Friday, February 17, 2006

Cahiers du Cinéma presents Jacques Doillon

This was the first series at the Brattle for their month-long "movie watch-a-thon" in November, creating in me a fervent wish that they had started with the samurai movies instead. This was pretty dry stuff, artistically interesting but also indicative of why American audiences assume French films are crashing bores.

It was also one of the least exciting examples of having the director present I can remember. To be fair, I missed what was probably the most interesting segment, where a film was rescheduled so that the guests could talk about the rioting going on in the Paris suburbs. Doillon only appeared to answer questions about the films he directed, and only some of those - he was apparently severely jet-lagged throughout his whole stay in Cambridge, and left before the end of the series. Personally, I think it might have been more interesting to have him talk about the films he chose. Filmmakers can answer questions directly about their own works, but the answers are seldom as exciting as expected, and often they don't want to go into much detail for fear of "spoiling the magic" or making definitive in the audience's mind what had deliberately left ambiguous (which is fair - was anyone really happy when Ridley Scott came out and said "Deckard is a replicant"?). But when talking about a favorite film, ah, that's different. Then they could engage in an actual discussion with the audience, because they are one of us, only with more knowledge about how films are made.

And, of course, the audience (when not speaking in French and leaving us guys with a very rusty high-school command of the language in the dark) was kind of annoyingly obsequious. Guys - when you feel compelled to start a question with "though some may claim the film is boring"... The film is boring.

And speaking of La Vengence d'une Femme...

La Vengence d'une Femme

* * (out of four)
Seen 11 November 2005 at the Brattle Theater (Cahiers du Cinema Presents Jacques Doillon)

Actors love shit like this. At least, a certain type does. They receive a long screenplay that's almost all dialogue, between just a few a characters, with obviously complicated backstory and a contentious relationship beneath the civility, and they're like, oh, wow, this is my chance to look good. And the type of actor who is attracted to this sort of project - they generally can pull it off. Here's my question, though: Is a film packed to the rafters with fine and subtle acting but little else have any more value than any other type of unbalanced film? Is this really better than a gimmick screenplay or two hours of empty eye candy?

I tend to think not. I think that in part as a reaction to people touting performance-heavy pieces which bored me over flashier movies that provided real entertainment, no matter how simple. I understand the feeling; of all the pieces that go into a movie, the acting is the most human. If how Isabelle Huppert says a word makes you cry, she does it without mechanical or electronic tools. It's an accomplishment that can't be denigrated or explained away. We want it to be most important, because we can see people doing it. But even when it is the most important thing, it can't be the only thing. And as fine a showcase as La Vengence d'une Femme is for its two leading actresses, it's not much more than that.

Read the rest at HBS.

A Man Escaped (Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 12 November 2005 at the Brattle Theater (Cahiers du Cinema Presents Jacques Doillon)

The title doesn't leave much doubt about the outcome of this film, though I suppose there's the possibility that it's metaphorical, that Lieutenant Fontaine frees himself of fear or guilt or some other emotional prison. Writer/director Robert Bresson may have been feeling philosophical when making this film, but not so much that he feels the need to obscure events. The title (at least, the English translation) is straightforward, and the movie is truth in advertising: The ticket says "A Man Escaped", and the events of the movie are never far from that.

The film begins with an escape attempt, as Fontaine (François Leterrier) attempts to jump from the car while the Germans transport him to prison. Once he arrives, he is just as single-minded in his purpose. He examines the grounds, taps messages to people in the next cell, and takes inventory of the raw materials in his cell. From there, it is time to put his plan in action - and that's when the Nazis saddle him with a new cellmate. He can't escape without adding the kid to the plan, but everything about him screams "informer".

Read the rest at HBS.

Day of Wrath (Vredens Dag)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 12 November 2005 at the Brattle Theater (Cahiers du Cinema Presents Jacques Doillon)

There were no credits on the print of Day of Wrath that screened at the Brattle, and if that's the way it originally played in 1943, well, that makes a certain amount of sense. If you were a European filmmaker who had made a film about the evils of intolerance and persecution, it's probably a good idea to keep a low profile.

