Lives of Others - The (Das Leben der Anderen)

Synopsis: In 1984 East Berlin, a dedicated Stasi secret police surveillance expert finds his loyalties shifting as he is immersed in the lives of others, an actress and a playwright. [Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2007, Germany, Rating MA, Running time 132 minutes]

A story of one man living through the lives of others, Das Leben der Anderen is an intimate account of the fear and surveillance that controlled the German Democratic Republic prior to unification in 1989. Surveillance was the means by which the Republic was documented in meticulous detail, reducing the humanity of its population to dry notations.

9.30pm: Captain Weisler attends new play by playwright Georg Dreyman. Capt Weisler is accompanied by superior officer, Oberstleutnant Anton Grubitz.

9.35pm: The Minister for Culture instructs Grubitz and Weisler to place Dreyman under surveillance.

9.45pm: Dreyman’s lover, the actress Christa-Maria is driven home. Her clothes are in disarray as she steps out of the Minister’s car. Prob. non-consensual sexual intercourse.

Weisler (Ulrich Mühe) , the surveillance expert, is a well-used tool of the State. He is small, contained, drab, loyal, inconspicuous, yet intimidatingly relentless in the interrogation cells of the Stasi secret police. But his initial, unreflective desire to monitor the possibly subversive playwright turns into something else. At the end of the long cable of his surveillance headphones, he finds himself a ghostly presence in the home of Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and Christa-Maria (Martina Gedeck) . Falling in love with their lives, his loyalties to the State begin to crumble.

As Christa-Maria is drawn deeper into the unwanted affections of the odious Minister, and Dreyman is forced to question the artistic censorship of the State, subversion begins to brew in the Dreyman apartment. As Dreyman takes elaborate steps to secretly publish an expose of the regime without having it being traced back to him, Captain Weisler must face the question whether to report him – and if not, how to conceal the truth from the superiors that are beginning to distrust him. The story’s tension continues to ratchet up, only resolving well after the fall of the Berlin wall when all their lives have irrevocably changed.

The film’s Orwellian themes are so well visually and emotionally realised that the somewhat bare characterization can be overlooked. As the frighteningly farcical operations of the Republic’s secret police unfold, a silent question lingers: to what extent have the same evils of fear and secrecy invaded our modern-day ‘democratic republics’. As Dreyman wonders, how is it that such men as these lead our countries?

4 flims.

The Happening

Synopsis: A couple struggling to even communicate (Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel), and the young daughter of their friend (John Leguizamo), are plunged into a horrifying struggle for survival when something starts happening in north-east America, causing people to kill themselves. [M. Night Shyamalan, 2008, USA/India, rating M, running time: 97 minutes]

Since the phenomenal success of Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense in 1999, the writer/director’s films have grown ever more fantastic and incredible (literally). From the boy who sees dead people we progressed to an unbreakable man, signs of hydrophobic aliens, strange monsters in the village woods, a spirit lady in an apartment block’s swimming pool, and now the strange toxic ‘happening’ that is driving people to suicide.

At the same time, the director’s style is increasingly measured in its naturalism, with peculiarly restrained performances in the face of extraordinary events. Shyamalan is nothing if not courageous in his willingness to forsake earlier commercial mega-success in the development of an unusually naïve style. In taboid film criticism, where every film must surely be an amalgam of others, The Happening would be called some kind of horrifying Hartley/Hitchcock hybrid. If they knew who Hartley was.

To love such a psychological fancy requires a certain suspension of logic and disbelief and a susceptibility to find great horror in small moments. Shyamalan’s earlier films are dramatic thrillers, but The Happening goes further to really horrify. It is strongly reminiscent of The Birds, yet even more effective in taking innocent aspects of nature and making them terrifying and almost inescapable. It’s a horror that doesn’t act externally but infects a person and turns them against themselves in ever more violent ways. The visual violence is a striking new feature in comparison to the director’s earlier work, mostly mercifully brief, but pitilessly heightened by a wonderfully panic-inducing score.

With all but one of his films profitable, some massively so, Shyamalan is obviously popular. Yet his work is often stridently criticised by reviewers as some kind of arrogant whimsy. Still, there were once a lot of people who said Bob Dylan should never have gone electric. Unfortunately for the fans of The Sixth Sense, there will be no numerical sequel or prequel. The director is moving on, avoiding neatly tying up loose ends in favour of exploring open-ended interconnections in peculiarly adult fantasies. Particularly, the spiritual and emotional connections that bind together the narrative of the family, the bonds between parents and children, the divisiveness of fear, and the transformative effect of love. There is a touch of both the sentimental and experimental but beneath it remains a fair degree of subtlety, even a political message that’s worth opening your heart to.

