentary (Mr Smith goes to Washington), tragedy (Dark Victory), and comedy (Ninotchka).

In the same vein, though far less celebrated, 1988 was an astounding year for the Japanese film industry. However, there is one small difference. The three Japanese films released that year that went on to make a mark worldwide all belonged to the same broad genre—animation, or anime (Japanimation) to be precise, which is the nomenclature for the peculiar animation style originating in Japan. Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies, an animated drama, is widely known as one of the most powerful and influential anti-war films ever made; the maestro Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro is a top-drawer example of animated adventure-fantasy; while Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira has the envious reputation of having introduced anime to the West.

Akira is a two-hour-long film, condensed from a six-volume, 2,182-page long manga (cartoons, comic books, and animated films that adhere to a typical Japanese style of drawing), created by Otomo himself that was published in a serialised form from 1982 to 1990. When it was first released in the US and Europe in the 1990s, Akira changed the way Westerners—who were till then fed only on a Disney diet—view animation forever (in one particular scene of the film there is a building, which bears an uncanny resemblance to the Walt Disney logo). Even today, almost 25 years after it crept on to celluloid, Akira continues to astound its audience in the same manner it stumped the American distributors on its release, who had never seen an animation film like it before. Similarly, audiences to this day are confounded when they try to pigeonhole Akira into a specific sub-genre. But all these differences aside, if there is consensus on a film as path-breaking as Akira, which paved the way for renowned anime directors like Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue, Paprika), Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell) and Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Ninja Scroll), it is that Akira is prescient and prophetic.

As the film begins with a bird’s eye view of Tokyo, we learn that on 16 July 1988 (which, incidentally, happened to be the exact date when Akira was first screened in Japan), after a nuclear explosion ripped through the city, Third World War had broken out. The screen immediately turns red and the overhead view of the topographical features of the city take on an eerie resemblance to blood-soaked veins and arteries.

This pre-title card scene encapsulates the entire philosophy of the film. The perspective from above is akin to god’s point-of-view. But what followed was not an act of creation but a deed of destruction. It is as if our relentless pursuit to play god runs through our veins and inevitably ends in blood being spilled.

Thirty-one years later, in 2019, a lot of blood is being spilled on the roads of Neo-Tokyo—the city that arose from the ashes. Tokyo, or the Old City, as it is known, is now nothing but a crater that stares continuously like an unblinking eye. The physical destruction of the Old City is mirrored in the disruption of the moral fabric of the new one. Here, terrorism is rampant, unemployment is on the rise, and nationwide riots between the aggrieved populace and the police are commonplace. In such a dystopian future, where corrupt politicians rule the roost, the streets and highways provide the backdrop for a different kind of power struggle—that between rival biker gangs like the Capsules and the Clowns.

Shôtarô Kaneda is the leader of the Capsules. His best friend and companion since childhood is Tetsuo Shima. Ever since they met each other at a shelter, Kaneda has treated Tetsuo more as a brother than a friend. This protective nature has led Tetsuo to bear a thinly veiled grudge towards Kaneda, who has made a habit of coming to his rescue every time. But one day, during a high-speed bike chase, Tetsuo meets with an accident, and for the first time Kaneda fails to offer his helping hand. Instead, the military steps in and carries the wounded Tetsuo away.

What begins as Kaneda’s attempt to rescue his companion soon turns into a perilous journey that will involve a terrorist group; a trio of wrinkle-faced, psychic kids called Espers; the hard-as-nails Colonel Shikishima; the scientist Dr Onishi; and above all, the shrouded-in-mystery military experiment named Akira.

Man-made destructions and their aftermath are a leit motif in manga. It is a common device to tap into the cultural consciousness of Japan. Against this background that portrays man not as a higher power but akin to an amoeba that devours everything in its path, Akira posits the pros and cons of a psycho-spiritual awakening at two levels—man as an individual and as a species.

Otomo’s pessimism towards the so-called ‘evolution’ of man is apparent in the first scene of Akira itself, when in one singular motion an entire city gets wiped out. This is nothing but a depiction of an ungodly act that arises from harnessing god-like power. While humanity’s relentless pursuit has always been to control such power, Otomo shows that there comes a time when the power starts controlling us, instead.

Drawing upon the basic philosophy that is preached by religions as varied as Buddhism and Sufism—that of the innate relation between the creator and the created—Akira’s anime might look slightly dated today, but the secret of its longevity lies in its message that transcend time: ‘There’s ought to be a future that we can choose for ourselves. It’s up to us to find it’.

A Horrible Homage to Hollywood

2011-05-15T23:12:00.003+05:30

The pithily titled Korean thriller H (2002) begins with the decapitated body of a schoolgirl being discovered in an unnamed city’s landfill. What looks like a young life wasted and dumped takes a turn towards the gruesome when an unborn foetus is also accidentally found amidst the mounds of waste. Four days later, on February 14, it is bloody Valentine for an unmarried mother, when she is brutally slain inside a city bus before it arrives at the terminus. Here, too, when a still twitching arm of a foetus is found half ripped out of the womb, detectives Kim Mi Yun (Yeom Jeong-ah, who acted in the following year’s horror hit A Tale of Two Sisters) and her partner Kang Tae Hyun (debutant Ji Jin-hee) notice an eerie similarity in the modus operandi of the now-confirmed serial killer with that of another convicted mass murderer, Shin Hyun (Cho Seung-woo).