Day of Wrath opens with an old woman being hunted for witchcraft. She has, of course, been doing nothing more dangerous than dispensing some herbal remedies, but it's not a tolerant time and many people in this small village are willing to use the church as a way to lash at out those who have angered them. Presiding over what passes for a trial is the Reverend Absalon Pedersson (Thorkild Roose). Pedersson has a young second wife, Anne (Lisbeth Movin), who is attractive and good-natured; she aided the old woman, hiding her in Pedersson's basement. Pedersson also has a harpy of a mother, Merete (Sigrid Neiiendam), who doesn't much like Anne, and a good looking son, Martin (Preben Lerdoff Rye), just back from sea and meeting a stepmother several years his junior for the first time. I suppose there are movies where this sort of family dynamic does not lead to trouble, but Day of Wrath isn't one of them.

Read the rest at HBS.

Rendez-Vous

* * (out of four)
Seen 13 November 2005 at the Brattle Theater (Cahiers du Cinema Presents Jacques Doillon)

I can't say that there weren't warning signs. The description of this movie in the Brattle's program was not the thing I usually go for, and I didn't much like the previous three films I'd seen in the Caihers du Cinema series that weekend. But the Watch-a-Thon was on, so by seeing this, I would raise another ten bucks to keep the Brattle open. It's not so tough to sit through a bad movie for charity, right? And then Olivier Assayas's name appeared in the opening credits. I looked left, I looked right, and I realized enough other people were feeling charitable that I was blocked in.

Assayas is only the co-writer for André Téchiné, who also directs. They tell the story of Nina Larrieux (Juliette Binoche), a young actress who regularly bails out after her one scene in a play to have sex with her boyfriend/roommate. After leaving him, she meets Paulot (Wadeck Stanczak) at a rental agency while looking for a new place, but though he falls for her, she has eyes for his roommate, Quentin (Lambert Wilson). Quentin's a virile, unstable sort who used to be an actor and now works in live sex shows; after he leaves the scene, his former director (Jean-Louis Trintignant) appears to offer Nina a role.

Read the rest at HBS.

La Puritaine

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 14 November 2005 at the Brattle Theater (Cahiers du Cinema Presents Jacques Doillon)

That theater people are crazy and self-important is a sweeping generalization, but one that apparently contains enough truth that people can watch a film like La Puritaine and say "you know, as insane as that is, I bet it might actually happen. Friggin' weirdos." It's the sort of movie that makes sense only if you presume a certain amount of individual and institutional insanity.

Renowned theater director Pierre (Michel Piccoli) has just received a letter saying that his daughter Manon (Sandrine Bonnaire) is coming home and will meet him at the theater the next day. His next move, therefor, is obviously to call in all the actresses in his troupe, assign some representation of his daughter to each of them ("you will be Manon's eyes... you will be her voice... you will be her hand...") so that he can figure out how to speak with her upon her return. In the meantime, Manon arrives at the theater, lets herself in the back way, and observes this whole exercise, occasionally talking to one of the actresses or her father's assistant Ariane (Sabine Azéma) before finally speaking to her father.

Read the rest at HBS.

Mon Oncle

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 14 November 2005 at the Brattle Theater (Cahiers du Cinema Presents Jacques Doillon)

I saw my first film with Jacques Tati as his signature character, Monsieur Hulot, as part of a series spotlighting him along with Charlies Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Tati initially seemed like the odd man out in that group, making his movies a generation after the others, with sound, and in Paris rather than Hollywood. It is, however, immediately clear after watching Mon Oncle that Tati certainly resembles that group more than his contemporaries.

However, M. Hulot is uniquely Tati's. He's an older gentleman, at least middle-aged, though still possessed of a childlike delight in the world around him. Here, he's the title character, the much-adored uncle to Gerald Arpel (Alain Becourt) who buys him ice cream and teaches him how to use a slingshot, in contrast to the boy's bourgeois parents (Jean-Pierre Zola and Adrienne Servantie). They live in an ultra-modern house with all the bells and whistles, and try to convert Hulot to their way of life, fixing him up with women and getting him a job at the plastics factory where M. Arpel is a manager.

