KWIF = Kent's week in film.
With the Amazon original The Black Demon, Toasty mentioned needing a post-Christmas palate cleanser. Even though I didn't go very hard into Christmas at all this year, just doing the requisite half of our Advent calendar, I too needed such a cleanser, moreso because the yoke of Godzilla has been weighing me down a bit (world's tiniest violin, I get it. I do these things to myself, folks).
I wanted to spend my post New Years' time off work at the movie theatres, shaking off the shackles of the COVID years, and getting out of the habit of only going for the latest spectacle. The "best of 2023" lists were hitting and I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone and into challenge mode. But now, as I look at my 5 selections from the week, with only one exception, these are all auteur directors who I am quite familiar with, so I'm not sure I stepped that far out of my comfort zone after all. Let's get into it.
This week:
Poor Things (2023, d. Yorgos Lanthimos - in theatre)
Anatomy of a Fall (2023, d. Justine Triet - in theatre)
The Boy and the Heron (2023, d. Hayao Miyazaki - in theatre)
The Zone of Interest (2023, Jonathan Glazer - in theatre)
Ferrari (2023, d. Michael Mann - in theatre)
Ikarie XB-1 (1963, d. Jindřich Polák - Criterion Channel)
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Is Yorgos Lanthimos a provocateur? Of course he is. He enjoys pushing the tolerances of his audience, especially when he's scripting his features. Dogtooth, the Lobster, and Killing of a Sacred Deer are each uniquely disquieting films. In those films, it's the way in which Lantimos' lens observes everything and everyone, with a cold, clinical detachment, which only makes the injection of the surreal or fantastical even more of a challenge to the audience.
With writer Tony McNamara on The Favourite, and now Poor Things, he's found a partner whose scripts push buttons and boundaries but in a less-distancing way. The humour is still dark, but not nearly as faint or dry as Lanthimos' scripts (if his even offer any humour at all).
Poor Things is the pair moving to the next level. Where there was an opulence to The Favourite, it still felt...traditional, I suppose, for a period piece. Here, creativity is unleashed in a way I get the feeling Lanthimos has been wanting it to be his entire career. He's got a budget, and he uses every cent of it.
Best described either as beautifully grotesque (or, better yet, grotesquely beautiful) in art, design, make-up, effects, sound, score -- the whole creative spectrum -- everything is bold, ornately constructed, and just captivating to behold. The first act is in black and white, and even that doesn't mute its life and vibrancy (Lady Kent asked afterwards, "when did it switch to colour?").
Poor Things is a fantasy film that is Barbie for grown-ups only. I'm sure someone will draw out all the parallels in a youtube essay (if it hasn't been done already), but to paraphrase critic Alonso Duralde, both films find their lead characters go on a journey only to discover who they already know themselves to be.
Here Emma Stone, in her boldest performance to date, is Bella, a new take on Frankenstein's creature. I'll leave her origins to be teased out by the film, but where we meet her she is but an infant in a woman's body. Her creator, her father figure, the mad scientist/Doctor Frankenstein of the piece, Godwin (Willem Dafoe) she calls "God" for short, which was no doubt his idea. As in many a Frankenstein tale, it's the doctor, not the creature who is the monster, but here we meet a man who has been horribly scarred (both physically and emotionally) by his own father, and processes his trauma through his hilariously horrifying scientific feats (the English bull terrier with its head swapped with a duck was just one of many dark delights).
Bella starts exploring her adult body, her sexuality, and when the men in her life try to control that side of her, she starts to distance herself from the men in her life. She sees the control they wish to yield, and she understandably doesn't want that. Eventually, as her intellectual curiosity grows, she wishes to be free of Godfrey's confines within the beautiful manor, but like an overprotective father, he wants to know she's safe by keeping her contained. When lawyer Duncan (Mark Ruffalo), a roguish Lothario, is brought onto the compound he becomes captivated by just the thought of Bella, and then, on her own volition, is whisked away on a Mediterranean journey of discovery, much of it sexual, but cultural and culinary as well.