The only problem is that ten months ago Shin Hyun had voluntarily walked into a police station, carrying with him in a bag the body of his latest victim. On confessing to six horrific murders of women, he is now on death row, counting down the last few days of his life. Evidently, there is a copycat killer on the loose. To obtain information that might help solve the case and stop further murders from occurring, detectives Kim and Kang decide to pay Shin Hyun a visit.

While what puts the two detectives on Shin Hyun’s trail are the obvious similarities between the recent spate of murders to those committed by him, ironically, it is resemblance of a different kind that puts us—the viewers—off, the moment the scheming, calculating, Nietzsche-quoting killer-on-death-row enters the scene. The setting, the sequence, and the situation all hark back to Jonathan Demme’s multiple Oscar winner The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Granted, the ode is not as blatant as the Christian Alvart (Pandorum, Case 39) directed German film Antibodies (2005), where another serial killer named Gabriel Engel (played by André Hennicke) had proudly proclaimed ‘What did you expect? Hannibal Lecter?’, but the likeness to that classic thriller is all too obvious to be ignored.

As discerning film-watchers, we all know that it is impossible to steer clear of all clichés, no matter which genre a filmmaker is trying to explore. That is the reason we were willing to forego the hackneyed characterisation of an expressionless detective, who has still not come to terms with a personal tragedy; her greenhorn brash, over-enthusiastic, impatient partner, who is diametrically opposite to her in character traits; the portly policeman, whose sole existence in the film is centred around providing some ill-advised comic relief; and the incessant chimney-like smoking by the two protagonists that reveal that the screenplay writers were in a haze while penning the detective duo, rather than express any depth of character.

These missteps aside, if there is one image that summarises this stillborn effort at crafting an effective thriller, it is that of the unborn foetus. It is nothing but an allegory of how Korean filmmaking was being prevented from evolving beyond an embryonic stage by Hollywood, before directors like Chan-wook Park, Joon-ho Bong, and Jee-woon Kim resuscitated it to life. In this context, it might be pointed out that the first of Park’s riveting revenge trilogy, Sympathy for Mr Vengeance (2002)—the second film of the trilogy being Oldboy (2003) that single-handedly put South Korea firmly back on the firmament of filmdom—was released almost exactly nine months before H.

Coming back to H, the intentions of the filmmaker, akin to those of Shin Hyun, were noble, at least to themselves. One need not be a semiotician to read the anti-abortion subtext running throughout the film. But both first-time writer-director Jong-hyuk Lee and the character of Shin Hyun committed a similar error. Both got embroiled in the word ‘copycat’.

The initial interest aroused to try and figure out how a behind-the-bars serial killer is pulling the strings gets diluted by the red herrings thrown at us. The number of suspects is just too many, which, in most cases keeps us involved, but in this particular instance causes confusion. Moreover, it seems, the director, in his fervent enthusiasm to depict the tussle between the heart—(as portrayed by Detective Kang, who seems to take every atrocity around him—from a torn umbilical cord to a traffic jam—to heart)—and the mind (the ice-cold exterior of Detective Kim, who smiles exactly three times during the entire film) has thrown the entire volume of Psychology 101 at us. So, we have a doctor specialising in neuro-psychiatry, who has this curious habit of flashing a mysterious smile whenever she is in the company of cops; a patient, who suffers from a recurring horrible nightmare, which, supposedly, lies at the root of his psychotic behaviour; an abstract painter, who appears like the proverbial dues ex machine, and is proclaimed to be suffering from a multiple personality disorder; and last but not least, the prevalent belief among Koreans that a foetus becomes aware even when inside the womb, and the information gathered therein remains latent throughout one’s life as suppressed, unconscious memories.

After 106 minutes of mishmash that involves prostitutes and psychology; honour and horror; nicotine and Nietzsche, one is almost tempted to project Shin Hyun’s paraphrasing the German philosopher’s popular quote: ‘Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you’ on to the film and brand it as ‘abysmal’.

And as far as the elaboration of ‘H’ provided at the conclusion of the film is concerned, no matter what the director has depicted, it will take a lot to dissuade us from believing that it did not stand for ‘Homage’—an homage to Hollywood, and not a highly-recommended one at that!

A Downbeat Tale of Drugs, Decadence, and Death

2011-05-09T20:47:00.003+05:30

In one of several brilliantly-written scenes in Shane Meadows’ (of the 2006 skinhead drama This is England fame) Dead Man’s Shoes (2004), a small-time drug dealer Sonny (Gary Stretch) and his gang accost a local guy Richard (Paddy Considine), who has just returned to the British Midlands after serving the army. Sonny is suspicious that the previous night Richard had broken into his house. The tête-à-tête between them goes something like this: Sonny: ‘You know the lads had this ridiculous idea th…’ Richard (interrupting): ‘Yeah, it was me.’ The abrupt cutting off in mid-sentence and the instantaneous confession take both Sonny and us, the viewer, completely aback.

