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Danger Man: That's Two of Us Sorry (1965)
Another fine DM production with lovely location work
Some excellent individual and ensemble acting. The ending can be forgiven: you could say it was an ending with a 'twist', albeit a silly one involving absent-mindedness. Resourceful location shooting around a priory on Anglesey, Wales, and some iconic Scots character actors really gave a sense of a Hebridean setting.
Cherez ternii k zvyozdam (1981)
If only it were appreciated for the sum of its parts...
..then people would understand it in its full beauty. It seems many reviewers condemn it for the particular - such as a poor example of scifi cinema robot or alien (the latter competing with that of Dark Star), or a sequence where a villain is found to be ticklish, which sets them oblivious as to the signifiance thereof and the movie's meta-narrative.
For me, this film is of the school which performs a deftly deceptive lightness of touch around profound issues. But here, uniquely, we see utilised measured and studied absurdist interludes, and a romantic dreamlike dynamic. I write 'deceptive', because at its core, if you care to look deeper into the pool, there is a story which is a subtle yet quite profound exposition of and meditation on the nature of isolation; the yearning inherent in loneliness (who in their heart didn't hope for Neeya to be comforted with kisses and held in a loving embrace by Stepan before the end?) the transitory nature of being; how great beauty can exist alongside great tragedy; the whole wrapped in an environmental parable.
Oh, and the soundtrack is powerfully evocative, like a fleeting nimbus of forgotten childhoods around quotidian adulthood; the shimmering whimsical harpsichord figure alternating with tone-poems and Kraftwerkian industrial-electro grooves on analogue synth are utterly fitting.
Hommes, femmes, mode d'emploi (1996)
Seemingly random yarns not without substance
I recorded this from UK TV about 3 years after it was released and I would like to confess that I really enjoyed this production. I only wish it were available on DVD with subs.
I'm not familiar with Lelouch's body of work but have taken note of some critical appraisals certain of which mark him as somewhat polished, perhaps suggesting affectedness and/or superficiality.
IMO, underneath the main and supporting story lines here (which almost self-identify as yarns) which play like anecdotes of dubious veracity such as a bibulous fabulist at a bar might recount, there can be discovered a revelatory satire on the human condition (needless to say, the best commendation one could make for a work of art). This is commonly translated as a journey, a search for something nameless (because you don't know what it is yet), but you do know is of inestimable value - like some phantom treasure (cf. the tramp with the world-quieting singing voice), and which might be discovered anywhere.
Is it enlightenment? Love? I hesitate to name it. One thing that this film communicates very enjoyably and with resounding verve characterised in a very French, gaily philosophical way, is the common cinematic narrative that we all are linked by those seemingly random, chaotic, journeys or rather, it is our journeys which are interlinked which confers on us all the status of fellow-travellers, pilgrims dancing and singing our several ways, all of which ultimately -and without exception- lead in one direction: toward the place on the other side of the horizon.
36 Quai des Orfèvres (2004)
A tale of two mens' losses in the pursuit of justice
A great film with superb performances by Auteil and Depardieu and notable others.
I *like* a film where there are plot and character ambiguities - this properly reflects the human condition. Life is not black and white and French cinema excels and is perhaps preeminent at delineating these complex truths of life. Such a movie leaves you thinking about it -and yourself- for a long while afterwards. Here, the inner conflicts of the various police units, the tension between moral conscience, duty, the desire for justice, loyalties, were powerfully recorded.
Let's leave aside the technical point of the prostitute being able to identify Vrinks - I'd be happy to grant artistic licence here (perhaps she did see him though: we could say street-girls have -and need- the eyes of an owl). But do we believe Klein when, in the rest-room confrontation at the end, he contends with his old friend that his wife was 'already dead' when he shot her? He might have meant that she was so horrifically injured that he made a mercy killing. It's possible he meant that she was 'dead' in a more abstract sense.
