Key Films #27

Greetings [Brian De Palma, 1968]:

In a key scene, Robert De Niro's budding filmmaker Jon Rubin persuades a young woman to take part in an art project that he's been developing.  He claims that it's an installation on the subject of still life.  In truth, the project consists of De Niro's character filming the young woman through an open doorway as she readies herself for bed.  As the woman undresses (and amusingly over-acts the part of the unconscious starlet, unaware of this intrusion) the camera becomes De Niro's eye and the eye of the viewing audience.  As it records, unmoving and unbroken - observing the woman as if not even there - the voice of De Niro continues on the soundtrack, directing; leading the actress through this "private moment" (as Rubin calls it), which culminates in a clear act of seduction.  In doing so, De Niro's character breaks the fourth wall of his own conception; stepping into the frame, literally, in an effort to claim the beauty that is captured, physically, within the texture and the grain.  It's an important scene in the context of the film, which throughout makes explicit references to the authenticity of the image in relation to the assassination of JFK and the general disparity between the image of youth-culture being sold as a vibrant commodity against the entirely less vibrant reality that is depicted, as well as the more conventional misuse or manipulation of images for the purpose of creating propaganda; in this instance, both for and against the war in Vietnam.

However, the scene is even more important in establishing a thread of continuity that will be further refined and developed through the evolution of De Palma's career.  The voyeurism, misogyny and exploitation that the director has frequently been criticised for is already beginning to take shape.  The "private moment", filmed here by De Niro's 'Rubin', will find a further expression in later films, such as Hi, Mom! (1970), Sisters (1973), Body Double (1984) and even Carlito's Way (1993), just as the nods to Blow-Up (1966) by Antonioni in Gerrit Graham's obsession with investigating the Zapruder footage will eventually meld with De Palma's own interest in the power of the filmmaking process to find the truth behind the lie (a concept quite evident in the director's subsequent masterpiece, Blow Out, 1981).  The film is full of relics that point to the direction of later De Palma works, from the counter-culture themes that would reoccur in the aforementioned Hi, Mom! (itself a continuation of the Rubin sub-plot) to the mock-newsreel footage of the conflict in Viet Nam, which suggests, on an obvious level, the same era and setting as the markedly more conventional Casualties of War (1989), but also the post-modern, mixed-media approach used in the no less political Redacted (2007).  In this sense, Greetings is perhaps more of a retrospective introduction to the world of De Palma than a film for the uninitiated; where the time-capsule look at '60s America ultimately says more about its director; his fears and obsessions laid bare.

Profound Desires of the Gods [Shôhei Imamura, 1968]:

The film deals with the usual Japanese concerns - loss of tradition, dishonour, the influence of the west, etc - but presents them as part of a grand tapestry; a collage of conflicting influences - including elements of melodrama, allegory and adventure story - all meshed together; the separate elements blurring, vividly, into one.  In approaching the film - this tribal study, which, in essence, seems to question the resolve of the pre-war Japanese mentality as it thrives in a forgotten enclave of the country as yet untouched by the vulgarities of the modern world - Imamura daringly combines a documentary-like emphasis on the everyday running of the community - this island where the film takes place - with a more colourful phantasmagoria; an air of fantasy, or magical realism, which, on occasion, threatens to metamorphose into genuine terror as superstition and retribution cause panic and eventual unrest.  The anticipation of violence is prominent throughout, suggested not just by the natural progression of the narrative but by the atmosphere of the setting - this island left behind by the modern world - with the filmmaking techniques creating a heightened feeling of sweltering conflict and claustrophobia; the isle itself becoming a kind of prison system; a paradise, but also a living hell.

Staggeringly, the narrative itself unfolds, not just as a conventional sequence of events, but supernaturally, from the legends of a legless minstrel, both colourful and vague.  This works against the more documentary influenced intonation of the direction, creating a parallel between the mythic story of these Gods and their downfall and the more intimate social dramas taking place within the frame.  The approach lends the film a fable-like theatricality, where the minstrel becomes a kind of orator, and where the words of his song become the story unfolding on screen.  This story - the legend of a family marked by years of hardship; their indiscretions, including sacrilege and incest, having cursed the island to an uncertain future - entwines with the eventual story of the island itself.  Throughout the film, Imamura observes the politics and daily lives of the island's inhabitants and the moral dilemmas of the "cursed" family with an unflinching intimacy, though he juxtaposes this closeness with a number of epic wide-shots of the imposing landscape, where the beach and the mountains again seem to suggest the idea of characters trapped, not just geographically, but psychologically as well.  Through this, Imamura and his co-writers are almost critiquing the way tradition can become a kind of weapon; a way to punish or persecute those who submit to their most base and animalistic urges, without acknowledging that the violent prejudice implicit in this supposedly civilizing creed is itself an affront to the way people live.

