A Dangerous Method

David Cronenberg, 2011, 94m

This biopic is about Jung, Freud and Sabina Spielrein, who was in turns Jung's patient, student, mistress and professional collaborator. We get a glimpse of the lives of the two researchers as well as of their ideas. Freud thought of himself as a man of rigorous science, whereas Jung's methods spilled into the paranormal and mystical. The movie does not succeed in bringing to life these epochal thinkers and one is left with a triangular drama garbed in much fancy psychoanalytic idioms and jargon. It simply does not do justice to its material and seems to be an amateurish representation of the demonic side of a human being's inner universe. It serves a purpose as a documentation of some bare historical facts.

The Help

2011, 146m

This social comedy is set during the sixties civil rights movement in Southern US. The “helps”, black maidservants employed by wealthy whites, may not use the toilets of their employers and have separate utensils and cutlery, at least in some of the featured families. A central event of the tale is no doubt the consumption of a dish laced with the faeces of an aggrieved employee, and the subsequent publicity of the event through a book titled “The Help”--vendetta with a difference and which may make some here squirm. Careful what you say -they have the last weapon, your dinner. The film ends on a note of triumph for the persecuted class.  This is a well made engrossing film which adds little to our understanding of the world we live in, or the turbulent era in which it is set..

Barry Lyndon

Stanley Kubrick, 1975, 184m

Based on Thackeray's novel, this is as close to literature that a movie can get.It is a panoramic view of a life and an age, portrayed with verisimilitude, plausibility and mild satire. The protagonist is an ordinary person, neither good nor bad, but enterprising and courageous who climbs the social staircase to climb down again. We have a detached portrait of the cultivated rogues responsible for the miracle of the empire over which the sun never set. Kubrick is in a different incarnation here, the satire being less bitter, but the touch of a master is visible throughout, as the painterly camera weaves a spell in its picture of Europe around 1800. A stunning film.

Harlan County

103m, 1976, documentary, Barbara Kopple (dir)

This Oscar winning film is the first of two documentaries made by this director about worker's struggle for better conditions in the US context. This one is about the coal mining industry. The coldness and exploitative greed of owners which extends to murder is graphically depicted. The simple lesson is that some people will do anything for money and the clash is almost Darwinian. The capacity of one group of people to treat another as things (in the Rwanda massacres one tribe was labelled as "cockroaches") seems inbuilt in human nature, alongside the better faculties. The film owes much of its power to the country music specifically related to coal miner's life. This film belongs to the era when socialism was alive enough to be kicked.

CLIP

Footnote

2011, 103m, Israel

Both father and son are professors of Jewish studies and have devoted their lives to the same narrow chink of specialization. But whereas the son has become a celebrity, the father, more puritanical in his academic standards, and also a victim of bitter academic rivalries, remains obscure. His greatest achievement is being acknowledged in a footnote by a renowned scholar. His name has been proposed repeatedly for the coveted Israel prize, only to be vetoed each time by his arch academic ill wisher. But the day dawns when he is finally offered the prize, and the tragicomedy of errors takes off.

The film gives a delicately etched picture of the relationship between the aging father and his graying son. At the same time it gives us a glimpse of contemporary Israel, not to mention the pettiness and jealousies of the academic world. This gem of a film had me riveted till its ambiguous end. Does he accept the award? The movie concludes to the notes of what sounded like Chopin's Funeral March, which may be taken as a hint of sorts. A lovely film.

Review by A O Scott