Klein though, was no cold, heartless monster. Nor did he act exclusively out of ambition or vanity. That Vrinks knew this, was referenced by a line early in the film where he rebutted a colleague's censure of Klein: 'he wasn't always like this'. What the film portrays is the brutalising effect that such experience can have on the individual - Klein was brutalised by his desire for justice, the agonies of his regrets for the families of men killed by the security van robbers, and his personal resolve -to the point of obsession- to achieve closure for them. This explains, if not mitigates, his seemingly unconscionable and irrational actions. His experiences, his regrets, forced on him a compromise of ethics - that same compromise of ethics which Vrinks had himself earlier enacted; and for the same reasons.
Referring back to the rest-room scene, Vrinks couldn't bring himself to kill Klein because in Klein, he recognised himself, his own errors and fragilities (in fact he was the first to abuse ethics by being a party -if hesitantly- to the street murder)- all powerfully symbolised in the cinematography through the dialogue being screened via their reflections in the sink-mirrors. His enjoining Klein to dispatch himself was more in the sense of an old comrade advocating that as he (Klein) had played the game and had lost (notionally even more: integrity, morals, friendship, and broad respect), perhaps it was time to 'leave the table', rather than being animated by a bitter need for vengeance. If Klein really were such an indifferent, callous beast, it wouldn't have troubled him and he would have celebrated his reprieve- that it did clearly trouble him, defined the humanity, the morbidly-injured conscience in the man. The motorcycle drive-by was, in a sense, another merciful killing, and may well have saved Klein having to do it himself. When Vrinks later read of his friend's demise, his reaction was hardly one of 'high-fiving' jubilation. There was no certain 'victor' here and I don't think the film maker intended to frame it as a straightforward adversarial tale. In some sense, Vrinks prevailed in merely being alive and having a healthy daughter to live for. If it was any victory though, it was a pyrrhic one as he was, to no small degree, a principle author of the tragedies that unfolded.
Bitter Moon (1992)
A veritable masterpiece....
One of Polanski's best films. All players give perhaps career-best performances; certainly Hugh Grant and Kristen Scott-Thomas have never been involved in anything of greater substance ('The English Patient' or no. And Peter Coyote is unsurpassed: weltschmerz has never been portrayed more effectively or intelligently. It is a study of different forms of human love, contemplating the distinction between that of physical desire and attraction, against something more fundamental. Special mention should be made of the theme music which, in my opinion, is Vangelis at his best, working superlatively in the context of the sea voyage setting.
Here is perhaps testament to the notion that the best film can attain something approaching exquisite art: in capturing mere quotidian human experience, evoking something beyond. On paper this is a movie made about an obsessive love affair in early 90's Paris as recounted by one of the protagonists to an emotionally-confused englishman on an ocean voyage. But it seems so much more than the sum of its parts; it transcends and sublimates the premise of the storyline, the experiences of the characters.
Alternatywy 4 (1986)
Subtitled DVD set NOW!....Please?
I was introduced to this superb social comedy via my polish friend. 'Alternatywy 4' is so succinctly observed and superbly written and acted, that despite not knowing the language and having had minimal translation of the text, I enjoy this more each time I've watched it.
To understand the political context of communist-era Poland is to enter into the richly comic ironies which are at the core of the writing: the gross corruption and hypocrisy of local politicians and petty officials, the empire-building by the hangers-on to the former, the chicanery, scams, and ruses (the latter perpetrated by the populace -in typical polish tradition- to improve what was, after all, a dismal lot) to confound officialdom, and the sketching of a certain mindset which flourished or was likely created by the era: an 'old-fashioned communist' brusque arrogance and patent unhelpfulness as exists to this day in many Czech and Polish establishments such as shops and kiosks,restaurants, rail ticket counters, post offices...you get the picture.
I just have to add that the sublime comedy and character acting is every bit the equal of the writing. 'Alternatywy 4' would be almost worth learning the idiosyncratic and difficult polish language for.