This hypocrisy is best defined by the film's third act conflict, in which the supporting characters rise up against the cursed family and descend into a fierce, tribal reckoning.  The tonal "shift", in contrast with the film's more contemplative coda, once again seems intended to present an image of the traditions of Japan as both corrupt and self-destructive.  A cultural time bomb that would inevitably make possible the country's submission to western consumerism, spiritual emptiness and capitalist greed.  If Imamura charts the decline of this culture, he's also suggesting, somewhat provocatively, that if such traditions were to be celebrated from a historical standpoint, then it is the violence, superstition and persecution that makes this culture what it is.  It is to the credit of the filmmaker that even when the film disintegrates into ancestral retribution, the audience is never forced to judge these characters, or to see them as either justified or malevolent in nature.  Instead, Imamura suggests that this story (as spun from the minstrel's tale) is as much an allegory for the present day.  By placing the main narrative in the past, as a reflection, Imamura seem to be contrasting the beliefs and prejudices of an earlier time with this image of twentieth-century modernity; making the connection between something that happened before with our own impending fate.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street [Tim Burton, 2007]:

Another Burton film with a hidden subtext; a surface of ornate stylisation that belies a more serious objective; a purpose of commentary and critique.  If Dark Shadows (2012) could be read as a thickly veiled industrial satire on the plight of the family-run business against the influence of a more powerful conglomerate, and Alice in Wonderland (2010) could be interpreted as a psychodrama exploring the horror of third world genocide and the damage left by war, then Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is about the exploitation of the working classes.  The iconography of the world, as well as the progression of its central character(s), seems, in this respect, almost explicit.  The backdrop of the film - a stylised re-creation of Victorian London - is a world of squalor and darkness.  The black cobbled streets, chimneys and smokestacks (pumping smog into the dismal air) seem to emphasize the reality of a world without hope; a world of toil, hard work and suffering, where the struggle of characters seems both incessant and unspeakably cruel.  The stylisations of the film - its musical theatricality and its own self-aware use of influences (from Hammer horror to the period of German expressionism) - don't undermine the grittiness of this subtext.  Instead, the look and style of the film exaggerates the cruelty of the reality, as it perhaps existed at the time.  Like the purpose built Wales of John Ford's How Green Was My Valley (1941), the impression of the place - the memory distorted by time - is somehow more "real", emotionally, than if it were to be experienced as a documentation, firsthand.

Creating an air of mystery, the film begins with the protagonist returning from sea, haunted by the past.  The back-story of this character is tragic; one of abuse and sorrow at the hands of a corrupt system that has everything, but still feels entitled enough to take from those with less.  Through the context of the flashback, Burton illustrates, visually, the psychological damage inflicted by the malice of these circumstances and the effect that such exploitation has had on this character's worldview.  The golden glow of the past, or the recollection of it, is now replaced by a dark, monochromatic malaise; a gloom that swallows up all sense of hope; the light of life painted over with a blackness and decay.  As the character himself laments in verse: "There's a hole in the world like a great black pit / and the vermin of the world inhabit it / and its morals aren't worth what a pig could spit..."  The sung verses express, much like the design of the film, a reality - a level of observation - but also express a psychological projection.  It presents the world as the character sees it; a world turned sour and bitter by experience; a world without light, without reward.  The darkness of the world mirrors the darkness of the character's wounded heart; the loss felt when all that he'd worked for was robbed by a fraudulent system; the Judge as personification of corruption on a wider level; the violence as a metaphor for the moral and ethical destruction that this personal exploitation begets.