Stone's performance as Bella, is an ever evolving one, and she handles the role masterfully. It's a very physical performance, that requires her to show a slow and gradual increase of control and ownership over her body. It's the entire metaphor of the film and so an essential element. But it's Stone's ability to show the intellectual growth, and not just through words, but through her eyes, that is outstanding. The role requires a lot of sex and nudity which, both credit to Stone and Lanthimos, are never objectifying, and always empowered. Bella is not sexy, she's sexual.
Ruffalo, meanwhile, brilliantly plays a cartoon of a man so out of control of his own desires that his own caddish game backfires upon him. He is the Ken to Bella's Barbie, just a husk of a person lacking inner depth or sense of identity outside of elitism and sexual conquest. He's used to a society where men have control, and has no concept of what to do with a woman who won't follow the patriarchal rules of "polite society". It's a wildly comedic performance, teetering on campy but just restrained enough as to be welcome instead of out of place.
If Barbie was "Feminism 101", Poor Things is at the very least a second year class. It's a fantasy setting, yes, but it reflects the fight still being fought today for women to have liberty over their minds, body and sexuality. It can be blunt about it but even outside of the theme, it's still an amazing adventure of self-discovery.
It's also been proffered that Poor Things is about an autistic character's sexual awakening and journey of self discovery, and from what I've seen on letterboxd, many people identify as on the spectrum have found a pretty deep connection with Bella, and the way she engages with the world. I look forward to deeper analysis on that front.
This was the last movie I saw in 2023, and it's also, quite possibly, the best in a pretty great year for film.
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If it sounds Hitchcockian, it has that kind of a conceit, but director Triet tells the film almost entirely from the perspective of Sandra (Sandra Hüller, in an incredible performance) with an lens that presents such intense compassion while also managing to retain enough distance as to not betray the "diddunnit" conceit.
The first half of the film finds Sandra, a very cerebral and composed woman, working on her defence with her lawyer, an ex-flame Vincent (Swann Arlaud, who is going to have to live with the shorthand moniker of "sexy French lawyer" for some time), while the second half of the film is the trial (and French trials are intriguingly different from the American trial process we have seen a thousand times over).
Where American trial films are largely very much about "the story" (usually based on true-life or novel adaptation), with maybe some character driven elements, Anatomy of a Fall is about perceptions, about examining how we see someone based on the information given, and the judgements we make thereof.
The opening scene, for example, has Sandra, an accomplished writer, being interviewed by a college aged female student. The scene, which takes place maybe an hour before the death of Sandra's husband, finds the two women already in conversation, but still at early stages. The student hasn't yet been able to segue into their interview, and any questions she asks, Sandra doesn't quite deflect so much as steer back towards the student as she almost counter-interviews...but casually. Knowing what the film is about, I'm already questioning Sandra, is she being cagey, or friendly? Is she controlling this situation intentionally or is she, maybe, just a little tipsy from wine?
But so too must Sandra and sexy French lawyer build a narrative. And so too does Triet build a third narrative that lies closer to the middle (but if it falls on one side or the other of the middle is up to the audience). All these narratives are a part of a whole, and it's a brilliant examination of what we know versus what we perceive. The trial is not one of of facts, it's one of perception. If you build the narrative one way, she's guilty. Another way she's innocent. The two are very hard to reconcile. Is Sandra cold and calculating? Or is she just German?
Language has a lot to do with it. The film is French-made, but is largely in English. Hüller is German, but never speaks it in the film, only speaking English and French. How does language play a role in our perceptions of someone? How does language play a role in controlling a conversation, a relationship? It's subtext in the film, but also a huge part of what it's trying to say about how we view and understand someone.
This was a fascinatingly thoughtful film while also being a gripping trial drama. It has things to say about the court system, about relationships, about parenting, about mental health. It's not offering answers, but it's keen to explore.
I didn't even talk about the huge role Sandra's son, Daniel, a pre-teen with low vision, plays in the film as a key witness. Young Milo Machado-Graner gives an outstanding performance that shows wisdom beyond his years, and taps into an emotionality most adult actors can't authentically reach.
Of all the films I watched this week, this is the one I immediately wanted to watch again.
