Happy as Lazzaro [Alice Rohrwacher, 2018]:
Watched: May 04, 2019
The furious social commentary of the film put me in
mind of an old quote attributed to the filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard; or more
specifically, to Godard's character in his own great masterpiece, First Name,
Carmen (1983): "When shit's worth money, the poor won't have assholes."
The sentiment reverberates throughout Happy as Lazzaro, where the saintly
nature of the central character, held, along with the rest of his fellow
villagers, in a perpetual cycle of poverty and subservience, like hostages to
their own employers, gives an added weight to the film's condemnation of
capitalist exploitation. Like M. Night Shyamalan's much maligned but brilliant
The Village (2004), Happy as Lazzaro plays with the perception of time and the
idea of characters imprisoned, not by lock and key, but by manipulation; by the
intentional withholding of information by those in positions of power. In both
films, the subsequent revelation as to the true nature of events hits the
audience like a sucker punch. It breaks the spell of the film's earlier, more
pastoral or otherworldly sequences, and has the potential to leave its audience
disarmed and disoriented, unsure of where we are or what we're seeing. Supernatural
elements surface as the film does something extraordinary with its central
character, the titular Lazzaro, who, like his near-namesake, rises literally
from the dead to become a living mirror to the heartlessness of people, and the
unending cruelty that defines us as a species. With Happy as Lazzaro, writer
and director Alice Rohrwacher announces herself as a clear descendant to
filmmakers like Pier Paolo Pasolini and Robert Bresson; finding an analogous
push/pull between unscripted naturalism, bordering on the documentary, and
something more artificial, stilted and austere.
Us [Jordan Peele, 2019]:
Watched: May 04, 2019
Like the director's first film, the zeitgeist
capturing horror commentary Get Out (2017), writer and director Jordan Peele's
second feature, Us, never really betters its amazing prologue. Finding a
balance between contemporary horror movie cliché and social satire, this
opening sequence creates an atmosphere that is unnerving and pervasive, perfectly
evoking a feeling of plausible suburban dread, both in its fairground setting –
itself a kind of self-aware acknowledgement of the film as "thrill ride"
– and in its observation of the family dynamics; the curious child, the
distracted parents and the constant threat of something insidious existing just
beyond the frame. The sequence is also necessary in establishing many of the
key themes and characteristics that develop throughout the film. The hall of
mirrors, set as it is in the façade of a fairytale kingdom, connects back to
everything from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (1865) and its
follow-up "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There"
(1871), to films like The Lady from Shanghai (1947) and Orphée (1950); that
notion of the 'magic mirror' that transports a character to a literal
underworld, as well as the usual connotations to self-reflection, identity and
duality of the mind. While the subsequent home invasion sequences and the third
act twist into something more elaborate if far-fetched are clever and
brilliantly executed, they pale in comparison to this opening scene. With Get
Out, I thought Peele's ideas, both in his subversion of conventional genre
iconography and his engagement with the current politics of identity, were
brilliant, but the film was let down by a bland, televisual aesthetic. Working
here with cinematographer Michael Gioulakis, best known for his excellent work
with directors David Robert Mitchell and M. Night Shyamalan, ensures that Peele's
imagery is now as powerful as his ideas. Despite some obvious flaws, Us is a bold
and singular experience, confirming Peele's reputation as an exciting and
ambitious new voice in American genre cinema.