Read the rest at HBS.

Raja

* * * (out of four)
Seen 16 November 2005 at the Brattle Theater (Cahiers du Cinema Presents Jacques Doillon)

During the Jacques Doillon series at the Brattle, I found time to see four three of the director's favorite films and three he'd directed himself. By the time the end of the series came around, I had to admit, I was less than enthused about the whole thing. His films were well-acted and grappled with some interesting emotions, but were so focused on observation and performance as opposed to story that I found them quite dull. I was pleasantly surprised, then, by how much I enjoyed Raja. It may not actually have more plot than his other films, but the environment he's observing is less familiar, so there's not quite the same sense of having seen it before.

The title character is a teenage girl from Marrekesh, played by Najat Benssallem. She has ideas about escaping poverty, which involve tagging along with her friend Nadira (Ilham Abelwahed) to find work on the estate of a French expatriate (Pascal Greggory). Her plan succeeds; Fred notices the pretty girl and gives her work inside the house. Once there, she teases and pulls back, trying to find ways to work less and spend more time by the pool, while also juggling her boyfriend Youssef (Hassan Khissal).

Read the rest at HBS.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Seven samurai movies that aren't The Seven Samurai

In a certain way, watching the Brattle's schedule of samurai movies last November provided a similar experience to the Harold Lloyd series earlier in the year. I came into that a big Keaton fan and came out with a new respect for the relatively unknown Lloyd; similarly, I came into the samurai series a fan of Toshiro Mifune, but came out quite fond of Tatsuya Nakadai.

I don't like Mifune any less, but I couldn't help but notice that he is, to a certain extent, always Toshiro Mifune. Nakadai, on the other hand, disappears into his roles more. I think this is at least partially because I was far less familiar with Nakadai, but it was still jarring to be opening the IMDB for reference on each of these movies and realize that the same guy starred in four of them and you just didn't realize it at the time. Part of it was that Nakadai was playing older in many cases, and maybe the make-up work was different. So were the beards.

Other observations: The genre as a whole seems to work better in black-and-white. There were a pair of good-looking color movies, but the simplicity of monochrome suits the samurai aesthetic: It keeps the gray robes from looking bland against the natural world, and reinforces the rigid codes of honor, even when the movie is trying to subvert them.

Also, I wonder if samurai films fill the same niche in Japanese culture that westerns fill for Americans. It's a way of life that is obsolete but still in the venacular. Wandering ronin aren't so far off from American gunfighters, and both have strong themes of trying to maintain order despite a strong central government being out of reach. Both fetishize the weapons and their use more than a little. It's easy to make escapist adventures in these millieus, but it's also not terribly hard for a gifted filmmaker to do intelligent social commentary.

The same can be said about martial arts films from the Chinas, with fighting styles standing in for weapons. Wong Fei-hung would be a samurai or U.S. Marshall if he were born elsewhere. I can't, off the top of my head, think what the equivalents would be for other cultures. England has Robin Hood and Arthurian legend, but I'm not sure what the French western-equivalent would be.

On to the films...

Samurai Saga (Aru kengo no shogai)

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 4 November 2005 at the Brattle Theater (Samurai Cinema)

Well, why not do a samurai version of "Cyrano de Bergerac"? It's a classic story, filled with grand, doomed romance and the occasional swordfight; every culture has that somewhere in their past, along with ostracizing those who look different. It's far less of a stretch to put Cyrano in feudal Japan than it is to put him in a Colorado resort.

It doesn't hurt at all to have Toshiro Mifune as the warrior-poet with the big nose. Here, Cyrano's name is Heihachiro Komaki. He's a big, burly guy whose broad nose and scruffy appearance distract from his skill with the sword; one wouldn't necessarily expect him to write a good haiku, either. The object of his affection is beautiful young Lady Ochii (Yoko Tsukasa); she is smitten with Jutaro Karibe (Akira Takarada), who feels the same but cannot find the words to woo her. There are plots and schemes and arranged marriages to further complicate things, overcoming which will require Komaki's wit and blade.