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Ghibli is held up on this other level from the term anime (just like, at least for a time, Pixar was distinguished from other "animated" movies), and Miyazaki is put on an even higher pedestal. I've watched over half of Miyazaki's oeuvre, and while I find his movies gorgeous, I still don't connect with most of them.
The Boy and the Heron is Miyazaki's latest "final" film. I forget how many times he's retired and come back (maybe only twice) but he is an "event" director, so it's no surprise that the film has been doing some great numbers at the North American box office, and receiving heaps of critical attention. I was, once again, dazzled, but left feeling a sense of uncertainty over what I'd seen and how I felt about it. It's happened with every Miyazaki film I've seen (save for Ponyo).
Perhaps it's because Miyazaki intends for his films to be watched and rewatched, explored for meaning. There's obviously what Miyazaki is bringing to the film, but also what the audience is getting out of it, and the director is notoriously cagey about expressing what his films mean. In reading about The Boy and the Heron since watching it this past week, others have unpacked some of its inspirations, being Miyazaki's relationship with his Ghibli co-founders and his own relationship with animation. The denouement of the film has been interpreted as a relinquishing of the torch to the young animators of today, perhaps. If you don't go into The Boy and the Heron as a Miyazaki scholar, are you going to grok any of that?
Re-titled from the Japanese name "How Do You Live?", it's a film that begins pretty stone sober, with the death of young Mahito's mother during a Pacific War bombing of Tokyo. Mahito and his father relocate to a rural estate to live with his aunt (his mother's sister whom his father is now married to) and the grannies. Mahito is traumatized over the loss of his mother, and is distant and angry. He's not particularly fond of his aunty stepmother either, even though she shows him only kindness and sympathy.
On the estate, he has regular encounters with a blue heron, whom, over these encounters starts to reveal that it speaks, and is in fact, a horrendous toad of a man in disguise. Mahito's mother and aunt and some of the grannies are of a lineage that are attuned to the magic of the world, in particular a silo with a strong family lore and magical properties. When Mahito's aunt goes missing, he's drawn into the silo, Alice in Wonderland style, and goes down the rabbit hole.
Within this world within worlds (or world between worlds, as its a gateway outside of time) Mahito discovers his family history as well as younger versions of his one granny and his mother, who along with a reluctant heron, aide him in his journey to find his aunt.
A lot of Miyazaki's films feature the fantastical for fantastical sake. At least that's always been my perception. There could be deeper meaning in all of it, but if there is, Miyazaki's never telling. I think there are aspects to his work that have meaning to him, for sure, and sometimes in the fantasy there is meaning for the character, but I also think the director has a bold ability to bring stream-of-consciousness to the screen, and so a lot of his fantasy is just that, for pure imagination's sake.
Fantasy isn't my genre. There's often an absence of logic to it, an absence of rules. So The Boy and the Heron, while striking, left me perplexed, and not in a good way. I think I'll have to do a full Miyazaki run at some point and try to engage with his repertoire, and thus this film, in a more metatextual sense.
I should note that I saw the film in its English dubbed version, which I initially bristled at upon realizing it, but turns out may be one of the best dubs I've ever heard. There's often a sense of disconnect between the animation and the vocal performance in a translation dub, but this one felt almost seemless, natural even, although I did get distracted trying to figure out who some of the voice cast was (best to leave it as a surprise for the credits, methinks).
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Where Under The Skin explored humanity through the lens of an alien, The Zone of Interest takes the same dispassionate lens and explores inhumanity instead. Call it "the mundane existence of evil". The film spends most of its time in and around the home of a Nazi Commandant. We witness Herr Hoss (Christian Friedel), his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller again, having a real moment), two boys, infant daughter (always crying) and the Jewish servants as they entertain guests, celebrate birthdays, play, clean, cook and serve. It would all seem very banal, if it weren't for all the fucking Nazi's about, and for the fact that, just on the other side of the wall of the yard is the Auschwitz concentration camp which Hoss is in charge of.