Unicorn Store [Brie Larson, 2017]:
Watched: May 05, 2019
In a year when Brie Larson would go on to achieve
enormous pop cultural significance with her starring role in the blockbuster
superhero movie Captain Marvel (2019), it seems especially incongruous to be
discovering her first feature-length work as director; the small and defiantly
unusual Unicorn Store. Representing a complete creative antithesis to the kind
of cinema typified by Marvel's flashy, big-budgeted CGI adventure, Unicorn
Store is an intimate, heartfelt, visually creative comedy drama film that
combines genuine twenty-something existentialism with more fantastical or
magical realist elements. Scripted by Samantha McIntyre, Unicorn Store captures
something of the millennial experience in a way that feels genuinely authentic,
at least in regards to the experience of middle-class suburbanites who leave
the supposedly liberating institutions of college and university only to find
themselves back at home, living with parents, and struggling with low-paying temp
jobs that offer little outlet for the kind of creativity and expression that
childhood promised. As a contrast to much of the current crop of American
independent cinema, which is blandly shot and unremarkable, looking more like television
movies than something directed with personality and style, Larson's film has a bold
visual aesthetic that practically bursts with glitter and rainbows. The stylization
extends from the personality of the central character, the struggling artist Kit,
meaning that in this instance the content dictates the form. However, the
result is still a confident and exciting work that suggests Larson could have
potential to be a bold new voice in American cinema. I found the film both
funny and moving, connecting with the character's sadness, her sense of failure
and disillusionment, and her eventual move towards something approaching hope
and self-acceptance. Ultimately, it's a film about belief and the need to believe
in something greater than the world around us; about having a purpose, no
matter how personal or irrational it might seem, which draws and connects us to
other people.
The Usual Suspects [Bryan Singer, 1995]:
Watched: Jun 06, 2019
It's hard to believe there was ever a period when
films like this would dominate the cultural discourse. In a world where
hundred-million-dollar blockbusters are expected to gross billions in revenue,
and predictably lead to the creation of an actual franchise of follow-up
installments that run and run until the series exhausts itself, only to then be
remade and rebooted as the process begins again, it seems entirely alien that a
film that cost $6million to produce and grossed only $34million world-wide, once
impacted the popular culture as significantly, if not more so, than The
Avengers (2012), Wonder Woman (2017) or Joker (2019). While the creative
success of the film and its legacy has been largely tainted by the separate sexual
assault allegations leveled at both director Bryan Singer and the film's co-star
Kevin Spacey, The Usual Suspects nonetheless holds up as a fantastic piece of
comic book noir. From the very first frame the film grips the audience with a
sense of mystery as we find ourselves faced with a seemingly senseless crime, conflicting
timelines, an unreliable narrator and a character who acts as a surrogate for
the audience, piecing together the clues. The screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie
is brilliant; it's clever without being conceited, and compelling without
becoming unnecessarily convoluted, always finding the right balance between
tone, story and the playful manipulation of the audience. In the presentation
of the mysterious Keyser Söze there is a touch of Dr Mabuse: the criminal
mastermind created by Norbert Jacques and made famous in three films directed
by Fritz Lang between 1922 and 1960. This similarity works to connect the film
to the influence of German expressionism and by extension the legacy of the
American film noir.
The Coming of Sin [José Ramón Larraz, 1978]:
Watched: Jun 15, 2019
The inference of the title, The Coming of Sin, creates
an inherent tension within the presentation of the narrative and in the
relationship between its three central characters. By seeking to personify
"sin" as a characteristic in the flesh and blood form of a living
person, co-writer and director José Larraz succeeds in taking his story out of
the literal reality and creates instead a figurative representation that
suggests something symbolic, almost mythical. By turning "sin" as a
concept into a physical harbinger, Larraz cuts the film free from the
restrictions of conventional drama and instead suggests something closer to the
psychodrama. In this sense, it's a film in which characters become
representations; where the struggle that exists between the protagonists is
meant to externalise an internal point of view. Like his earlier film, Vampyres
(1974), The Coming of Sin is a work that straddles the line between the
arthouse and the grindhouse, proving itself to be another hard sell for both
factions as it appears too salacious or leering for high-brow audiences, and
too esoteric or languorous for the populists. On one level, the film is filled
with scenes of soft-focus, softcore erotica, suggestive of analogous works by
other European provocateurs such as Walerian Borowczyk and Tinto Brass, and films
like The Immoral Tales (1974) or Salon Kitty (1976), where sex and depravity
were treated as selling points, but packaged with creative cinematography and
appeals to historical or psychological depth. The Coming of Sin undoubtedly takes
great pleasure in depicting its lengthy scenes of sex and nudity, but it also features
intelligent themes, strong emotions and an emphasis on smaller, observational
scenes, which establish the world of the film and the relationship between the
characters. The psychological subtext is as rich here as anything found in a
film by Ingmar Bergman.
