Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (2008) | Director: Uli Edel | Constantin Film | IMDB: tt0765432

Der Baader Meinhof Komplex is the 2008 german submission for the 81th Academy Awards (didn’t win, Departures from Japan did). It’s directed by Uli Edel who has interesting powerful works in his CV (Last Exit to Brooklyn) as well as tremendously embarrassing works (Body of Evidence). Baader Meinhof is probably his finest.

Based on the book with the same title by Stefan Aust, the movie follows and tries to account for the early years of the terrorist group Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF, or Red Army Faction), one of the most violent post war extremist groups and responsible for 34 confirmed deaths. It follows Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck), Andreas Baader (Mortiz Bleibtreu), Gudrun Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek) and other founding members through their escalate from bank robbery to “imperialist enemies” bombings. Countered by the sharp and sensible anti-terrorist specialist Horst Herold (Bruno Ganz), the story tangles in its own intricate details, at times a little hard to follow for non germans acquainted with this particular slice of their country history.

Some critics described the movie as slightly biased or even glamorizing towards the terrorists but I disagree. There’s a lack of focus within the group’s ideology leading to feelings of violence for the sake of it. Not that an orthodox marxist ideology would release the group from their violent inexcusable actions but, what I reckon from watching the movie, is that these violent activists could actually decide to stick to whatever excuse of an ideology on any given moment.

The movie tries to explore their sense of liberalism, almost in a strict european kind of hippie fashion which is much more bourgeois than actually liberal although american audiences will most likely misunderstand them. Ulrike Meinhof, for instance, is seen at the very beginning of the film at a nude beach. An american would typically consider that attitude as liberal but, as any european knows, that kind of easy going attitude is much more related to a lesser faire attitude than a anti-conservative feature.

Despite the long running time, I found the movie to be entertaining and leaning towards factual correctness. The rhythm and innumerable actions and counteractions of the RAF account for the long running time. It is never dull, that’s for sure.

Lars and the Real Girl (2007) | Director: Craig Gillespie | Sidney Kimmel Entertainment | IMDB: tt0805564

Understated debut film by Craig Gillespie that, nevertheless, reached three 2007 top-ten lists (Dennis Harvey – Variety; Joe Morgenstern – Wall Street Journal; Kenenth Turan – Los Angeles Times). This was a very impressive year – check this list which is, by no means, all-inclusive: There Will Be Blood, No Country For Old Men, Atonement, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Michael Clayton, In The Valley of Elah, Gone Baby Gone, The Kite Runner, Once, I’m Not There, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Into the Wild, The Lives of Others, you know, I really could go on. Nevertheless, I consider this a year with a few out-of-bounds hyped but unsatisfying films: Margot at the Wedding, Superbad, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Zodiac, and two that I’m not sure will age gracefully: The Savages, and Juno. If I had to draw comparisons to another 2007 film, it would be the very good and satisfying Dan in Real Life. Yes, there are films that make you feel good and you should embrace that feeling more often.

Lars Lindstrom (Ryan Gosling) is a shy and withdrawn young man living in a small nameless town, much resembling a Minnesota landscape. He works and attends church but that’s about it concerning his social functioning. He lives in the garage of his deceased parents’ house, now inhabited by his brother Gus (Paul Schneider) and sister-in-law Karin (Emily Mortimer). Karin tries in vain to include Lars in their family life, asking him in very persuasive mode to come to breakfast or dinner. Karin is the perfect sister-in-law – now pregnant – concerned about Lars voluntary retreat. Lars spends his evenings alone inside the small flat-garage. One day, a work colleague shows him a website featuring full size and “anatomically correct” vinyl sex dolls. A few weeks later, Lars receives a crate with his own doll, introducing her (Bianca) to his family as a paraplegic missionary of Brazilian and Danish descent whose luggage has been stolen (as well as her wheelchair). Bianca is Lars new and (you may guess, first) girlfriend.

The film has everything to go wrong. From the premise above, you’re correct in believing that it best describes a crude comedy. It does not. It works beautifully. Bianca is Lars way of overcoming his lack of human touch, his bitter pain and his fear for his about-to-be-born-nephew causing danger to his mother (Lars mother died during labour, delivering him). The community overcomes the fact that Bianca is a doll, treating her as the woman she “really is”. Some criticism was raised concerning the fact that the whole community is supportive. Well, in what world do you live and, in what world would you like, in fact, to live? Ditto.