Read the rest at HBS.

Sword of Doom (Dai-bosatsu toge)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 5 November 2005 at the Brattle Theater (Samurai Cinema)

Samurai movies are often tales of righteousness and honor, good men struggling to do what is just within a corrupt system. There are elements of that within Sword of Doom, to be sure, but a great deal of the movie is centered around the bad guy. Lucky for us, Tatsuya Nakadai is a highly engaging screen villain.

His character, Ryunosuke Tsukue, is a monster. His first on-screen victim is an old man visiting a mountaintop shrine with his granddaughter Omatsu (Yoko Naito). Soon afterward he is involved in a duel with low-level samurai Bunnojo Utsuki, and Utsuki's wife Ohama (Michiyo Aratama) begs him to allow Bunnojo to escape with honor and status, offering herself as reward. Tsukue decides to take both the kill and the girl, becoming an assassin for hire under an assumed name. The dead man's brother, Hyoma Utsuki (Yuzo Kayama) vows vengeance, but before he can face Tsukue, he must be trained by a master swordsman (Toshiro Mifune).

Read the rest at HBS.

Kill! (Kiru)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 5 November 2005 at the Brattle Theater (Samurai Cinema)

Look at that title. It seems simple enough, so straightforward that it almost has to be a parody. Right? That's the right track, but few mere parodies are so elaborate in their set-up as Kill!, or as witty in how that set-up plays out. And that's even without acknowledging that Kill! does a fine job as samurai action, even if you're not inclined to laugh at the genre.

Kill! opens with Genta (Tatsuya Nakadai) and Hanji (Etsushi Takahashi) meeting while taking turns trying to chase down a chicken, since it has been a while since either has had much of a meal. They are both ronin, of sorts: Genta has abandoned the samurai lifestyle, sick of the compromise and corruption, while Hanji has sold his farm to buy a sword, even though there is far more to being a samurai than carrying the sword. The local yakuza have no work for them, although a local lord might. It doesn't take long for things to become a mess, with Genta pretending that Hanji has killed him so that Hanji can secure a position, a group of honorable samurai holed up in an old mountain fort, and the leader of the mercenary samurai sent to rout them is only in it for the money to buy the freedom of his beloved.

Read the rest at HBS.

Three Outlaw Samurai (Sanbiki no samurai)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 7 November 2005 at the Brattle Theater (Samurai Cinema)

Reluctant heroes are a storytelling staple. It gives the writer a reason to build the tension, develop the villain slowly, set up a variety of ways that the tale could go, even if you know in your heart of hearts that the direction is pre-ordained. It gives the audience a certain amount of identification with the protagonist, because most of us know that our first reaction to a dangerous situation would probably be "don't get involved". And, when they finally do get involved, the audience knows that the bad guys are in for one heck of an ass-kicking. As the name suggests, this film gives us three reluctant heroes.

Sakon Shiba (Tesuro Tamba) is a wandering ronin just looking for a roof to sleep under for a night, but the mill he chooses is occupied by Jimbei and Tasugoro, a pair of elderly farmers who have kidnapped Aya, the daughter of the cruel local magistrate. He gives them enough advice to avoid a bloodbath. The magistrate offers two prisoners their freedom if they deal with the situation (it would not look good to send troops after two old men); one of the prisoners, samurai Kyojuro Sakura (Isamu Nagato) kills a man en route and later switches sides, touched by the farmers' plight. Finally, he sends Einosuke Kikyo (Mikijiro Hira), the samurai in his service who prefers to be a threat than an actual weapon, but when Kikyo, too, decides he is serving a dishonorable master, it's time to call in the mercenaries to keep the letter that the farmers have written from reaching the visiting lord.

Read the rest at HBS.

Bandits vs. Samurai Squadron (Kumokiri Nizaemon)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 8 November 2005 at the Brattle Theater (Samurai Cinema)

I'm going to be honest here... I can't remember the details of what happened in this movie. I remember the basic storyline, and I remember that it looked kind of spiffy, but a backlog of reviews to write stretching out to three months often means that the details to mediocre films like this one sort of fall out the back of one's head. Normally, I'd try looking for other reviews online and using their plot summaries to refresh my memory, but there don't appear to be any, at least not in English, for Google to find.