In a sense, this short, but impactful scene encapsulates the film itself. Most of us, while reading the above verbal exchange might have formed a mental picture of Richard, the ex-army man, and Sonny, the drug dealer. Fed on the staple Hollywood diet of hard-as-nails, biceps-bulging soldiers and gun-toting villainous drug lords, the characters of Richard and Sonny in Dead Man’s Shoes are as different from the stereotypical portrayal of similar characters by Hollywood, as the astonishing repartee by Richard to Sonny’s half-asked question. Moreover, the confidence Richard shows in confessing does not stem from the power he feels in his muscles, but from his knowledge that deep-down Sonny and his crew of drug peddlers—Tuff (Paul Sadot), Soz (Neil Bell), Big Al (Seamus O’Neill), Herbie (Stuart Wolfenden), and Gypsy John (George Newton)—are a bunch of cowards.

The story of Dead Man’s Shoes, written by Meadows and Considine themselves, deals with the age-old theme of revenge. Richard’s mentally-challenged brother Anthony (Toby Kebbell) was abused, humiliated, and tortured—both physically and mentally—by Sonny and his cohorts, while Richard was away serving the army. Now, that he is back, Richard seeks retribution for the wrongs done to his brother, who was too weak-minded to fight back.

Straightforward, the story may seem, but run-of-the-mill, it is not. In the opening monologue itself, when Richard says ‘God will forgive them. He’ll forgive them and allow them into heaven. I can’t live with that’, we realise that our protagonist is not like his American ilk from the Marines or Special Forces, who have god-like powers and prowess. So, is he the devil, then, as Soz enquires when he comes face-to-face with Richard? The answer, this, time, too, is in the negative. Richard is simply a man consumed with the single motivation to right the wrong done to his helpless little brother. Later on, though, we get to learn what is stoking the slow-burning fire of vengeance inside him has a lot to do with Richard himself, which makes the character all the more humane.

On the other side of the coin lie Sonny and his gang. While their corrupting influence on Anthony revealed a malevolent and immoral streak, but like Richard, it does not take us long to see through this veneer. Just as Richard is anything but the personification of the ‘one-man-army’, these small-time drug dealers, too, are nothing but scared little ferrets inside. After all, bullying is but a façade behind which hide the weak.

Richard is well aware that Sonny and his gang feed on others’ fears, and that they would crumple like the powder and pills they ply as soon as they are confronted with an individual who can stand up to them. And it is this very weapon—striking fear in the hearts of those whose business thrives on that particular emotion—that Richard uses in avenging his brother’s brutalisation.

Sonny and Co. are quite similar to Anthony in the sense that they are nothing more than a bunch of overgrown children. This facet becomes all the more clear over the five-day period during which Richard strikes terror into the lives of Sonny, Soz, Tuff, Herbie, Al, and Gypsy John. Be it scaring the living daylights out of Herbie by appearing in front of him while donning an army gas mask or generating a frenzy of fright among the entire group by breaking into Sonny’s apartment and leaving behind a ‘colourful’ message of warning, Richard relegates the outwardly tough drug dealers into a group of crying, bumbling, panic-stricken collection of cry-babies, who refuse to be left alone even for a second.

Unlike most revenge-films that focus more on the final culminating act of virile violence, Dead Man’s Shoes derives its message from the drugs that wreaked havoc on Anthony’s life. Richard believes that by peddling drugs to the youth, the dealers control their minds. And to teach these dealers of death a lesson or two, he turns the tables on them by doing exactly that—meddling with their minds first before delivering fatal blows. In fact, he had carved this philosophy on the wall when he had sneaked into Tuff and Soz’s apartment. The graffiti ‘Cheyne Stoking’ that he had spray painted on the wall denotes a breathing pattern in terminally ill patients that acts as harbinger of impending death.

Richard decided to turn every breath taken by Sonny and his band of miscreants into a poisonous inhalation—a fact made all the more ominous by the gas mask he wears. A vérité vengeance, indeed!

Trains, Transit, and Tribulations

2011-05-01T22:52:00.003+05:30

It is said that if one climbs on top of the tallest tree of the Tapachula municipality of the Mexican state of Chiapas, then one can see all the way to China. But the dream destination for most Central Americans, irrespective of whether they are from Mexico or from Honduras, is not the Asian behemoth, but El Norte (the north), which is what they call the country that encapsulates all of their aspiration—America.

These illegal immigrants chase the ‘American dream’ as much as they flee from a life marred by the Maras, or criminal gangs—the most vile, violent, and vindictive of which is the Mara Salvatrucha, commonly known as MS or MS-13. Instantly recognisable by the ornate tattoos that make the Mareras, or gang members—who are sometimes as young as 12, such as El Smiley (Kristian Ferrer)—look more like the Maoris, the MS-13 is a widely networked and closely knit group. Led by the merciless Li’l Mago (Tenoch Huerta), or ‘little magician’, MS-13 professes to flourish on the three pillars of honesty, respect, and generosity, but treats any transgression with utmost cruelty, of which cortes or cuts inflicted on the body is just the beginning. Not surprising, considering its initiation ceremony involves a new recruit being kicked around mercilessly like a football for 13 excruciatingly long seconds—harking back to the numeric part of MS-13—and killing a chavala, which is a derogatory term for the members of any rival gang.