4 flims.

Australian confabulators: Unfolding Florence & Hunt Angel

Unfolding Florence [Gillian Armstrong, 2005] has interesting parallels to the more recently made Hunt Angels (Alec Morgan 2006), about Australian film-maker, Rupert Kathner. Both films are idiosyncratic docudramas about Australian confabulators and artistic identities who weren't averse to lying and grandstanding in order to achieve their goals. Both explore themes of identity and art, and innovative approaches to compositing visuals of actors, animation, archival footage and photographs.

While Hunt Angels' Kathner lived on the run in order to fraudulently finance his film-making, Florence Broadhurst lived on the run from herself. She regularly denied her rural Queensland origins while reinventing herself as an English artist. Whether she was searching more for her true creative identity or for acceptance by the social elite remains unclear. Best known for her wallpaper design career which she began at 60, her framed designs are used as backdrops for a series of interviews about her many personae as a singer, dancer, painter, fund raiser and socialite. In the background is her mysterious, brutal death in October 1977 at the age of 78. Director Gillian Armstrong says she wanted to find a solution to this crime, but the film is foremost a lavishly retold life, with her death an abrupt and puzzling finale.

The screenplay draws on Florence's letters to construct the semi-fictional narration by Florence about her own life and death. The frenetic (sometimes too frenetic) imagining of her life, including animations created from old photographs and footage, is interspersed with the ominous recreation of Florence's last walk to her design studio and factory in Paddington.

Old friends and socialites annotate Armstrong's account of Florence's life with a generally uncritical tone. But other reflections, including her neglected son's perspective, round out the impression of a woman both generous and self-absorbed. She lived in a world sometimes even more fantastic than fiction but had a decisive impact on the real lives of people around her, for better or worse. It is a compelling, although at times unflattering look at the world of the social and artistic elite into which she fearlessly forced entry.

While films like Unfolding Florence and Hunt Angels may not be of huge interest outside Australia, they are a welcome reminder that our own artistic heritage and possible futures are forces to be reckoned with. And they leave the lingering question: how far would you go to get what you want?

3.5 flims.

Sin City

Synopsis: Sin City is infested with criminals, crooked cops and sexy dames; some searching for vengeance, some for redemption and others, both. [Robert Rodriguez/ Frank Miller, with guest director Quentin Tarantino, 2005, USA, Rating MA running time: 124 minutes]

Robert Rodriguez' oeuvre thus far is a kaleidoscope of visual effects that usually tell a simple story well. He was made for turning pulp fiction into celluloid, and his dedication to realising Frank Miller's silhouetted and polarised fantasy crime comics pays off. Images are worth a few gazillion words here - Miller was apparently convinced to unprise his fingers from the film rights by Rodriguez turning up with the opening sequence already in the digital can:

The dramatic black and white comic visuals are lovingly transferred, almost comic frame for cinema frame, to a predominantly colour-free screen. Rodriguez adds splashes of colour to pick out details or accentuate highlights. The occasionally extreme comic-violence is manageable - blood spurts luminescently, a gruesome evisceration is masked by hard-edged black and white. This is the stuff of the classic noir detective style, but with a feral edge to both the style and the content. It's lazy, and perhaps unfair to Rodriguez, to say it's Tarantinoesque; but I'm going to anyway - especially given the most feral scene was guest-directed by Mr T. Unlike Tarantino, the film is a bit of a patriarchal package - even the gun-toting dames need a manly helping hand in the end; but ultimately the genders make a partnership that loosens the black grip that crime holds over Sin City.
The cast is a huge list of names spread over the three intertwining Sin City comics stories that comprise the film. Jessica Alba is the dark city's bar-dancing angel. Mickey Rourke is transformed into a hulking, but human, vengeance machine. Benicio Del Toro won't shut up even with a slit throat. Rosario Dawson leads a pack of fearsome Amazons. Bruce Willis is the last honest cop. Clive Owens is out to play a dark hero. Elijah Wood is the freakiest character in memory. Alexis Bledel, Carla Gugino, Devon Aoki, Rutger Hauer, Michael Madsen - all play a part to bring a big story with real dimensions to the screen.