There's potential - the opening scroll of text describes two enemy organizations: A gang of thieves led by Kumokiri Nakaemon (the always-great Tatsuya Nakadai), and a ruthless band of samurai police headed by Shikubu Abe (Shogoro Ichikawa). Abe will stop at nothing to lay Kumokiri low, not even putting innocent girls in harm's way, while both try to infiltrate the other's organization. Kumokiri, by the end, plans to disband his gang anyway, after they rob the treasury of the Lord to whom he once swore fealty.

At two hours and forty-five minutes, Bandits is epic-sized, and it's got the elements that often make such a long runtime worthwhile: A large cast of characters, a story that unfolds over years, and enough betrayals and double-crosses that one desires a little space between them, so that a status can become quo before being upended. And yet, it still seems overly-elongated. We don't get to know the characters well enough for this extra time spent with them to be worth it, so they actually seem thinner than normal. There's also not really a strong sense of time passing; we get captions stating the year at intervals, but it often seems like the filmmakers are trying to make the story grander by making it longer. They may skip two years, but we tend to find people right where they left off.

Hideo Gosha can still direct the heck out of an action scene, though, and the ones he gets to work with let him show off his craft. He's given two or three heists, some of which turn into ugly battles, and choreographs his games of cops 'n robbers as good as anyone. He and cinematographer Masao Kosugi make fine use of color during daytime scenes, and during the rest of the time the night fits like a fancy stolen coat.

Almost every entry I did find when looking for information on this picture describes it as one of the best samurai films of the seventies, although that may just mean that the seventies were a pretty dire period for samurai films.

Samurai Rebellion (Jôi-uchi: Hairyô tsuma shimatsu)

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 9 November 2005 at the Brattle Theater (Samurai Cinema)

As great as samurai movies, I sometimes have a hard time getting invested in the stories. After all, these stories often hinge on formal codes and hierarchies that are alien to me. But even if you're as thoroughly ignorant of eighteenth-century Japan's culture as I am, it's not hard to be hooked by Samurai Rebellion - after all, what's more universal a story than a man fighting to preserve his family?

Of course, the family must first be assembled. We meet Isaburo Sasahara (Toshiro Mifune), a middle-aged samurai who has long served the family of Lord Masakata Matsudaira (Tatsuo Matsumura). The Lord tires of his haughty and disrespectful mistress Ichi (Yoko Tsukasa), and decrees that one of the Sasahara sons take her off his hands by marrying her. Isaburo initially finds this demeaning, but when son Yogoro (Takeshi Kato) falls in love at first sight, the father relents.

Read the rest at HBS.

Hara-Kiri (Seppuku)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 9 November 2005 at the Brattle Theater (Samurai Cinema)

I never really got the whole suicide concept; I tend to fall into the "all life is precious" and "where there's life, there's hope" camp. Hara-Kiri touches on the situation where it starts becoming comprehensible to me, the "n cannot survive but n-1 can" Cold Equations scenario. You don't have to understand or approve of suicide to be moved by the drama of Hara-Kiri, though: You just need to recognize cruelty and hypocrisy.

As the opening narrative crawl informs us, there was a surplus of samurai in 1630: As the abolition of one clan and general peace among the others left the employment prospects for those without masters dire, many lived in poverty. One such ronin is Hanshiro Tsugumo (Tasuya Nakadai), who comes to the Iyi clan's stronghold to request the use of the grounds and a swordsman to commit seppuku. The retainer who meets him rolls his eyes and mumbles "another one?"; after the clan leader was moved enough by one man's story to offer him a position, many insincere ronin have made the same request, hoping to at least be sent away with money. Retainer Saito (Rentaro Mikuni) warns Tsugumo that there will be no payoff this time, but Tsugumo says he knows, and relates the story of how he came to this position - a story which soon indicates that Tsugumo's plans go beyond killing himself.

Read the rest at HBS.