Posted in Film Review Tagged: Doll, Lars and the Real Girl, Ryan Gosling ]]> http://stingbite.wordpress.com/2009/06/30/lars-and-the-real-girl/feed/ 0 stingbite Lars and the real girl http://stingbite.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/der-siebente-kontinent/ http://stingbite.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/der-siebente-kontinent/#comments Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:22:37 +0000 stingbite http://stingbite.com/?p=28 ]]>

Der siebente Kontinent (1989) | Director: Michael Haneke | Wega Film | IMDB: tt0098327

Der siebente Kontinent (or “The Seventh Continent”) is Michael Haneke‘s debut cinematic release. An obscure art house release before earning a small but steady cult follow after Haneke’s bizarre and successful Funny Games, it’s the first in a set of three films the author himself described as his Vergletscherungs-Trilogie (or “Glaciation Trilogy”). Without analysing the other two films (Benny’s Video and 71 Fragemente einer Chronologie des Zufalls), Kontinent is an acidic and fiendish kick in your scrotum. Yes, maybe I’m not being clear enough: it’s a gut-wrenching exercice that will change your perception of art and hopefully, everyday life. But it’s not an easy film to watch. It’s slow, precise, and disturbingly clinical-cold. Haneke‘s dismiss of incidental music gives it a terrifying tone implying that real horror is within the confines of your home.

Anna (Birgit Doll) and Georg (Dieter Berner) live with their daughter Eva (Leni Tanzer) in a upper middle class Vienna neighbourhood. When I say “live” I mean “everyday-life-live”. They have breakfast, dine, go shopping, go to work and school, live a common workingman’s life. You know, could be your family, right? Excruciatingly you watch their routine. And I say “their routine” since I’m assuming the characters are the ones handling the objects we are being shown. Faces are avoided as much as eye contact is avoided within the family. Yes, you see close ups of different objects until you realize that neither Anna, Georg or Eva are the main characters. A clock, a toothbrush, a bowl of cereals, frozen broccoli, a fish tank… Their mundane existence is tedious, monotonous, unexciting, mechanical. The whole first act is a film about every John Doe living in any given western town. One day at school Eva pretends to be blind. Her mother, an optician, demands Eva to tell the truth (if she sees or not), telling her that she won’t hurt her in case she was lying. Eva admits to being lying and Anna slaps her face. Another crack in the paint. Thereon the family leads itself to an unpredictable and distressing final third act.

It’s clear that this people are unable to communicate their feelings but, what feelings are those? Caught in a landslide of mundane existence is there anything to feel? What’s the meaning of it all? Money, objects of routine, meaningless jobs, undetermined neighbours, solitude from emotional interference, worthlessness… These are words that can’t describe the coldness of the film. On the other hand, there are other questions being raised: we, the audience, are spectators of their collapse. Is it worth watching such a thing? Well, perhaps you watch it everyday and either turn a blind eye or deliberately shrug it off.

The Reader (2008) | Director: Stephen Daldry | Mirage Enterprises / Neunte Babelsberg Film / The Weinstein Company | IMDB: tt0976051

The Reader turned to be a provocative film for the wrong reasons. It suffered from bad hype regarding sexual activities with minors and Nazism. The film is about neither, so the hype is unfair, unjustified and shall I say, petty.
Stephen Daldry is yet to make a bad film. I believe he never will. In fact, Billy Elliot, The Hours and The Reader seem like a beautiful trilogy about contemporary society (and how contemporary is a much broader term than “here and now”). Despite the Oscar nomination and the much deserved best actress statuette, it felt short of the attention it deserved.

The film begins with older Michael (Ralph Fiennes) as an uncommunicative and bitter middle age man seemingly oblivious of the woman he just had sex with. Straight to the late 50s, Hanna (Kate Winslet) founds and takes young Michael home to recover from a debilitating fever. From them on, their relationship is based on lust. Hanna doesn’t love Michael. She calls him “kid” and dismisses promptly any romantic feelings young susceptible Michael genuinely advances. Despite the sex, Hanna seems much more interested in being read to. Not that she isn’t a keen lover – book reading just prompts her mundane desires in a ritual not unlike a romantic dinner. When Hanna suddenly disappears, Michael‘s world collapses as it should to teenager unprepared for such a harsh dismiss. Years later, Michael as a law student discovers Hanna in a courtroom by a simple twist of fate. He then understands she is a prison guard in trial for murder during the Nazi regime. During the course of the trial, Michael discovers one simple fact that may alter the outcome of the trial altogether. Ridden by her unforgivable past and perhaps his own sense of unsolved hatred, he does nothing, plunging himself to a life of secluded detachment. Unable to forgive Hanna and himself for the pain both inflicted, Michael seems like a man in a quest for his own understanding.

The Reader is not about the Holocaust, underage sex, the shameful secret Hanna withholds or even the moral dilemmas in concealing truths. It’s about moving with the tide, shutting our eyes and relinquishing to the common will. Germany did close their eyes. So did the world many times after and before. But is it peer pressure? Or is it that every man or woman cannot survive outside their own breed?