No wonder then, for a Mareo like Willy (Edgar Flores), who is known better among his homies, or brothers in the gang as El Caspar, a teardrop tattoo is a constant reminder of how futile everyday is, especially when one has a sweetheart. In the opening shot of the film, we see Willy looking at a path laden with fallen leaves, with sad eyes. This is because deep down he knows that if he tries to leave all this behind and realise his dream of visiting the Six Flags amusement park in Texas with his girlfriend, it will in all probability result in him being crushed like the leaves. Falling in love with the beautiful Martha Marlene (Diana Garcia) has just made his life a bit more complicated. To spend more time with his fiancée, he is avoiding the mandatory visits to La Bombilla, or the ‘light bulb’—a place in Tapachula along the train tracks. Symbolising the flicker of hope that burns inside every illegal immigrant, who wishes to land up in America, La Bombilla is where these hoping-against-hope bunches flock together, often sleeping on the tracks to be woken up by the alarm of a blaring freight train, which is their ticket to the land of their dreams. That Willy is playing truant has not escaped the attention of Li’l Mago. El Caspar’s predicament is that neither can he tell Martha Marlene how close he is to Li’l Mago, nor can he tell his lascivious leader about her existence.

Sayra (Paulina Gaitan), a teenager from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, is also facing a predicament. Horacio (Gerardo Taracena), her estranged father, who she has not seen in years, has just re-entered her life and now plans to take Sayra and her uncle Orlando (Guillermo Villegas) to New Jersey. While the possibilities that such a proposition entails are not lost on her, the inherent fact that she will be putting up with her half sisters, who she unambiguously tells her father are ‘your family’, has taken the gloss out of it.

Just like our introduction to Willy, when we get our first glimpse of Sayra, she, too, is looking at the horizon, but from a high vantage point. This is nothing but a precursor to the fact that eventually, the lives of Sayra and Willy will be intertwined; as well as a portend to the journey Sayra, Horacio, and Orlando will undertake—atop freight trains that trudge along laboriously, taking innumerable immigrants within a touching distance of the US border.

Sin Nombre (2009) is the American director, writer, and cinematographer Cary Joji Fukunaga’s first foray into directing a feature-length film. Based on his own short Victoria para chino (2004), which dealt with the true story of 80 illegal immigrants from the Mexican border who travelled inside a refrigerated truck with tragic consequences, Sin Nombre narrates the harrowing experience faced by countless immigrants, who originate from deep into Central America, including places like Guatemala and Honduras. Perched precariously atop cargo trains, only a handful of these hordes of nameless, faceless humans ultimately succeed in crossing over. The rest either fall prey to murderous marauders during the perilous journey or are shot at by the border police or the judicial patrol.

With more than one-third of the film shot on top of a cargo train, Sin Nombre is a cinematographic marvel. However, it is apparent that what attracted renowned Mexican actors Gael García Bernal (Amores Perros, The Motorcycle Diaries, Y Tu Mamá También) and Diego Luna (Y Tu Mamá También) to come on board as executive producers of a film by a debutant director is not its rich visuals, of which there are plenty, but because it dares to give a face and a name to immigrants and gang-members, who go through their lives facing trials and tribulations that are eerily similar.

A Conundrum Cracked During a Conversation

2011-04-24T17:35:00.003+05:30

The joy of being the aficionado of any art form lies as much in appreciating the renowned works as discovering those unheralded, unknown, and unrewarded creations. It is quite confounding to come to terms in the first place with the fact that very few have even heard of a film named Una pura formalità (1994), or A Pure Formality. The reasons behind this sense of disbelief are many.

To begin with, it is written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, who gave us the Academy Award winner (in the Best Foreign Language Film category), Cinema Paradiso (1988) and the heartbreakingly beautiful coming-of-age story Malena (2000). Then comes the fact that A Pure Formality stars Gérard Depardieu, one of the most well-known faces of both French and international cinema. Moreover, it has Roman Polanski, a surefire entrant in any list on the acclaimed directors of our times—whose considerable genre-spanning body of work includes Chinatown (1974), Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Tenant (1976), Death and the Maiden (1994), The Pianist (2002), and The Ghost Writer (2010)—this time in front of the camera. Another stalwart of Italian movies, who is equally revered in Hollywood, Ennio Morricone of Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966) and A Fistful of Dollar (1964) fame has composed the music for the film.

In a nutshell, A Pure Formality is a made by an Italian with a French actor and a Polish-French director in starring roles. In other words, it is a microcosm of world cinema. Ironically, when the world of cinema talks about any of the four doyens associated with it—Tornatore, Depardieu, Polanski or Morricone—one rarely comes across even a cursory mention of A Pure Formality. The irony is compounded by the fact that those who get the opportunity to source out this inexplicably ignored film find it to be pure pleasure to watch.