There's not really a narrative to the film. It's experiential. As we witness this family living their life, buoyed by their privileges and receiving tainted spoils of the murdered people from the other side of the wall, we are all too aware of the sounds of the trains, the gunfire, the screams, shrieks and yells, and the sounds of the furnaces, not to mention the gushing red flames coming out of the smokestack.
Herr Hoss takes meetings where the deplorable plans of evil men to make the eradication of a people more efficient are discussed with the casualness of a board room meeting about a new marketing ploy for, I dunno, salsa. Hedwig shows her visiting mother her home for the first time, and her mother wonders if the woman whose house she used to clean is on the other side of the wall. The boys play, and other children play with them, in the backyard while mass murder happens on the other side of the wall. The boys have a teeth collection. The infant is never in the arms of its mother, always with a servant.
The closest we get to drama in the film is news that Hoss is being relocated. Hedwig refuses to transfer and sends Hoss to his new assignment on his own. Her speech about having built a home for their family that is too precious to leave makes the bile in one's stomach rise. There is a moment there where Hoss, facing being separated from his family, elicits just the smallest twinge of compassion, before one remembers that Nazi's deserve as much compassion as they showed the Jewish people.
It's a scoreless film, leaving the sound design to do all the heavy lifting. There is a near 3-minute overture performed to a black screen, a briefer interlude composition against a red screen, and the final end credits track. These Mica Levy constructs of sound aren't exactly musical. I almost dread learning what these sound collages are composed of.
The film's final 5 minutes or so, for me, were its most potent. It takes a time jump to the furnaces of Auschwitz today, now a memorial site, as it prepares to open. The cleaners come in and start wiping everything down with efficiency and dispassion. It's swept up, as if any speck of dust is not allowed. A memorial displays thousands upon thousands of pares of shoes are piled up, pressing against the window as the glass is cleaned. The floor is vacuumed. We cut back to Hoss, last seen retching in a stairwell, as if he just captured this glimpse of his legacy.
There's much to be unpacked, in what is shown, what isn't shown, and how it was all constructed from a filmmaking standpoint. It's very deliberate in so many ways (editing most of all) but rarely feels staged in its (nonexistent) story and performances (which barely seem performative).
It is not a comfortable film, and as heavy and burdensome as I was expecting it to be, it wasn't. It's a film that settles you into its mundanity, and dares you to ignore, as this family does, the events on the other side of the wall that so often deign to call attention to themselves. We never see what goes on there, but we don't have to in order to feel the impact.
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I wondered going into Ferrari if I actually knew what a Michael Mann film was, beyond neon lights, heavy shadows and pulsating soundtracks. Partway through the film, I realized that what makes a Mann film is how he observes his characters. A lot of that is framing, and how people move within the frame, his direction on where he wants someone on the screen seems pretty precise, while still giving actors the leeway to perform. At this late stage, it looks pretty collaborative, if the performances Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz give in the film are any indication.
I'm not a car guy, nor am I a racing guy, so I had to ask, going into this film, what the point of it was. We meet a 50's-ish Enzo Ferrari, as he moves from the rural Italian abode of his mistress, Lina (Shaeline Woodley), to his city-side manor, pushing his car to its limits, his old racing instincts undying inside him. At home his wife Laura (Cruz) has been fielding calls from his people, reporting on their adversary's new arrivals to town, and she's pissed. When he arrives she reminds him, he can fuck who he wants, he just needs to be home before the calls start. She then pulls a gun on him, and fires wide. He's shook momentarily, but unfazed. Their dynamic is set. They are honest with each other and spare each other no emotions.
The worries at the Ferrarri factory (as a Saudi prince picks up his new vehicle) are many. Maserati is going to break their speed record, and the company is spending money faster than they can make it. They need a financier, a partner, who can invest in increasing production. They need to keep on with their focus, improving their racing performance which sells the cars to the market, and not selling the cars to market to pay for the racing. Enzo is always a racer at heart, and not a car dealer.
The film is the B-side of the Hollywood biopic. Where the A-side is the attempt to summarized a whole life or career, the B-side is the "most turbulent year" biopic. Here, it takes place in the span of a week. Enzo faces a personal crisis as his two family situations collide, and his professional interests in racing and car manufacturing threaten to go belly up.