Key Films #23

Karayuki-san, the Making of a Prostitute [Shôhei Imamura, 1975]:

 

The voice of the director establishes context.  The film we're about to see is a documentary.  The subject matter, the story of Japanese women forced into prostitution during the first half of the twentieth century, is told by the women themselves.  Imamura's camera records the still life of the Malaysian waterfront as the voice of a woman - our guide to this eventual narrative of recollection - introduces herself, and in the process, sets the scene.  The age and deterioration of the voice is mirrored by the dereliction of the boats and houses that we pass by on our voyage.  People stop and wave to the camera, acknowledging the presence of Imamura and his crew, as well as the actuality of the film itself; the authenticity of it.  These images, in contrast with the interviews that follow, are intended to establish the world of the film (as it existed in 1975) against the nostalgic recollections of the women, and how the physical appearance of these places bring back the memory of certain events.  With Imamura as mediator, walking in step with this woman - microphone in hand - the film becomes a journey into the past; into places that are both real and significant to the story of this woman, and to all these women, kidnapped and forced into prostitution, and told that they were "serving" their country, only to be shunned by it following the end of the First World War.

 

Again, Imamura is using his film - his cinema - to give a voice to these people; to intervene on behalf of those on the margins of a society and as such denied the opportunity to make clear their own chain of events.  Like the director's earlier film, the anecdotal History of Post-War Japan As Told by a Bar Hostess (1971), the presentation of this world gives perspective to the recollections of its subject.  It creates personification.  These places - which hold so many kept secrets - are in a sense a reflection of this woman; an extension of her own story (as historical document), as tangible and 'concrete' as the buildings themselves.  In allowing these women to tell their stories, Imamura is shining a light on one facet of Japanese history.  Documenting, through the experiences of the women, the exploitation that the modern Japan - the now thriving, industrious nation that we know today - was built upon.  However, he's also suggesting the importance of these women, as a celebration.  Acknowledging that their ability to deal with the cruel reality of the circumstances they'd been forced to endure may have actually benefited the economy back home; making possible the great success of Japan in that period between the first and the second world wars.  As ever, the compassion and the sensitivity that Imamura shows to these characters in committing their stories to film (without judgement or denigration), is entirely overwhelming.

 

 

The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) [Tom Six, 2011]:

 

The film we are watching is already at an end.  A survivor - bound, ass to mouth and mouth to ass, between the bodies of her fellow victims - pleads, wet-eyed and muted, for the sympathy of a viewing audience.  A pool of blood seeps out onto the carpet, like a shadow; a Rorschach test that mocks the need to make sense; to presume the "why?" when some things are beyond reasonable explanation.  Better to rationalise; to put into context.  It's only a movie... and it is.  The closing shot begins.  We're outside the house, looking in at this macabre scene through the shattered glass of the bedroom window.  Already we're being placed, literally, on the outside of the drama, as viewer, or voyeur.  Again, we think of Hitchcock.  The camera begins its slow craning motion, moving upwards, over the slate roof of the house with its innocuous skylight, into the reality of the everyday.  The treetops of the black forest against the grey of the morning sky seems more like an image from a Lav Diaz movie than the kinetic torture of a film like Hostel (2005) or Saw (2004).  We've experienced the real horror - the experiment and it's sickening consequences - but in this small movement of the camera between heaven and earth, we find... transcendence?  A moment, quiet and contemplative.  Then the credits roll.

 

The film we are seeing is The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009).  It unfolds, first as flashback - as a self-contained dramatisation - before switching perspectives.  As the director's credit appears, we move from the scene itself to a recording; the same image as a transmission on a flat screen monitor.  If this original film could be accused of being provocative for the sake of provocation - its grotesque scenario used as a contentious talking point and little else - then what follows is truly remarkable.  Rather than simply rehashing the plot of the first film (as sequels generally do), director Six uses this character - the 'voyeur' - to investigate the impact of his original film, while also making a far more interesting, even intelligent point, on the use of the cinema as a projection of our own fears, anxieties and concerns.  The central character - this strange little man who watches the everyday life of people unfold on security monitors as part of his daily work - has suffered a lifetime of sexual abuse.  His existence is as such without colour and without hope.  He finds in the violence of The Human Centipede not only an outlet for his own pain and frustration, but ultimately a way to feel connected; to be closer to people; to be a part of something even greater than himself.  The final twist makes this connection explicit.  It is after all "just a movie", but Six makes us question the necessity of these movies (and movies in general) and how the idea of voyeurism and projection on the part of the audience (of our own fears 'satiating' the subject matter, bringing it to life) gives the film its "influence."