As a precursor to a journey that will be undertaken for almost the entire 108-minute duration of the film, A Pure Formality opens with a point-of-view sequence of someone trying to find a way through a dense forest on a dark, rainy night, after we, the viewer, have stared down the barrel of a gun moments before a bullet has been fired. The man (Depardieu), soaked to the skin, shoes caked with mud, and quite disoriented, is apprehended by a couple of policemen, who bring him to a ramshackle police station after he fails to produce any sort of identification. His earnest requests that he has an important meeting next day for which he will get late fall on deaf ears, when the captain of the station insists that he wait for the Inspector to arrive and ask him a few questions.

Once the Inspector (Polanski) makes his entry, the film becomes an engrossing tête-à-tête, during whose numerous twists and turns a mystery will be solved. But a few intriguing questions get answered almost as soon as the ‘interrogation’ begins. We learn that Depardieu’s character is, in fact, a renowned novelist named Onoff. Unfortunately, for Onoff, the realisation that the time when ‘people knew who I was before I even said “Hello”’ seems to have gone forever dawns when he finds that even though the Inspector is an ardent admirer of his work—to the extent that he can recite chunks of what Onoff wrote verbatim—he fails to recognize him at first. Maybe, it has something to do with the fact that Onoff’s characteristic thick beard is missing. Or is it because it has been six years, during which he has become a recluse, since he came out with his last published work?

But there are other more important questions that remain, and to the Inspector, it seems that Onoff can help in answering them. For example, the identification of a body, whose face has been badly mutilated, that has been discovered not far from Onoff’s farmhouse. Then, of course, there is that little niggling query about what Onoff was doing running around in such torrential rain, without an umbrella or a raincoat.

Onoff himself is quite apathetic to being interviewed. In his own words: ‘Interviews are pointless…Someone visits you to make you say what he already knows, for the pleasure of hearing you repeat it.’ Little does he or the viewer know that like a true writer he has phrased a truism, and that, too, unknowingly. As the conversation continues between the Inspector and Onoff, questions are faced with adamant opposition, contradictory information, and eventually an intense introspection. The outcome is as much a revelation for Onoff, as it is for us.

There are other films based on the premise of an interrogation. Examples include the Morgan Freeman and Gene Hackman starrer Under Suspicion (2000) and the Australian film The Interview (1998) which has Hugo Weaving in it. The pure pleasure of watching A Pure Formality does not lie in the fact that the film deals with the unraveling of an intricately crafted puzzle. But its enjoyment lies in the manner in which clues to the solution of the conundrum are laid out as the film progresses, similar to the bowls scattered across the floor of the decrepit police station to collect dripping water from the leaking roof.

For almost the entire runtime of the film, there are only three characters on screen—Onoff, the Inspector, and Andre (Sergio Rubini), a young policeman, who has been entrusted with the job of transcribing the interview. The fourth character that ensconces these three is the rundown police station. There is a clock, but it has no hands, indicating time has all but stopped here. There is a phone, but we are told that the phone lines are the first casualty whenever there is a storm, implying estrangement from the rest of the world. And there is a cupboard, whose contents include important official documents, a few bottles of wine, a couple of glasses, and a mousetrap.

Each of these components of mise-en-scène comes into play as the film moves forward, but special mention needs to be made of the mousetrap, which is also an homage. It refers to the titular murder mystery written by Agatha Christie. Like the play, in A Pure Formality, a body has been found. While in the drama, four guests are forced to lodge in a guest house due to heavy snowfall; Onoff finds himself inside a dilapidated police station while it is raining cats and dogs. The guests in The Mousetrap are informed of a death by a detective sergeant; while it is from the Inspector that Onoff learns that a body has been found near his farmhouse. Most importantly, there is a twist ending in the play, as well as in A Pure Formality.

While Tornatore was gracious enough to strategically place an object of ode in his film, there are at least two directors, who have blatantly ripped off the crux of the story as well as some important plot points from him. Surprisingly, while both films are well known, one of these two went on to garner massive collections at the worldwide box office, while A Pure Formality till this day lingers in the shadows.

Just goes to show that life can be pure fatuity, at times.

A Tribute to the Triumphant Tramp

2011-04-17T15:25:00.000+05:30

‘There is no essential difference between the material of comedy and tragedy. All depends on the point of view of the dramatist, which, by clever emphasis, he tries to make the point of view of his audience.’ — George P Baker

In the history of cinema, perhaps there is no singular instance of an artist who knew this truth more instinctively than Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, or ‘Charlie’ Chaplin as he is fondly known. By poking at problems, and not confronting them squarely, this pint-sized pantomime artist made us laugh at the absurdity of it all, and revealed the universal truth that not only can the human condition be depicted better through comedy, but also that making the audience laugh is a better way to pontificate at a social malaise, rather than resorting to the power of the fist.