The film was shot almost exclusively against green screens, but the performances are very alive and in sync with the ultra-realistic surroundings. Unlike George Lucas' recent efforts, Rodriguez seems to have succeeded in overcoming the performance hesitancy often apparent in this kind of film-making. He shoots and cuts fast and well, capturing a palpable immediacy and tension in the performances. The staccato dialogue also transfers faithfully from page to screen.

Ultimately, two of the three stories are riveting, but one interrupts the pacing a little. Perhaps this is like Mozart being told that there were too many notes. What's being done here is very fresh meat, and well worth consuming. The imitators will, of course, be right around the corner. Hopefully Sin City 2 won't be one of them, but will add even more innovation to a very impressive beginning.

4 flims.

Note: these images were first collected and presented on another website at the time this review was written in 2005. Unfortunately, I can't remember the site name to give credit where credit is due.

Factotum

Synopsis: A visualisation of Charles Bukowski’s semi-autobiographical novel, Factotum. [Bent Hamer, 2005, USA/Norway, Rating M, Running time: 94 minutes]

is bukowski like cummings

without all the fucking wordplay

or do they both just like lower case

but bukowski liked capitals as much as the next guy

so no consistency there but never mind

so, was bukowski just some drunk

some womaniser

derelict

destitute

he wrote these books (exhibit a: factotum)

this canon of work, firing bolts of stories, poetry

words cascading over cheap notebooks (not the technological kind)

or bashed out on a typewriter – every line crashing out

with the staccato finality of the carriage return

he was born into this

the grim reality of life and art twisted up

thinking form/structure only worked on words once the spirit had been used up

so gave all his energy to covering those pages, sending them off to literary rags

so, this is Henry (Hank) Charles Bukowski becoming Hank Chanaski

and Hank becoming Matt Dillon

and Matt becoming the Factotum

the man who peforms many jobs across 70s, 80s LA

except that Henry/Hank/Matt can’t hold a single damn job

down for more than a day, a week, a month

the only thing he holds down with any regularity is a gutful of rotgut

and the broads under him who take his cock like a knife

(although Lily Taylor, Marisa Tomei do much more than this)

and the slight ember of hope that his words will finally be read.

Bukowski wrote Barfly too

But always thought Mickey Rourke was too pretty

Dillon is a big pretty guy too but got a gritty voice big enough for the poetry

(and the high contrast of the Dadafon tunes sure brings them out)

Dillon lumbering through the grimy city, grainy celluloid,

Plumbing the depths but also finding the laughs among a sea of characters,

And blowing that ember into flames for every wannabe out there.

Like me.

4 flims.

Kill Bill Volume 1

Synopsis: The Bride, a sword-fighting assassin, goes on the warpath against her former colleagues and boss after they slaughter her wedding party and leave her and her unborn child for dead. [Quentin Tarantino, 2003, USA, Rating R, Running time 106 minutes]

Volume One of Kill Bill is an extravagant, indulgent assault on the senses. It’s a slice-and-dice homage to more films than you can poke a stick at. Tarantino fans can rejoice at the stylistic and editing strengths that echo elements of Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and Jackie Brown. Sadly, the machine gun dialogue of these earlier films does not take the foreground, but perhaps the martial arts purists will find this a good thing.

The main preoccupation here is the violence of vengeance in many gritty and parodied representations, ranging from live action to mind churning manga, using everything from saturated colours to over-exposed black and whites. To Tarantino, the ability to communicate violence in all sorts of increasingly visceral ways is one of the main entertainments and strengths of cinema. The Greeks may have coined this ‘catharsis’. Tarantino calls it fun.

Kill Bill dallies with fairly brief moments of ominous violent horror reminiscent of Reservoir Dogs, but the main bread and butter is absurdly stylised violence far beyond Pulp Fiction’s craziest moments. There are countless decapitations of heads and limbs followed by water sprinkler geysers of thin red liquid in all directions; generally with an increasingly bruised, cut, and bleeding heroine (Uma Thurman) dishing it out in the middle with a very sharp sword. Through this is entwined some hint of the codes and values of the fu-film genre, but they don’t get much exposition.

