by Dean | Sep 8, 2015 | General
The German movie Phoenix (2015), by Christian Petzold, brought certain thoughts to mind.
First, if people will not behave humanely during wartime, when will they behave humanely? Second, the film concerns ordinary people living in a defeated Germany after WWII, and their actions are mundane, unheroic, sometimes scheming. At the same time, they are often rising from the ashes (the book Phoenix is based on is titled Return from the Ashes): such is the case with Nelly (Nina Hoss), a concentration camp survivor.
Though overrated, the film is a good one, finely directed and photographed. One of its few flaws is that it peters out instead of actually concluding. But listen, Hoss: your acting is marvelous, as is that of Ronald Zehrfeld. That is, Hoss is marvelous playing a woman with a broken spirit, one who seems normally sensitive and deeply appreciative of a man’s love but is also capable of rebuilding strength and initiative when necessary. Zehrfeld pulls off a smart working-class dude, the husband of Nelly who does not recognize her.
(In German with English subtitles)
by Dean | Sep 3, 2015 | General
Auggie Wren, a smoke shop owner; Paul Benjamin, a novelist; Rashid, a black teenage boy; Cyrus Cole, a one-armed black filling station owner; Ruby, Auggie’s one-eyed former girlfriend—these make up much of the dramatis personae of the intelligent and absorbing 1995 American film, Smoke, directed by Wayne Wang and written by novelist Paul Auster. Somebody in the film complains it is only a matter of time before society outlaws smoking, wanting it to vanish as surely as the smoke of every lighted cigarette does. At least for the present, though, smoking is one of the few pleasures the characters here enjoy, particularly Auggie and Paul. Tobacco has its evanescence, and so does happiness; the characters know what it’s like to look smoke in the eye, as it were.
Auggie once shoplifted for Ruby and was given by a judge the choice between jail and the military. Opting for the latter, serving his time, he was abandoned by thoughtless Ruby for another man. What light there was in Auggie’s life was evanescent: smoke. Ruby herself (played by Stockard Channing with astonishing control and pleasant force) has a grown, cocaine-addicted, foul-mouthed daughter who excoriates her. Paul has experienced a writer’s block ever since his wife and unborn child were accidentally gunned down in the street. Cyrus lost his arm after drunkenly crashing his car and consequently killing his wife (God, he says, took away that particular limb to remind him of what “a bad, stupid, selfish man” he is), which woman happens to have been Rashid’s mother (Cyrus is his father). Rashid grew up without either of his parents since Cyrus forsook him years ago the way Ruby forsook Auggie. Now he is running from thieving thugs.
Not that there isn’t any hope here; a bit of uplift results merely from the idea of slowing down now and then, taking one’s time, for the sake of personal equilibrium. At least one critic has indicated that having a smoke requires slowing down. Further, there are some virtuous deeds done, though never mind the stupid phrase “random acts of kindness” that one magazine review in particular used to describe them. Random acts of kindness do not exist, random meaning without purpose or design. The various acts of kindness here are all purposeful.
Smoke is a healthy, even edifying, achievement.
Cover of Smoke
by Dean | Sep 1, 2015 | General
Rene Clement’s Forbidden Games (1952) is the classic French picture which centers on two youngsters living in rural France in 1940 as German planes invade the air space and drop bombs on various sites in the country.
When death pervades in the sphere of children is what the film is about but, plainly, additional themes obtain as well. One of them is the ineffectiveness of religion in causing people, such as the peasant family, to behave as they ought. This goes only so far, however. Usually the conduct of clergy in Forbidden Games is unobjectionable, and at any rate it isn’t as though Catholicism is not needed in rural France. But although the kids here play what is easily termed a forbidden game—for it involves theft—adults in those German planes are playing a worse forbidden game involving murder. It is an extreme on a scale of adult games.
(In French with English subtitles)
Cover via Amazon
by Dean | Aug 25, 2015 | General
I believe Woody Allen is a damaged man and that 1979’s Manhattan is damaged goods. That 42-year-old Isaac (Allen) will wait six months for teenaged Tracy (Mariel Hemingway) to return from London without hooking up with another woman, and that Tracy, however pure-hearted, will refuse to take up with any smitten boy during that time, is laughably absurd. Yet the film subtly and patently wants us to believe this.
Allen’s story is so thin we have to listen to the one-liners to enjoy anything in the film. Not that the jokes are always good—and the one about the psychiatrist in a coma is tasteless—but heartening wit does spring up. So does fundamental silliness (Oh, that character played by Michael Murphy!)
Cover of Manhattan
by Dean | Aug 23, 2015 | General
There are a great many problems with the script by Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo, thus making The Godfather Part II (1974) a near-flop. Yet it is watchable, I think, because it is powerful. In this it resembles Hitchcock’s films, and like Hitchcock, Coppola directed cannily. And numerous people did some very fine acting, from Lee Strasberg to Talia Shire.
Undeniably Part II is an imaginative movie. TOO imaginative, but . . . strong in its way.
Cover via Amazon
by Dean | Aug 18, 2015 | General
Don Siegel got a bit fancy in his directing of the 1971 film, The Beguiled, and that the look is occasionally unpolished is not so bad. All the same, the film is built on a premise which I must regard as poor: during the Civil War, the female proprietor of a Southern boardingschool for girls (Geraldine Page) is disinclined to turn a badly wounded Union soldier (Clint Eastwood) over to Southern troops even after he is nursed back to health. Thus she is so foolish she fails to see what a dangerous situation she is creating, and yet this woman is not supposed to be dumb.
Even beyond the premise, though, there is feeble material. Not everything comes across convincingly (e.g., the Page character’s belief, if it exists, that the Union soldier must have his leg amputated in order to avoid gangrene). The final years of Siegel’s career saw a decline in his movies’ quality. But there are a couple of hard-hitting scenes here, and the performances of Eastwood, Page, Elizabeth Hartman and Pamelyn Ferdin (a youngster) are pleasurably true.
The Beguiled (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