 

Martin's fantasy - to purge himself of the violence that he's been a victim of since birth - is also his only way of connecting to those around him.  His experiment - his hope of continuing where the fictional madman Dr. Heiter left off - is really an effort to insert himself (literally, if not figuratively) into this living chain of human suffering, and to dominate it.  In doing so, his psychological pain will be matched by the physical pain of his tortured victims; allowing him to become 'one' with it.  Many of these sequences are beyond 'poor taste', as the film refuses to shy away from presenting the most gratuitous and sensationalistic violence.  However, the depth of the character and the intelligence of the way the director uses the influences of meta-fiction to deconstruct the 'need' for these films, is really quite astounding.  For all of its gore and degradation, it's the psychological aspect of the drama that cuts the deepest.  For instance, the use of the baby to suggest the destruction of Martin's innocence - with the cries of the baby heard during scenes of murder to make clear the effect that Martin's abuse has had on his own potential to exist - and how so much of this fantasy seems centred on the idea of destroying the society (or institutions) that made possible such abuse, hints at a deeper, less salacious relevance that works perfectly alongside the film's visual references to works like Repulsion (1965), Eraserhead (1977) and A Snake of June (2002).

 

 

From One Second to the Next [Werner Herzog, 2013]:

 

I'm not sure how much I have to say about this one.  The outline is fairly straightforward.  Herzog and his crew interview several people whose lives have been changed irrevocably as a result of road accidents.  Their accounts are moving and absorbing and often misdirect the viewer; manipulating our emotions, but only to make a point.  These recollections are structured episodically.  In the first story, a mother and her daughter recall fond memories of their respective son and brother, Xavier; the "X-Man."  They talk about him in the past tense - things he liked to do, things he was going to do, etc - which makes the viewer automatically assume that the child is dead.  However, he isn't.  The car that collided with him left the child severely disabled and as such no longer able to do the things that he'd dreamed about or enjoyed.  Herzog has the sister revisit the place where the accident occurred and she stands, completely motionless, as if spellbound - like the stunned characters in the director's earlier Heart of Glass (1976) - as she talks about the terrifying sensation of feeling the hand of her brother slip from her own grasp as the young child crossed the street.  The car came out of nowhere, and in an instant... he was gone.  Through the power of this memory as re-enactment, the audience is experiencing the accident through the emotional recollections of the daughter, making it possible for the viewer to identify and to relate.

 

In the second interview, a young man talks about his accident in vague terms, as if the memory itself has become fragmented and distant, like a terrifying dream.  We assume he's another survivor, recalling a series of specific 'haunting' details from his own accident; his ordeal.  Then it hits us.  His reckless driving killed a family of four.  The structure of the film continues like this, with Herzog developing the details of these stories naturalistically; revealing statistics through conversation and always keeping the emphasis on the stories themselves; these people and their shattered lives.  While it would be easy to demonise those who caused such accidents - turning them into villains or monsters to be hated by the viewer for their recklessness, or lack of attention - Herzog presents their experiences with the same sensitivity and distance as those on the other side of the wheel.  Recognising that these people have also been damaged by their accidents, psychologically if not physically, Herzog seems to be making the broader point that any one of us could kill or be killed; not through malice or spite, but through irresponsibility or a lack of alertness.  The movie plays to the director's strengths as a filmmaker interested in people and in their stories of survival; a theme consistent with films like Echoes from a Sombre Empire (1990), Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997) and Wings of Hope (2000).

Key Films #22

 

The Pornographers: An Introduction to Anthropology [Shôhei Imamura, 1966]:

In titling his film 'The Pornographers', Imamura is not only introducing the clandestine profession of his central character - the hapless but well-meaning entrepreneur Mr. Ogata - as an important part of the plot, but is also implying a more balanced commentary on the themes of abuse and degradation as shorthand for the general brutality of the way people live.  If pornography, as both an industry and a human need, exists to satisfy our own basic curiosity regarding the most private and personal of human relations, then it also seeks to exploit this necessity; turning the act itself into a spectacle and the participants into willing performers; commodities for our viewing pleasure.  It also forces the audience to confront their own role as the spectator.  The collective witness, intruding upon these private scenes made public for our amusement and in a way becoming complicit in their creation; 'compelling them' into existence through the simple act of viewing.  The connotations of this title are many, not only drawing a parallel to the act of filmmaking itself - where Imamura skewers the usual 'film-about-filmmaking' conventions of a beleaguered director struggling against the tribulations of his art - but also of his own role as a more respectable kind of "pornographer"; one exploiting the foibles and follies of his central characters for the entertainment of a cinema audience.

