The Exterminating Angel..revisited

This strange and fascinating movie has been fermenting in my mind for a month since I first saw it. My second view was certainly enjoyable (specially to have a better look at the cinematography at the expense of the subtitles), for all the extra illumination it may or may not have provided. The first essay is here. But this is a movie of substance and charisma which has to be savored many a time.

This is a film by an exiled spaniard, a film about Spain filmed in Mexico, Bunuel's adopted country. Spain (I'm not referring to the land of football which it is now) is the land of Dali (a friend of Bunuel, as was Lorca), Picasso, El Greco (whose "View from Toledo" is third from bottom among the pictures down the side-bar). It's the land of Cervantes, of the Inquisition, of the clash and confluence of Christianity and Islam. The opening and closing sequences depict ancient domed churches which resemble mosques, used by the director as symbolic of our manifold prisons.

More important than the meaning or interpretation (interpretation beggars), since Bunuel is an artist first, with traces of a saint, and a philosopher hardly, is to have an ear for the resonances. It is certainly not a comedy, as some critics have called it, with sheep willingly butchered, a crowd being sprayed with gunfire like insecticide, and people dying without dignity in the course of a prolonged party turning into nightmare. Of course, Bunuel is too good to lapse into pompous solemnity, and the compassionate, unsentimental and objective observation of human behaviour, or a slice of it, is with an effortless lightness of brush, an abandonment which only an artist completely confident of his powers can afford. How much can be done with so little!

To describe the bird-like antics of the camera, as it explores and scans the intimacies of the claustrophobic space in which the main drama is enacted, now from afar, now from close, now overhead, or gazing upward at the ceiling and chandeliers, would require more cinematographic vocabulary than I can summon. At different times, the gathering takes on aspects of a witches conclave, a hump of refugees, a steamy bordello, a primeval jungle. The stink starts to rise as civilization sinks and entropy surfaces. There is death, desolation, grief, carnality, hunger, fear, hate.

But that which redeems is also there. The men folk wait their turn for the water. There are voices of sanity to be heard even as the mob is about to take over. The host contemptuously offers his life when demanded. As the bard says, our lives are "of a mingled yarn, good and ill together".

As the sheep troop towards the slaughter, the organ soars, the cathedral is again closed. The sheep are different, as is the party and guests, but the"sorry scheme of things entire" changes not, not so easily, not for bloody revolution.

The Matrix

*1999*136m*Wachowski*

How does one write about a movie one has neither liked nor admired? This is what all professional critics must be facing all the time. They see the movies they have to, and write about them. Their opinions must necessarily reflect what the films potential audience is likely to think about it, more than their own. That is economics. A blog writer is spared such constraints. He writes ultimately for himself.  At best one can extend an apology to friends for whom it was not such a hard watch, at least when they saw it. But then to each his own meat. After all the reviews seem to be more favorable than otherwise. And I could be the wrong generation, which never advanced beyond car chases and fist-fights (with chairs hurled and tables tilted). What is the use of a fight which does not generate the"ouch!" reaction? Simpler weapons seemed more vicarious. After all, one can't more than die, be it a bullet or a laser thingy.

This is not a movie for those whom a film is an investment of precious hours of their lives. A bad film can be a well made one. This one isn't. It has nothing to say either to your head or heart. The acting is of the poorest and the plot pointlessly complex. The special effects in Terminator 2 and Minority Report or even Spielberg's War of the Worlds--the few yardsticks in my sparse SF arsenal--were, in contrast, astounding and novel. And yet some one has worked hard to earn the money that it did earn.

The plot in effect, grossly and probably not so accurately, simplified. In the film the life we are living is not really happening. You don't actually enjoy the food you enjoy, neither do you go for work, or have a family life. It's all a dream. Truth is, you are lying stupefied in some deep cavern with a myriad tubes poking out and ugly insect-like monster machines (see figure1) stabbing needles into you, and jellyish fluids sputtering all around. Your so called normal life is but a program running in your brain. Your function is as a mere source of electricity for the gang of computers named Matrix that has taken over the planet. And now is not now, but a hundred years or two ahead. Wars have obliterated the sun, and since electricity is the food of computers, what could be more handy than "growing" teeming humans in underground farms as a source of bio-electricity. Hence our afore-mentioned predicament. Throw in some leather jacketed good/bad guys/gals, heavy doze of Hong Kong style kung-fu, a sprinkle of plausible determinism vs freedom philosophy, lots of computerese, and the dish is ready for consumption.

The most striking scene was the vertigo inducing shot of the camera looking down a scaffolding a couple of dozen floors through the hero's eyes. For the rest it is a Tom and Jerry state of the art bashing exercise amidst deafening sound and fury. It is neither science, philosophy nor drama. Entertainment? Yawn is more apt. Of course, everything is grist to write about, so nothing is really wasted.

And could this mysterious pull be the Matrix himself who is sucking me into the second number in the trilogy (orgy?)?

Help...!??!

