The Red Riding trilogy

“You eat meat with your teeth and you kill things that are better than you are, and in the same respect you say how bad and even killers that your children are. You make your children what they are. I am just a reflection of every one of you.”

- Charles Manson, serial killer, rapist, life-convict.

Everyone loves a good murder mystery, more so when there’s an element of serial-obsession involved in it. Serial killers and compulsive murderers have continuously kept us guessing and contemplating what they’d do next for so long that today, when we watch or read on them, it only feels normal when such characters spawn a set of skills meant to trick, connive and collude even the most challenging adversaries our minds could manifest and challenge them with. It’s true such stories most instantly draw us into a sense of paradox. On one hand, there’s a fervent need for justice in it’s most pulped form, a desire to see a murderer face the combined wrath of what has resulted out of his own horrific actions. On the other, we will the killer to up the level of pathological difficulty for those on his trail. In a way, we don’t want him captured, not yet. Even if what we see is based on incidents that are not entirely fictional, we usually come to the point where storytelling wins over: when the general attitude becomes ego-centric. Of course, being at the receiving end of a medium, watching or reading on such people changes perspectives, but what transpires ultimately is the fact that a disturbed induvidual who is refused to be acknowledged by society as a human at all, most leniently a monster, is now an exotic specimen of intrigue for us to exercise upon him, the dark recesses of our own induvidual personalities.

The Red Riding trilogy is more than everything that’s been described above, and more: a familiar cocktail of whodunit drama, anxiety and frustrating twists in the plot and the most important ingredient of all: the fear of having to blink your eyelids. Based on the quartet of novels written by british author of The Damned United, David Peace (Red Riding In The Year of Our Lord: 1974, 1977, 1980 and 1983) and adapted into three screenplays by Tony Grisoni, “Red Riding” is actually supposed to mean the West Riding locality of the provincial town of Yorkshire, UK. It’s a beautiful place with ugly looking buildings, cloudy skies all year round and plenty of sheep running around vast farms on it’s outskirts. David Peace actually based his novels on real-life incidents that happened in and around the little town. Though Tony Grisoni wrote the three screenplays together, three different directors were hired to bring in very distinct filming styles, handling and feel to the three films, generating the impression that the three films had actually been filmed at three separate times. Not that the three directors (Anand Tucker, James Marsh and Julian Jarrold) belong to the cream of the british film fraternity, maybe apart from Marsh, who’s still fresh from directing the Oscar winning documentary, Man on Wire, which still keeps us in the dark as to his capabilities when handling linear-narrative fiction. Not many filmmakers jump between the two sacred, basic genres of modern cinema, maybe giants like Wiener Herzog do, yes. But for others, it’s really not easy.

Talking about genres, I’m not sure and I haven’t had any genuine opportunity to deny this fact, but when it comes to crime-heavy movies depicting serial killers and investigations in pursuit of such criminals in the traditional format, from the point of view of those in pursuit, there haven’t been any good movies out of UK in this department at all. And comparing this fact with that of American films, there lies pure contrast. The only other time British television launched me into the world of serial-crimes, be it in the sixties, or in the modern times, was in the hugely popular tv-series – Life on Mars, which actually got me quite irritated, trying to find a solution to the time-warp paradox, and milking it out of proportions, killing the fun in it completely.

Still, this shouldn’t mean that such incidents are new to this country. And this trilogy pretty much makes up for the void that at least I see here.

Without revealing too much of the plots, the first part,1974 starts with the discovery of a disturbing corpse of a very young girl, who has been found to be bound, tortured, raped, mutilated with bloody engravings on her body and real swan wings stitched to her back. The police immediately jump to damning conclusions and Leonard Cole, an obvoiusly innocent autistic boy is framed and jailed quickly. The sinister silencing-down by the officials appear suspicious. The horrors of the reality soon catches up with amateur journalist Eddie Dunford (Andrew Garfield) who decides to dig deeper, only to discover a huge ring of corruption and cover-ups involving his own chief editor, the local police chiefs, the mother of a victim, a powerful businessman (Sean Bean) and the violence of it all waiting to eat him up.

The second part, 1980 goes behind the notorious real-lief serial killer, the “Yorkshire Ripper”, a dramatisation of the investigations and the ever-looming hand of the corrupt police force. Paddy Considine plays Peter Hunter, partly connected with the events that took place as a bloody culmination of the first movie. He is assigned to bring in a “fresh perspective” to an already prolonged and publicly defamed team of detectives. He’s given all the support he needs, the team members he wants and the voluminous casefiles of the Ripper. Soon, he realises the mistrust and deception lurking within his own department and his own team when the Ripper is “caught”, and cofesses to all but one of the murders in their files, hinting at the possibility of the first of many Copycat Murders, which eventually keep continuing even after the arrest.