 

However, the real inference of the title - and how it corresponds to the subject matter and the development of the characters on screen - seems to suggest a more pertinent examination of the contemporary Japanese society of the mid-1960s.  It is not simply Mr. Ogata and his small group of collaborators who are the 'pornographers' of this narrative, but the pernicious culture that observes the tragedies of people with a gleeful inquisitiveness and a barely disguised contempt.  This, as an idea, is explicit in the film's rarely used subtitle, 'An Introduction to Anthropology', in which the presentation of these characters, both comic and tragic, becomes a kind of ironic study on the burlesque of human endeavour.  Imamura exaggerates this perspective further by shooting the majority of scenes through open doorways - framing his characters in cramped, interior spaces - or through windows (usually barred), which again, suggests the imprisonment of his characters by the social conventions of the time.  Through this exacting approach, Imamura is extending his commentary, suggesting that we are all pornographers - exploiting or being exploited, consciously or not - and that it is the cinema itself, whether pornographic in nature or seemingly more respectable, which forces the audience to confront their own voyeuristic tendencies, as if the 'reality' of life becomes exhibition.

 

While the film's critique might initially suggest a more scathing attack equivalent to the political films of Jean-Luc Godard, R.W. Fassbinder or Imamura's close contemporary Nagisa Ôshima, the tone of The Pornographers is instead unpredictable and emotionally complex.  In profiling the life of this character and those closest to him, Imamura's film cuts between scenes of domestic drama, slapstick comedy, social satire and psychological horror.  For instance, while the earlier scenes are amusing and observational, the later scenes seem to channel the Bergman of The Silence (1963) or Persona (1966); where the broken vow of the widowed Haru Matsuda - Mr. Ogata's landlady turned common-law wife - will eventually lead to both psychosis and the personification of guilt in the form of a talking carp.  As dark and abrasive as the satire of the film is - challenging not only social conventions but also the superstitions of a culture that seems intent to punish the happiness of people - Imamura's sensitivity to his characters is nothing less than remarkable.  He doesn't look down on these marginal figures or view them with a snobbery or contempt, but instead treats them fairly, with compassion and admiration.  As Mr. Ogata himself remarks quite early in the film, "my work may be immoral, but I treat everyone honestly, dammit!"  A statement that might also be said of Imamura and his films.

 

 

Sebastiane [Paul Humfress & Derek Jarman, 1976]:

As with many films by Derek Jarman, history is being used to comment on the contemporary.  In taking the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian as a starting point, the director is able to examine the dynamic of one particular facet of homosexual desire; creating a historical framework through the transposition of these scenes (and what we now know of human behaviour, desire and persecution) to provide a kind of context, or justification, through the perspective of the present day.  Whether or not the real Saint Sebastian as depicted through the centuries even was a homosexual is irrelevant to Jarman's hypothesis; it is really the legacy and the reputation of the martyr, as an icon, that is of interest; his death and revivification as a figurative expression.  In subsequent films, like Caravaggio (1986) and Edward II (1991), Jarman would again use the iconography of a particular historical or mythical figure to create a political statement.  In this instance, he's equating, through the story of Saint Sebastian, the persecution of the Christians under the reign of Diocletian with the persecution of homosexuals during the last half of the twentieth century.  This, as a concept, is provocative to the point of being profane, but it also gets to the truth of understanding the machinations of prejudice and also the way Saint Sebastian, in a sense, embraces his fate.

 

The opening sequence, which depicts a vivid jamboree for the Emperor and his guests, culminating in the lead dancer being enveloped by a troupe of men wearing oversized rubber phalluses and subjected to a kind of staged scene of 'Bukkake', is also a prelude to what Jarman sees as Sebastian's willing subjugation; his surrender to his master and eventual martyrdom by his peers.  This scene, as representation, correlates to the power dynamic of many relationships, where the battle is fought between the dominant and the submissive, and how this is further related to the affiliation between Sebastian and his vicious captain Severus.  Through this interpretation, Jarman is giving an emotional context to the martyrdom (and eventual murder) of the character, where his rejection of Severus is effectively the real "rationalization" for his demise.  In doing so, the subtext of the film ceases to be simply polemical and becomes something personal; the film, from the perspective of Severus, is really a love story (albeit, an unrequited one), where the corruption and persecution of the lover, in itself, speaks to a kind of heightened emotional state.  The music by Brian Eno emphasises this feeling of yearning, or strained emotion, with the synthesiser becoming like an ambient drone - akin to the beat of a broken heart or the pulse, suspended, in excitement or anticipation - or like a restless whimper that gives certain images a more dreamlike inflection.