Caché (2005) | Director: Michael Haneke | Les Filmes du Losange / Wega Film | IMDB: tt0387898

Caché is a brilliant work of art dressed as a late evening thriller. How else can you explore the threads in a tangled web of emotions that occur when the voyeur becomes the voyeur’ed? Michael Haneke knows his trade too well – I can’t think of anyone else working today able to freeze your sinews with a static long shot. Western civilization watches the world through a television screen – violence, inhumanity, real world conflicts come across the screen as nothing different from the typical Saturday night at the movies gore fest. What is reality and what is fiction? Bizarrely more important: when does reality become fiction?

The movie starts with a facade shot of a Paris house. Then you realise it is actually a video being watched by Anne (Juliette Binoche) and Laurent (Daniel Auteuil). It’s their own house their are watching on video, unknowingly of who and why the tape was left for them to watch it. During the course of the plot, more videos with increasing emotional proximity arrive and Laurent is able to find clues to pursue his quest, finding the meaning of the videos or if they are a threat. He’s led to meet someone he knows from a distant past who soon revealed to be an unlikely candidate.

New videos arrive making Anne feel threatened and Laurent unwilling to reveal the information he’s deeply trying to keep within. He shuts himself on his own shell leaving his wife feeling betrayed. And then the unfolding leads to an unsettling thought so brightly written by Roger Ebert: “The film seems to argue that life would have gone on well enough for the Laurents had it not been for the unsettling knowledge that they had become visible, that someone knew something about them, that someone was watching“.

Caché won the prize for best direction at Cannes. It’s unsettling, open, intense, radical and absolute. It’s also the work of a director, perhaps the most assertive European director of today, showing viewers how art is about raising questions, not providing answers.

It left me hanging with one very paramount question: “Am I frustrated because I didn’t understand it or am I (much more likely) frustrated because I did”?

Die Welle (2008) | Director: Dennis Gansel | Rat Pack Filmproduktion GmbH / Constantin Film | IMDB: tt1063669

Not many movies can cause disgust and fear while still maintaining an entertainment value. Although one of its strenghts, this may as well be the film’s major flaw. Despite this dilemma, no questions remain about its’ effectiveness. What remains after you and your moviegoer partner leave the theatre is the discussion about if any of you are as susceptible to the experiment as the film characters were.

Rainer Wenger (Jürgen Vogel), a creative and popular high school teacher is summoned to lecture an Autocracy course after his stifled and obsolescent colleague Wieland (minor supporting role played by Hubert Multzer) is given the course Wenger was expecting, Anarchy. Wenger indeed seems more inclined and motivated to teach Anarchy than Autocracy. He is an unconventional teacher with a major in Sport and Political Sciences, one that drives to school singing loudly to a cover of The Ramones‘ Rock’n'Roll High School. This kind of caricatural portrait is less effective than a realistic straightforward one despite giving the characters a fable-like quality. Nevertheless, one cannot dislike an old-school conservative teacher named Wieland (as in “like the country”).

Rainer Wenger (or simply Rainer as his students address him by first name) is unprepared to teach Autocracy as he spent the weekend preparing himself for the Anarchy course. He begins by asking his students the characteristics of an Autocracy. You quickly realise he knows the subject matter – don’t be fooled by his lack of preparation which is more of a how to organize the course than proficiency. Inevitably, the big question is raised: Germany will never succumb to a new dictatorship since “we know too much about it now”, says a clever student. Wenger, incapable of making the point that autocratic regimes are just around the corner given the necessary conditions, proposes the class an exercise in experimenting Autocracy for themselves. He quickly became “Herr Wenger” and slowly but steadily, imposed the rules of discipline, proper posture, unity and sense of belonging. It then goes up a few notches that include uniforms, marching and the use of a symbol. Without giving out too much, all I can say is that the experiment develops a life of its own during the course of the week to a sudden collapse of grim consequences.

Based on a real life experiment by American teacher Ron Jones in Palo Alto, Ca in 1967, moving the narrative to modern day Germany gives it a pungency that otherwise a Hollywood film could never attain. After more than half a century since the end of WWII, Germany is still a country feeling the guilt of a worldwide generational psyche. More than that, it’s a country unwilling to travel the same deadly path and inevitable repetition of history. It’s a country that thinks about the Holocaust and finds a way to include the dire confined lessons in young people’s minds as the proper way to educate younger generations for the dangers of repetition.

Never a film felt more actual and urgent – you just need to open any given newspaper on any given day. Nominated for the Grand Jury award at the Sundance Film Festival (2008), it failed to win the prize for the Swedish Ping-pongkingen. Nevertheless, on the year that Frozen River won the Festival, this seems like the perfect companion for the low-key masterpiece and, in my humble opinion, a subject of mandatory curriculum in every European and North American high school.