The term ‘comedy’ originates from the Greek word ‘kōmōidía’, which roughly translated means ‘to revel’ or ‘to amuse’. In its earliest form, comedy arose from the revels associated with the rites and rituals of Dionysus, the Greek god of grape harvest and wine. Today, when we see a Hindi film star donning the role of a standup comedian, while promoting a cellular service, it might seem an innovative idea. But very few of us would know that it was, in fact, Aristotle, who in his ‘Poetics’, written as long back as 335 BCE, had sown the seeds of the concept, when he stated that the foundations of comedy lay in improvisation.

In sync with its Greek roots, the classical definition of ‘comedy’ cites that its primary objective is ‘to amuse’. It has a ‘corrective’ motive, and it is based on truth, no matter how exaggerated. However, to make comedy effective, the foundation must always be believable. As Sir Peter Ustinov had once said, ‘Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious’.

Even though it is one of the most popular film genres, ‘comedy’ is unique as an art form simply because within that generic term lies a plethora of narrative structures. The most commonplace avatar of modern comedy involves a plot with the following plot points: boy meets girl, the two fall in love, and they unite after overcoming several obstacles. This age-old formula was made popular by doyens of literature like Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw, and is till date keeping the wolf from the door for innumerable screenplay writers worldwide.

Next are ‘parody’ films. Stretched beyond its expiry-date today, in the form of a sub-genre called ‘spoof’, by the likes of the Wayans Brothers, Jason Friedberg, and Aaron Seltzer (Scary Movie series, Disaster Movie, Meet the Spartans), parody in cinema is essentially nothing but imitation—of the structure, style or subject of another film. Chaplin himself, in his early shorts, such as A Woman (1915) and Triple Trouble (1918) had taken recourse to parodies.

The third variant of a comedy plot is reductio ad absurdum. In this, a social issue is reduced to a situation of chaos and utter absurdity. Perhaps the reason we laugh, when we see people making all sorts of wrong choices on screen and making all the errors of judgments possible is because all of these ring true—psychologically this is all very real. Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux (1947), which deals with a serial killer of rich women, is a classic example.

Then there is the narrative structure that draws a distinction between how people react differently to the same stimuli and similarly to different stimuli. Chaplin’s masterpiece The Great Dictator (1940) exemplifies this aspect by offering several perspectives—from a barber to the barbaric leader—to depict the interlinkages between human conduct and the social milieu.

The fifth structure of comedy films is characterised by a central figure—the protagonist. It is through his/her eyes that the viewer experiences both the main character’s and the other characters’ responses to the events that unfold as the film progresses. Chaplin’s iconic tramp, who was introduced in the short Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914) remained the central figure in all his films till Modern Times (1936), which, in its climax, had the tramp symbolically trudging down a long winding road towards the horizon.

Once Chaplin had famously stated that ‘All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman, and a pretty girl’. The genius that he was he knew that comedy, like music, is not dependent on the accoutrement, but on hitting the precise notes. And the tramp succeeded in doing just that. As depicted in what is now considered one of the—if not the—greatest comedy scene ever filmed, when he boils and eats a shoe in The Gold Rush (1925), while his companion keeps thinking he is a live chicken—no matter how bleak the circumstances and how towering the odds stacked against him, the tramp never accepted defeat. It appears as if the character had an in-built mechanism that forever prevented him from giving up. No wonder then, the tramp is the universal figure of comedy, without whose signature, the smile, the human society will find it extremely difficult to survive.

The timelessness of Chaplin lies in the fact that absolutely at the onset of his illustrious career he had realised that there is a thin line that separates laughter from pain, humour from hurt, and comedy from tragedy. He embodied these apparently antithetical aspects in the way he appeared as the tramp—a coat that is too tight, pants that are too loose, shoes that are too large, and a moustache that is too small. But just like his films that seamlessly combined tragedy with comedy, his appearance was a smorgasbord that flawlessly came together to create one of the most everlasting images depicted on celluloid.

Thus, even though the tramp remains one of the most oft-copied characters in filmdom and Chaplin the unacknowledged inspiration for millions even today, it is indeed disconcerting that the world decided to overlook that April 16 marked the birth anniversary of this timeless thespian. If we consider Jackie Gleason’s definition of comedy that states: ‘Comedy is the most exacting form of dramatic art, because it has an instant critic—laughter’, then the reaction that Chaplin continues to evoke from his audiences, irrespective of age, caste, colour, and creed, 97 years after the tramp made his first appearance on screen, bears testament to the fact that he is, and always will be, the master of comedy.

And for those acerbic critics, who will invariably point out Chaplin’s discomfort with ‘talkies’, the answer lies in a quote from an American comedienne, Elayne Boosler: ‘To listen to your own silence is the key to comedy.’

A Subterranean Saga of Salvation

2011-04-10T20:36:00.005+05:30

There comes a point in each of our lives, when we just cannot stand the sight of the profession we are employed in. But for Bulcsú (Sándor Csányi), the issue is slightly more complicated. As a ticket inspector of the Budapest Metro, his job is to kontroll, or to ensure that passengers have bought a ticket or at least have a valid pass. This apparently monotonous and innocuous job turns out to be a daily struggle, primarily because, with almost no exception, the passengers hate kontrollers and their job. In fact, they do so with such ferocity that the ticket inspectors face verbal—and even physical—abuse almost on a daily basis.