It's enough to build something out of, and Mann hammers away at it until it takes shape. It's not a boring process though, Driver's performance as Enzo is a sheer delight, as he portrays the Italian as charming, dry, and sardonic, revealing his heart only in private, and only to the dead (who sit heavily upon him). The first half of this film, while not an outright comedy, is damn funny, largely from Driver's delivery, but Mann is leaning into it just enough. With Cruz, he has a very gentle touch, allowing her the large comedic beats and a big melodramatic performance that still has room to be reigned in when she need to hit those real devastating emotional marks. She's magnificent. (Between Stone in Poor Things, Huller in Anatomy of a Fall, Cruz her and Da'Vine Joy Randolph in The Holdovers I'm having a hard time choosing the best performance, though Cruz and Randolph could probably push to slug it out for best supporting).
It's not a grounded film. Nobody should mistake this for real life. The film builds around the Mille Miglia an endurance race along the Italian highways and through the towns and cities along the way that is unlike any other race I've seen outside of maybe Death Race 2000 (which was maybe inspired by the Mille Miglia?) or The Great Race. But Mann's shooting of it is breathtaking, the gorgeous countryside, but also those beautiful Italian machines (this film doesn't thrust the beauty of its cars upon you, it lets you come to their beauty on your own). But, with beauty there is also danger, and we see that multiple times. Mann reiterates time and again that racing is a kamikaze pursuit, and that racers know what they're signing up for. And we learn why the Mille Miglia has not been seen since 1957.
It's not a flawless film, but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the performances, the production, Mann's stylistic flourishes, the cars, the racing, the melodrama, all of it was pretty fun, until, at its moment of spectacle, it's not fun anymore. It can't recover from it, and it doesn't try. It knows there's no recovery. We only spend a few minutes more before the summary text of the next few decades fills us in briefly on who does what and when.
I can see people being particular about the accent work here, especially when there aren't many Italians actually in major parts. It doesn't hold back my ability to appreciate it though.
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I must have caught wind of the Czech sci-fi drama Ikarie XB-1, or "Voyage to the End of the Universe" as it's been known in its heavily edited and dubbed form for decades, at some point in my life, but I've never really known anything about it, nor have I ever taken note of it as something to seek out.
But it popped up this January on the Criterion Channel in its restored, digitally archived form, and it drew my eye like a signal flare. Amidst all the films from "best of 2023" lists, I knew this 60 year old film was mandatory watching.
Based off a novel from Polish sci-fi legend Stanislaw Lem, here we have a film made years before Star Trek, presenting a humanist future and a space journey done for the betterment of mankind. It's set 200 years from when it was made (2163) but has still-potent things to say about the events of the first half of the 20th Century, while optimistically dreaming for a more ideal future.
The set design, sound design, sound effects, visual effects are all quite far above par for the early 60's. The film's influence on sci-fi for the subsequent 15 years (up to and including Star Wars) is tangible, sometimes it's just a little thing, an image, or the way the ships move through space, and sometimes it's a whole swath of the film feels like it's been completely copped by filmmakers who thought we would never notice. At the same time it's clearly aware of the popular sci-fi that came before it, most notable in Peter, this film's version of Robbie the Robot.
The restoration is gorgeous. The blacks are crisp, the whites are vibrant, it looks incredible. I was worried that this would wind up being Solaris (another Lem novel turned into a notable sci-fi film), which is a monumental production but also monumentally boring. This is much pulpier than that, while still retaining some sense of science in its fiction (it's largely "hey, that's not bad science for 1963"). What perked me up when I was starting to drowse was a "future dance" number which was clearly copped by both Buck Rodgers and Logan's Run, yet somehow manages to (narrowly) escape campiness, I think primarily from a perplexing-but-intriguing score by Zdeněk Liška, and visually curious, simplified dance moves. It's like future line dancing.
It's a surprisingly satisfying production, but even more potent as an artifact of sci-fi. Anyone who's a Star Trek fan (or sci-fi in general) who has not seen this really should.