Part three plays the role of a redemption prayer to both the first two films. Heavily intertwined with what we see in Part one, 1983 brings back two very quiet characters, Detective Superintendent Maurice Jobson (David Morrissey) and an elusive male prostitute, BJ (Robert Sheehan) both of whom have gathered significant information about local authority figures without coming into much prominence. An otherwise grumpy public-solicitor, John Piggott (Mark Addy) decides to help Leonard Cole, the autistic boy, now in jail.. only to discover a huge ring of paedophililes, operating professionally on a very high level, with his own late father’s name embroiled in the mess. The mental turmoils these people undergo comes a full circle when the last few moments bring such a climax to the trilogy, that the total horror of it all becomes a form of artistic extremism in itself during the final ten minutes of the last movie.

Inspite of being a small production under the Channel 4 banner, and originally being straight, made-for-television films, so much detail has been deployed in the making of this epic, that even the camera-formats used in filming the three parts have their purposes. 1974 and 1980 were filmed in 16mm and 32mm formats respectively, while the final part was shot in standard,modern high definition. Julian Jarrold (1974) uses several closeup shots with deep camera focusing that seemingly blurs-in the foreground into more creepily detail, while James Marsh (1980) tries and minimises excessive colour-editing, unlike the other two. Anand Tucker’s 1983 however ends up looking the best with strong contrast ratios and heavy, smoke-filled, stationary shots. The cloudy skies of Yorkshire (where the trilogy was filmed, using predominantly local crew members) are a perpetual gray, providing a favorable, even light to the cinematography. The yorkshire accents are so thick in places, you’d be grateful for the subtitles in the US-release.

Though the storyline might appear to suit any location, be it yorkshire, London, or even someplace in the US, what makes it necessarily adaptive to only the provincial town of Yorkshire, are in many ways, exclusive..from the public reactions to the horrific incidents, the attitude of the self-righteous, but indigenous press against the police force, the personal isolation felt amidst the community members and the eerie beauty of the landscape that brings in a whole new artistic sense to the horror spewing out of this little county; this is Neo-Noir at its best. Each of the lead characters seemed to fall short of actually becoming “likeable”, as long as their plotlines were in the foreground, the concept of using sex as a means of comfort might baffle some, but the complete absence of sexual tension preceding such passionate episodes of lovemaking is so typical of the elusive genre called Noir, which so few filmmakers seem to have provided. Relationships arise amidst the sense of apparent comfort. Eddie falls in love with a mother whose daughter was a victim, Hunter has a prior history with his partner-detective, and Maurice starts to bond with a sipritual medium, who helps him find the source of the murders, talking through spirits. Still, the directors knew where to draw the line between love and trust. At the point where Maurice seems so sure of whatever the medium (Saskia Reeves) is trying to convey…even we are reduced to blindly trusting some impeding breakthrough where there is absolutely no hope otherwise for those wrongly implicated into life sentences.

The films actually work as standalone masterpieces themselves, though the real ingenuity is seen when watched as a complete set, spanning approximately the entirety of five nail-biting hours. The trilogy isn’t so much about what happens objectively, but about the world in which it takes place, an abyss of greed and evil. The experience is so diverse and immersive, that by the time we watch the final part of the series, we have come across so many characters and complex plot twists, clues and dead ends, that we find ourselves evolved into such a state that we’d suspect even the most unlikely of characters put before us. Everybody could be a suspect, lawmakers, businessmen, doctors, priests, a mentally unstable lad, even the autistic boy in prison.

It’s rare to achieve such an intense level of quality within a single production, and three different directors, which is why some simply choose to ignore theatrical time limits and proceed to make considerably lengthy masterpieces like The Best of Youth, Shoah, Berlin Alexanderplatz and The Lord of the Rings, all involving production budgets of many small countries’ GDP figures put together. But to hardly spark a news-flash (do yourself a favor and don’t watch the cheesy US-release trailers, they’re horrible), with a restricted television-studio budget and a quality supporting cast (Sean Bean, Jim Carter, Warren Clarke, Rebecca Hall and David Morrissey included), Channel 4 has achieved something as spectacular in it’s own right, and the result is there for all the front-row critics to put down their note-taking and sit with their jaws in their laps. Unbelievable.