In this thankless livelihood, Bulcsú and his crew, comprising the elderly Professor (Zoltán Mucsi), the narcoleptic Muki (Csaba Pindroch), and Lecsó (Sándor Badár), who is afraid of dogs, has just been joined by the bumbling recruit Tibor (Zsolt Nagy). It is through Tibor, or Tibi, who acts as the surrogate for the viewer, that we learn that as if the incessant animosity of the Metro passengers was not enough, a prankster nicknamed Gyalogkakukk (Hungarian for the cartoon character Roadrunner), also known as Bootsie (Bence Mátyássy), who, apparently has eyes at the back of his head like the devil and can run like him, is making life hell for the kontrollers. On top of all this, there have been seven suicides, or jumpers who throw themselves in front of an onrushing subway train, this month alone. Later on, we realise that in most cases, it is a mysterious hooded figure that is pushing people on to the tracks.

Like the gigantic exhaust fan that we see Bulcsú perched upon in one shot of the film, each day in the life of our poker-faced protagonist is an endless cycle. Through a conversation with a passenger named Feri (János Kulka)—from whom Bulcsú hides the reality that he is now employed as a ticket inspector of the very Metro Feri is travelling in—we get to learn that Bulcsú had left a project that he was working on unfinished before he ‘went underground’. Bulcsú explains that he simply got weary of waking up everyday knowing that he had to wage a daily war to prove that he was the best in his work.

But deep down both Bulcsú and we, the viewer, know that the life he has consciously opted for is no better. While he has shut the world above by never venturing out into the sunlight, spending his days boarding one train after another and the nights by sleeping on the platform, he feels equally confined by his daily routine that never veers from waking up, working, and wandering off to sleep, and waking up again to engage in exactly the same sequence of events.

It seems the only time Bulcsú can feel any rush is when he competes in the perilous game of ‘railing’ with one of his rival kontrollers, Gonzó (Balázs Lázár). ‘Railing’ is like Russian roulette. Only difference being it is a footrace and does not involve a revolver, though the stakes are equally high. When the last passenger train leaves, those who are participating in ‘railing’ run after it, following the serpentine tracks. But the objective is not to catch the train ahead of them, but to avoid getting crushed by the ‘midnight express’, the last train that comes after the final passenger train, which never stops at any station, and is always breathing down their necks, and is hot on their heels.

The ‘midnight express’ is nothing but a personification of the past that Bulcsú is running from. That is why, even though he has made a name for himself as a ‘railing’ champion, even after winning another race, his face is not flush with the exhilaration of victory, but cringed with an aura of defeat.

One day, into this dreary life of Bulcsú, appears Szofi (Eszter Balla), a girl in a teddy bear suit. She is the daughter of Béla (Lajos Kovács), who, after being banished from the world above when he could not stop in time because of ‘insufficient braking distance’ now drives one of the subway trains of Budapest Metro. Like the Little Bear constellation, Szofi takes on the role of a guiding star, lighting up Bulcsú’s humdrum existence. For the first time in a long while, Bulcsú starts thinking beyond the frequent fights with the commuters, the boring conversations with his crew members, the menace posed by Bootsie, and the perilous hooded figure.

It is difficult to categorise Kontroll (2003), the first feature length film by the Hungarian filmmaker Nimród Antal. Like its characters who hop, skip, and jump over railway tracks while ‘railing’, the film deftly hopscotches across several genres—drama, mystery, thriller, comedy, and even romance. Filmed in its entirety in a subterranean setting, the brooding atmosphere is lightened both by individual character traits (like Muki collapsing into a narcoleptic fit every time his temper rises) and by the interactions of the kontrollers with passengers without tickets, which vary from the benign (a stuttering man trying in vain to explain his situation) to the bizarre (being handed a lottery ticket in place of a subway ticket; being threatened by a gypsy that she will put a curse on the inspector who had the gall to ask for a ticket; to a guy pulling out a syringe full of blood and wielding it as a weapon).

Kontroll was selected to be a part of the Un Certain Regard category of the Cannes Film Festival in 2004—two decades after the last Hungarian film made it to the prestigious event. Not a small feat by a director making his full-length feature film debut, by any means. Thus, one would have been perfectly justified to hope that the four sets of escalators all moving upward in the final shot of Kontroll would also signify the rise of this talented born-of-Hungarian-parents but raised-in-Los-Angeles filmmaker. Unfortunately, his career graph, since then, has resembled not the final, but the opening shot of Kontroll, wherein all the escalators are seen moving down. The clue possibly lies in the fact that he never went back to his homeland again but decided to heed the call of Hollywood instead for his next three films: the vacuous horror flick Vacancy (2003), the atrocious heist movie Armored (2009), and the pathetic sci-fi offering Predators (2010).

Learning Life’s Lesson

2011-04-03T16:57:00.003+05:30

As the 13-year old-students of an unnamed Japanese junior-high school get ready for the bell to ring and announce the end of term, storm clouds are gathering outside, foretelling an impending doom. When their teacher Yuko Moriguchi (Takako Matsu) starts addressing them, the boisterous, rowdy, and unruly bunch is seen hardly paying any attention to her words—some of them are sleepy, some are busy texting on ubiquitous cell phones, some generally spaced out, while others are obviously bored and disinterested in what their teacher has to say.