 

To create balance, the direction of the film is mostly naturalistic.  Shots are composed with a great simplicity, showing the action as a straightforward expression - sometimes static, sometimes handheld - but mostly conveying the physicality of the actors (as characters) and how their bodies - sculpted and posed like the great statues of Michelangelo or Rodin - suggest the desire of the male gaze.  As the camera records these masculine figures - mostly nude as they lounge beneath the glare of a hot sun - Jarman finds poetry in their struggle against the landscape as a kind of outward expression of the beauty of emptiness or desolation.  As such, he creates an impression of the body as a "prison", a cage or battalion for a wounded heart.  This, as an idea, is consistent with the film's central metaphor; the 'dance of the sun on the water' as symbolic of the inability of these characters to express love or to find acceptance within a culture, as it exists.  In their attempts to show a recreation of history as if the camera had actually been there to record it, firsthand, Jarman and his co-director Paul Humfress evoke the influence of Pasolini and his film The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964); mining that same juxtaposition between religious transcendence and earnest homoeroticism, as well as a genuine feeling of heightened authenticity.

Key Films #19

Emitaï [Ousmane Sembène, 1971]:

 

In the first scene of a pre-credit sequence that runs for almost twenty-minutes in duration, a group of 'Jola' villagers from the Casamance region of Senegal are rounded up and detained by a black militia working under orders of the French.  This is the first of many instances where the oppression of these characters is depicted by Sembène both as a reconstruction of actual events and as a more figurative commentary on the nature of Colonialism; where the flow of life is physically disrupted, or overturned.  As the action unfolds, two children hiding behind trees or in the thick rushes of the long grass become the eyes of the audience, on the outside, looking it.  In depicting the scene, Sembène uses documentary techniques to give us a sense of urgency.  Shooting unobtrusively from the sidelines, his use of the long lens flattens the depth of field, imprisoning these characters even further, cinematographically, against the backdrop of the land.  For the most part, Sembène maintains this level of distance, observing rather than intruding - capturing the action with a degree of naturalism that blurs the line between reality and dramatisation - but in later scenes chooses instead to evoke the beliefs and the superstitions of the 'Jola', who call on their own Gods in an attempt to escape this burden of oppression and regime.  In these sequences, blurred images and 'trippy' colour filters are used to suggest the presence of something strange and otherworldly.

 

When one of the tribe's elders performs a sacred ceremony to consult with these Gods, the Gods themselves appear as actual spirits; their words echoing those of the living as they become physical manifestations of the anger, animosity and fear felt by the 'Jola' as they struggle against the weight of this indignity and shame.  Such sequences stand out against the strict reality of the rest of the film, yet seem intended to give the narrative a cultural authenticity; presenting a level of commitment and solidarity, or even illustrating (through the conviction of these scenes) that Sembène believes in these people; takes sides with them; that his work is true to both the culture and their beliefs.  Throughout the film, as his characters reflect on the political situation and use it to question the existence of God and the nature of belief at a time when their own way of life has been disrupted beyond recognition, the director is able to put into perspective the true price of this exploitation.  As scenes of observation are intercut with attempts at revolution and moments of protest from the women of the village - who use Pacifism as opposed to violence to make their point - the characters wonder how a God can exist in the face of such torment.  A moving realisation of the hidden cost of war, where the bitter irony of the title, Emitaï, the 'God of Thunder', is only truly felt in the devastating explosion of the final scene.

 

 

Resident Evil: Retribution [Paul W.S. Anderson, 2012]:

 

From the thrilling reverse-motion gun battle of the opening scene to that startling moment when the walls of suburban normality are ripped apart to expose the self-reflexive manipulation of the form within, Resident Evil: Retribution marks itself out as one of the most bold and audacious mainstream American releases of the last three years.  While the use of 3D remains, for me at least, an empty gimmick, there is no arguing that Anderson's adoption of the format has focused his filmmaking in a way that allows for the creation of a more contemplative, static approach, where the clarity of his HD images gives way to a stunning, almost abstract focus on the mise-en-scène.  While the previous instalment, Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010), eventually descended into a parody of The Matrix (1999), there was a hold and intensity to the imagery that came directly from Anderson's experimentation with the 3D paraphernalia.  The handheld camera was banished; cutting became leisurely, more rhythmical.  The static framing, combined with occasional but elaborate tracking shots and dreamy, even hypnotic use of slow motion, worked well within the film's claustrophobic setting.  Retribution takes the formalist experimentation even further, adapting a bold, often minimalist approach where scenes drift and flow, where the action is balletic, but is applied to a screenplay that not only works on a narrative level, but is loaded with clever 'meta' notions that dismantle and then rebuild the very foundation of the franchise, while acknowledging the broader manipulations of the cinema in general.