PS: The NY Times review below can be strongly recommended as a brilliant piece.
Review: NY Times

The Rules of the Game

*Jean Renoir *1939 *106m *France*

Comedy or satire? In any case, it is a film that any buff has to see because it is there, it's pre-eminent position in the canon, having long shared the top slot close with Kane. Tough going as it was, only in the second view did the contours reveal themselves. Subtitles inevitably take the toll on one's cinematographic appreciation, and on the second foray one is able to better trade script for visual splendour.

1939. Austria and Czechoslovakia have been annexed by Germany and the Nazi juggernaut is set to unroll. France trembles, wishfully denying what is to come. Renoir (son of the renowned impressionistic painter) has tried to capture the life of the upper classes "exactly as I found it"  in this beautiful black and white tragi-comedy, apparently unconnected with the grim history of the moment. The film evoked violently negative reactions at it's first release, even to the extent of an attempt to burn down the cinema where it was playing. Obviously there is more to it than mere farce, because the French must have seen themselves mirrored.

A large group of upper class French society gathers in a mansion in the countryside for a weekend along with their retinue of servants. Andre Jurieux the aviator is a current national hero who has just completed a trans-atlantic flight in a record time of 23 (!) hours. He is infatuated with the Austrian Christine, wife of Jewish aristocrat Robert Cheyniest (who knows this), and who in turn is having an affair with Genevieve, which he wants to end. Parallel affairs are taking place in the serving class--gamekeeper Schumacher struggles vainly to keep a leash on his beautiful and exuberant wife Lisette, maid of Christine, who is the object of affection of nearly everybody, master or servant. Renoir himself plays the voluble and good natured Octave, the middle aged bachelor, who is a thread that binds the labyrinth of plots and sub-plots. And then things take a turn for the melancholy. Renoir compares the events to "people dancing on top of a volcano".

The hunting sequence is famous. Rabbits and fowl scamper in fear as the party of "beaters" drives them forward through the woodland into the open where they are skittled in merciless merriment. One is free to read any symbolism into the sequence, in the light of ongoing and impending military events, but this certainly one of the most memorable of film sequences, in the background of the French countryside in iridescent black and white.

The party which forms the final third of the film is another dazzling feat of cinema/drama/opera/pantomime.  The men and women chase each other around the halls and corridors, often exploding to fist fights, with some gun-shots thrown in. The deep focus photography captures this intricate and rapid climaxing of the story with the precision of an intricate clockwork.

The title of the film is the clear expression of the intent. Manners are all. Everything is permissible, anything can be condoned, provided you "fit". It is the aviator and the game-keeper who are the misfits in their slobberish sentimentality, and both pay a heavy price. Sincerity is not in, savviness is. Society is savage, with it's wars and animal hunts, below a thin layer of culture and learning. Appearances are all important. Be anything except a fool. The game is man's existence as a social animal, and the rules are the implacable forms and veneers which must be maintained, even as we rampage. It is not about France in 1939, it's about us, sadly.

To quote Renoir: It is a war film, and yet there is no reference to the war. Beneath its seemingly innocuous appearance the story attacks the very structure of our society. Yet all I thought about at the beginning was nothing avant-garde but a good little orthodox film. People go to the cinema in the hope of forgetting their everyday problems, and it was precisely their own worries that I plunged them into. The imminence of war made them even more thin-skinned. I depicted pleasant, sympathetic characters, but showed them in a society in process of disintegration, so that they were defeated at the outset, like Stahremberg and his peasants. The audience

recognized this. The truth is they recognized themselves. People who commit suicide do not care to do it in front of witnesses.

Review Roger Ebert     Andrew O'Hehir   Jean Renoir.

Persona

*Bergman*95m*Swedish*2006*

A film unwinds and sputters amidst whines and screeches of a machine. The carbon arc of the equipment bursts into incandescence and then dies into darkness. A spider crawling over the screen. Blood streaks out as a spike is driven into a palm. A monk in flames. A white screen. A rabbit is disemboweled. Bodies in a mortuary. A thin boy of ten or so tries to touch and feel the image of a woman separated from him by a transparent barrier. This montage of a few minutes leads us to the titles.

Elizabeth (Liv Ullman) is a successful actress of around thirty five who in the midst of a performance of Elektra suddenly stops speaking and thereafter becomes completely silent to the point she is hospitalized and put under the care of twenty five year nurse Alma (Bibi Anderson). The rest of the film is about the relationship of these two classically beautiful women, the one in her chosen muteness, the other loquacious.

This is pure cinema, where the form supersedes the substance. Every black and white frame of the film is a model of austere yet lustrous composition. The movie glows with with a battle of light and shadow. The marble forms and intense yet controlled performances of the two actresses encase the inner tumult, which ts petty more than sublime. It's a film about loneliness and the failure of inter-humaneness-- failure to connect-- like the little boy vainly trying to touch the woman behind the transparent barrier. An essay on solitude and existence. On the poverty behind the plenitude.