As oblivious they are to the monotonous monologue of their teacher, it seems Moriguchi is equally unmindful of the cacophony around her, as she starts her address that begins innocuously enough, but gradually builds up to a terrifying conclusion.

Like the students, we, the viewer, too, are initially unaware of exactly where she is going with her monologue as it sifts through apparently unrelated topics, while the camera snakes through students, benches, and the nooks and crannies of the classroom. But like the thunderheads gathering outside, as time passes by, her words take on a more and more ominous shade; and similar to the students in the class, we, too, find our curiosity piqued and attention captured. After all, it is unlike any farewell speech ever delivered by a teacher, who has just resigned from her post and addressing her class the last time.

By the time Moriguchi’s half-hour-long monologue ends, the seemingly disparate aspects of her speech fall in place like an elaborately crafted jigsaw, threading together the answers to the following questions: Why was she referring to Masayoshi Sakuramiya, well-known for his brilliant book, who had travelled the world before becoming a passionate teacher, and was diagnosed with a terminal illness just a month ago? What was the significance of Moriguchi insisting that anytime one of her students asks for her after school hours, she would invariably send a male teacher, instead? Why was she speaking about the health checkups once the next term begins, while handing out cartons of milk to the entire class, if she would be gone by that time, anyway? What did she mean by saying that the death of her four-year-old daughter Manami was not an accident, as the ensuing police investigation had revealed, when she was found floating on the swimming pool inside the school? And who are the two boys of the very class she was addressing, who, she says, had in fact murdered Manami in cold blood? Most importantly, what is it exactly she wants with those two boys?

The first half-an-hour of Tetsuya Nakashima’s Kokuhaku aka Confessions (2010) has more twists, turns, and surprises than most films manage to fit in into their entire runtime. And after such a breathless start, one would expect the film to lose its momentum thereon. But here, too, Nakashima’s film, based on a bestselling novel by Kanae Minato, proves us wrong. Like a clock that we see on screen a number of times, the film meticulously surges ahead, keeping us wondering with every ticking moment what Moriguchi’s painstakingly crafted plan for revenge has in store for the two implicated individuals—the athletics aficionado Naoki Shimamura (Kaoru Fujiwara) and the electronics prodigy Shuuya Watanabe (Yukito Nishii).

Moriguchi, as we come to learn, is more than just an avenging angel. Her intention is to make the two perpetrators realise the severity of the crime she believes they have committed, and make them come to terms with the importance of life itself.

Similarly, the film is not merely a revenge drama. It is a critique of the Japanese legal system, specifically, Article 41 of the Penal Code, which stipulates that those under 14 years of age are not liable for the crimes they commit, and hence, cannot be punished as a result; a treatise on the desire youngsters have to be recognised; a commentary on how most parents are completely ignorant of how to reach out to their kids; a condemnation of how majority of parents impose their own dreams on their children, unaware of the detrimental effect it can have on those young minds; a denunciation of how gadgets, while being designed to keep them connected have actually succeeded in alienating the young generation from their peers; and an impeachment of how impressionable young minds are always in the quest for an idol to emulate, and the extent to which that blind faith can be exploited.

Intricately structured akin to the novel it is based on—divided into five confessions—Kokuhaku is a frightening depiction of teenage group dynamics, peer pressure, and the angst of adolescence. It is, indeed rare to come across a film where the audience finds it difficult to take sides with any of the characters on screen, simply because each one of them is irredeemable. It is with immense gusto that Nakashima has pulled this one off. His mastery of the craft is evident in the way he has used the red-and-white milk cartons as harbingers of a horrific plot point; the introduction of fish-eye lenses to invoke the idea that there is more to what is being viewed than what the normal eye can see; a cleaver chopping off an electronic toy resulting in a splatter of its mechanical body parts like blood spurting out of a human body being butchered; the uneasy screech of the chalk on the board as Moriguchi writes ‘life’ on it; Moriguchi opening a window, while allowing her class to know a particular secret in her life and then shutting it as soon as she has finished relating it, as well as Nakashima’s poignant portrayal of the attention-craving, loneliness, and rejection that adolescents find so difficult to cope with.

During her address, Moriguchi had revealed that as a teacher, she chose to ‘do my best to place myself on the same level as the students’. In her quest to avenge her daughter’s death, not only did she stay true to her word, but also meted out a lesson that would last a lifetime and scar the two perpetrators forever.

Japan’s official selection in the Best Foreign Film category at the 83^rd Annual Academy Awards, it is quite apparent why this searing tale of adolescent anomie did not make it to the top five. The ease with which Japan tackles the harsh reality of life, be it on screen or off it, is conspicuous by its absence in mainstream Hollywood. And having an ambiguous conclusion to a situation that Hollywood chooses to forsake rather than face did not help the film’s cause, either.

This is one of the many life’s lessons that the American film industry, which is still in its puberty when it comes to confronting the cruel side of growing up is concerned, needs to learn, fast.