 

Although it would be pretentious to call the film "Borgesian" - as reference to the work of the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges - there is no other way to adequately describe the film's clever layering of alternate realities (as an on-going reflection of the different levels of the story) or the self-aware deconstruction of the franchise "form" (where even the central character is one of many; infinite and unending).  These levels become like 'platforms' in a video game, where the characters must face a series of obstacles and foes, picking up power points and eventually working their way to the final stage.  This in itself shows a clever understanding of the intrigues of the source material, while the cloning of the protagonist gestures to the interchangeability of the franchise ideal; the obvious repetition.  The way Anderson juggles these levels (as artificial worlds) plays into the acknowledgement of the artificiality of the cinema.  The world as a series of sets; a façade, literally constructed on a giant soundstage.  Cameras record everything.  Characters become actors, adapting; adopting different roles.  The mission is secondary to this presentation, which throughout, reminds the audience of the technicalities of film-making; the manipulation of everything.  In its structure - in which these worlds become a dazzling hall of mirrors, reflecting and refracting the splintered personality of Jovovich's invulnerable heroine - the film is able to combine the thrill and the bravado of a film by the Wachowski's, with the 'cinema as miniature world' commentary of a film like The Truman Show (1998).

 

 

History of Post-War Japan As Told by a Bar Hostess [Shôhei Imamura, 1970]:

 

Representations of women as personification of a particular country or state are not unique in cinema.  One only has to think back to films like Black Girl (1966) by Ousmane Sembène, Germany, Pale Mother (1980) by Helma Sanders-Brahms, the BRD Trilogy (1979-1982) by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Rosa Luxemburg (1986) by Margarethe von Trotta or the later films of Krzysztof Kieślowski, such as The Double Life of Véronique (1991) or the Three Colours: Blue (1993), to see the ideology at its clearest and most successful.  What elevates Imamura's film above these similar endeavours is the fact that the woman at the centre of his story is real.  Her words are not scripted, but are a direct reiteration of her own judgments and experiences.  This is not an allegory or a social-critique 'acted' for greater dramatic impact, but a documentary that speaks plainly and clearly to the Japanese experience as a collective narrative during the turbulence of the post-war years through the voice and the recollections of a woman who saw it with her own eyes.  Taking the form of a lengthy interview (or, more appropriately perhaps, a conversation) between the film's subject - the bar hostess of the title - and Imamura himself, the film builds on its anecdotal title; allowing the personality of the woman to bring to life these places, people and events, with only the occasional use of newsreel footage and additional commentary to provide context and clarification.

 

Imamura's approach to the film came as a direct result of the critical and commercial failure of his previous work, the great masterpiece The Profound Desire of the Gods (1968).  There, the filmmaker had mixed documentary-style naturalism with elements of myth and fable to tell a story about dishonour and superstition.  While the family saga aspect was pure melodrama, the sub-text of the film dealt very plainly with the loss of Japanese tradition as a result of the unending influence of western culture and consumerism.  As a contrast, History of Post-War Japan... is a more modest, more intimate film - in which the personality of its subject is central to the appeal - but the true intent remains the same.  It's no less an attempt to understand and comprehend the seismic changes taking place within the Japanese culture, as it existed at this time.  The motivation for Imamura's work is still political, but he gives the political or historical aspect a human face by allowing this woman, both garrulous and unpretentious, to speak clearly and from the heart.  Through following the life of this character, Imamura is able to map the socio-economic changes of Japan as if it were a living breathing thing, connecting the experiences of the woman, spoken, with the visual documentation of events as they play-out on screen.  From the use of this editing, the story of the woman and the development of her own life becomes a mirror to the story of Japan during the post-war years.  The early poverty, aspiration and dishonour moving into stability, both emotional and economical, to eventual prosperity; affluence but at a price.