The film is so saturated that it’s a relief when the huge central battle of the film switches to over-exposed black and white. Essentially, it’s a love of the super-stylin’ set piece and wild screen violence that has turned a planned 90-minute kick-to-the-gut into a more meandering series of punches spread over two volumes. This film generally eschews the long-shots and wire work of The Matrix or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for rapid close-shot edited piece, where often the set rather than the fight has the key billing.

Those who loved the strong and usually-complex central stories and dialogue of Tarantino’s earlier films may find Kill Bill lacking. Perhaps dialogue was former co-writer Roger Avary’s strength for what dialogue there is here can occasionally seem stilted or unnatural. But perhaps this is intentional, given the film’s nods to the stiffly-subtitled martial arts films that Tarantino reveres. Even the usual distinctive choice of music is light on lyrics. Kill Bill also cuts back and forth through the timeframe of the story, but the lack of any complex story means this technique has little to add to the interpretation of the film as it unfolds. Possibly Volume Two will offer the other characters some more exposition.

Tarantino’s style has a definite substance of its own, which has fuelled many a doctoral thesis. But Kill Bill’s style alone won’t win him a scriptwriting Oscar to twin his earlier one, or another little swag of Oscar nominations for the actors. But Uma Thurman could get another Oscar nomination for her moments of pure exhilarating brilliance as the key protagonist out for revenge. The other actors generally play their parts with skill and often distinction (for example, Darryl Hannah’s impressive few minutes on screen, or martial arts veteran Gordon Liu) but they are essentially bit players in Uma’s grand scheme. Only she has the emotional motivation and screen time to make a real impression.

Tarantino has aimed to make one of the greatest action movies ever seen. Until Volume Two is released, it’s hard to judge. Coming to the end of Volume One is like someone ripping a pulp fiction novel out of your hands just after the mid-point climax. But even if Tarantino fails in his aim, Kill Bill is certainly something new from something old, and striking if not hugely memorable or significant. Bring on Volume Two.

3.5 flims.

In the Cut

Synopsis: Frannie (Meg Ryan) is a teacher learning about the underside of life, and a brutal neighbourhood murder brings her into contact with Detective Malloy (Mark Ruffalo), with dramatic consequences. [Jane Campion, 2003, USA, Rating R, Running time: 118 minutes]

In The Cut is dark, emotional, sexual, violent, tragically beautiful and revelatory material. It opens with a ‘petal storm’, something that seems too lovely to be real. Yet as I walked through the park this morning, a gust of warm breeze shook petals from the blossom trees and they whirled past me like snow. It was just like the film. The film was just like this. Visceral, immediate. The almost constantly shifting camera and focus captures the energy and essence of people and landscape. Focus shifts as the eye shifts, the relative position of things move as the body moves, small details carry weight, and even wide city streets can be claustrophobic with cars, people, urban detritus.

And like life, the film doesn’t conveniently deliver its meanings on a plate. It makes little deliberate effort at exposition, relying instead on the unfolding events to demonstrate who characters are, what they are like, what they might be capable of. The intensity of these gradually unfolding unknowns combined with the unsettling camera and urban sound effortlessly create a very ominous tone.

Meg Ryan looks very little like herself as Frannie, and more – if anything – like Nicole Kidman. This is somewhat disconcerting given that Kidman bought the rights to the film planning to play the lead herself. Frannie is understated, intense, on the edge of discovering herself. Ryan’s comic roles can be terrific, even if they can seem spread into a thin veneer. She now reveals a substantially different talent and potential, as well as revealing just about everything else in the tingling sexual peaks of the film. Mark Ruffalo plays the brooding detective, with alternately ugly indifference and surprising compassion. Other performances also capture unfamiliar energy, with Jennifer Jason Leigh and the uncredited Kevin Bacon both surprising and outstanding.

Frannie is preoccupied with words, from the detective’s description of the corpse as ‘disarticulated’ to the snatches of poetry on the walls in the subway. Her vicariously academic interests are in street culture and slang, but her own life becomes increasingly complicated after two key events - watching an explicit blow-job in a seedy bar which awakens a new level of desire, and becoming linked to a murder investigation. As she becomes more emotionally involved, she is beset by visions (spliced into the film) of the moment in which her parents fell in love, a moment which later led to betrayal and abandonment.

The only criticism might be that the plot is at times implausible or slightly unsubtle, but this is a film more about the psyche than who did it. Perhaps it should be added that the aftermath of the murders is graphic, the sex is explicit, and the end is different from the book.

4.5 flims.