Nurse and patient retreat to a wave lapped sea side dwelling to work out an uneventful yet gripping drama of love, need and hate.. The vast expanses of land, water and sky are an apt metaphor for the infinite mystery of the inner universe. The self chosen and self enforced silence of the older woman, her apathy, indifference and occasional tenderness are set against the vulnerability and outbursts of anger of the nurse. Both the women have failed in different ways in the most fundamental other-centric human role of motherhood.

Somewhere in the background are the larger landscapes of wars and holocausts. A monk reduces to cinders. The Jewish boy in the beret is led away by the militia.. Bergman stated his failure to respond to mega tragedies. Elizabeth paces her room at night as sounds of the screaming bombers emerge from the TV.

Alma is furious and humiliated when she pries into a letter describing her as an object of study. She knowingly allows the actress to injure her foot on a shard, and the actress knows that she knows. Alma threatens Elizabeth with a saucepan of boiling water, forcing her to scream out, "Don't!" The fear of death and the instinct for survival go far deeper than our vanities. As was said "The most terrible things in the world are the pain of fire, the flashing of swords and the shadow of death. Even horses and cattle fear death, how much more those in their prime."

This is a film sparse and economical to the bone, a work of serene architecture. To interpret is demeaning to the film as to oneself. It is complete and round, maybe cuboid, a thing of symmetry, a film within a film within a film.

Complete to the point that it reveals no secret, which is as it should be, since neither does life.

At last Elizabeth breaks her silence as Alma asks her to repeat, "Nothing." It is the zero which is the beginning of everything.

What I can say for sure is that it's a movie, which like the carbon arc in the prelude, etches and engraves itself. I regretted having to depend on subtitles, to miss looking at the grains of the skin, to miss the nuances and cadence of script. The second time around, I allowed myself to ignore the subtitles, to focus on the marvelous  stream of facial expressions. Bergman has famously remarked to the effect that cinema is all about the human face and it's changing expressions.
Persona on Bergman Foundation Site,  Susan Sontag on Persona,  Bergman and philosophy

Close Up

*Kiarostami *1990 *90m *Iran *

In his televised interview Kiarostami says to the effect, " I don't know how to make films to cater to Western audiences or to please critics at film festivals. If my films are slow that is what they are meant to be. If they are boring and put you to sleep at least they are kind enough to leave you alone, and not leave you exhausted and knocked out. Films should have a lasting effect, and the effect of a good film starts working immediately after it ends. Some films that have made me doze off in the theater have often kept me awake for nights and thinking about them for weeks afterwards. I don't like films that arouse you emotionally, give advice, belittle you or make you feel guilty. Films that nail you to the seat and overwhelm you leave you feeling cheated. Such films make you a hostage."

This one uplifts you gently like a feather, hovering awhile around a hazy focus, to land you safely back where it picked you up, with infusions to spread lastingly into your mind. Slow and boring are the last thing they are--riveting and unputdownable is a more apt description. Not the least of their merits is the brevity--they never hit a hundred minutes. Kiarostami's films have the delicacy and intricate perfection, of a Persian tapestry, for all the modernity of their setting. They are the easiest to watch, in their almost lazy contemplative style. There is a sequence of a tin-can rolling down a slope and you see it as you might in real life when standing somewhere with nothing to do, except fool around with whatever object is at hand.

Like so many of his other movies, this one is about the movie making process. What can come more naturally to a film-maker who wants to portray the melodies of real life instead of telling stories. Each of his films is different and seems the best of the lot. This certainly is a great film (I hesitate to use words like masterpiece).

It is based on a real life incident involving a person a person having a resemblance to the director Makhmalbaf. After being mistaken for him several times, he is involved in a situation in which he deliberately impersonates him, is discovered, arrested and tried for the fraud. Much of the movie relates to the trial, in which his complex motives for committing a pointless and seemingly ludicrous felony are explored. He comes out not as a criminal but as a sensitive, confused and helpless human being, a floundering vessal in the waves of society. An artist by temperament (quotes Tolstoi in the course of his very competent defense) and unable to sustain his family, he finally breaks into sobs, when embraced by the real (which means the real) Makhmalbaf, saying, "I am tired of being myself." Kiarostami was given permission to film the actual trial and most of the cast, including the impersonator and the family he tried to decieve, are the actual persons involved and many parts of the film are actual footage. Finally the court lets him off, partially because the complainants have decided to "forgive" him (quite unwestern). Finally he is encouraged by Makhmalbaf to continue a normal life.

In the process we get many glimpses of Iranian society, tending to the rosy side because Kiarostami, unlike Makhmalbaf, has chosen to remain in his country, and adjust with the political system, including censorship ( mostly stemming from religious elements like women wearing the head dress), which he says is not a problem for him. Men mostly wear western dress, but no ties. The accused person carries out his own defense. The judiciary seems mild, reasonable and compassionate. Books on cinematography seem available in the native tongue. Women wear the burqua but can sit besides men in buses. Persian, a classical language, seems considerably evolved for the needs of a modern, technological society. Different from western society, perhaps a step or two behind in some respects, but ahead in some others.

My taste for Kiarostami grows as for a wine, and meanwhile this puts me on the trail of Makhmalbaf, another apparently equally acknowledged film maker of Iran.