By Fazil (at PassionForCinema.com)
To read the original article, click here

This post is an entry to the Reel-Life Bloggers contest organized by wogma.com and reviewgang.com

Central Station

Central Station begins with a shot of several large groups of people pouring out of train carriages and onto the platform at a local train station. The shot is linked to the next scene that takes place on ground level of the station, that being a pouring out of emotions that happens when several people partake in dictating letters to a woman they've never met but entrust to write down what they've said before mailing them off to the chosen address' of loved ones. Just in the opening, director Walter Salles foretells the spilling out of emotion the characters will go through in this film whilst, some might argue, bringing to attention the illiteracy problem that he believes plagues his native Brazil. The opening also goes a long way in establishing the protagonist of the film, a certain Dora (Montenegro), and how she is 'before' the film develops her. Central Station is, essentially, a road movie but it is one of the better road movies that I have ever seen. It is a humbling and thoroughly interesting piece that studies two people of binary oppositions in a situation that consistently pushes weight down on top of a delicate mindset that is possessed by the protagonist.
As a character, Dora is initially unlikable. She spends her days writing out letters dictated to her by illiterate people but rarely posts them to their respective addresses. She is friendless, bar a loose woman named Irene (Pêra) whom visits from the apartment downstairs, and does not have any family or pets. But what makes Central Station so memorable is the gradual changes Dora undergoes in order to become a better person and this is accomplished through the time she spends with a very young boy named Josué (de Oliveira). So the film is a character study, made in a language that is not of the English variety and stretches out to a little bit under two hours. But what brought it its success, I think, is its familiarity in regards to structure, a constantly shifting film that moves on down its single strand arc, effortlessly gliding from location to location and setup to pay-off. The beginning of Dora's transformation occurs not so far from her own door given how many miles she must travel in this film. She witnesses a young boy steal something from a stand before he is chased by security and mercilessly shot in a desolate area near the station.
The initial incident from the outside that interrupts Dora's life, which itself could constitute as the set up, is her acquiring of Josué, when a tragedy befalls him. She figures he is helpless and may need to steal to live, similarly to what the prior, now dead, youth had to do also. The centre of the film revolves around Dora delivering Josué to his father, an address that she acquired a few days earlier when the boy's own mother dictated a letter to her. The character's goal is in a very remote and far off place, too many bus rides and truck lifts away to be reached in a relatively quick time. But complications to do with people having moved on or being missing equate to the two having to trek on to the point where it would be wiser to continue into the unknown rather than just turn back, since a certain point as been crossed. During this time, Dora will undergo a transformation.
The ideas behind the film are perfectly captured by a truck driver, whose words double up as the film's entire study, something the author(s) wants to make quite clear. At one point, whilst driving flat out on the open road, the trucker exclaims that 'the open road has changed him'. Not only this but 'many times' when discussing his job and his experiences with Dora. Principally this is exactly the point. Central Station, being the 'road movie' that it is, allows two or slightly more persons to learn more about themselves as they travel on a continuous route of no return. This is the crux of the film as explained by an individual who is helpful for as long as he needs to be, states what he needs to state before being removed from the text once his kind-natured spirit is brought into repute for aiding in some shoplifting. Additionally, the boy Josué himself brings to both our and Dora's attention Dora's flaws.
If the demonisation of Josué's father is very much present as this uncaring and far away individual, who enjoyed being under the influence of alcohol, then the boy points out Dora bears a similar mindset with her attitudes to alcohol. The statement draws on parallels with the father, as this uncaring and quite solemn individual who doesn't see job through. Then we remember Dora's attitude to all the letters she wrote and to the people she took money off of, while she insulted them in the process. Is Dora any better than the boy's father? Did she ever stop to think of this? Perhaps the father is a better person for at least he, as pointed out by the boy, could mould wood and earn a living out of a skill. While thoroughly engaging and always interesting as interactions and situations are played out, Central Station takes time to develop exchanges and studies like all great, slow-burning character studies do. The film is rewarding in a spiritual, dramatic and emotional sense and it could quite feasibly be labelled as one of the better films to ever come out of South America.

The Misfortunates - The Shittines of Things

If you could redeem your childhood halfway through your life with your conscience intact and everything else retracted, would you really want to celebrate what you’ve savored all your life and relive them all one by one, moment by precious moment? More interestingly, would you with just your scarred conscience, try and alter the course of your future to spawn a better you in the future? Or would you rather face the future unknown, that lies ahead of you and let fate take its vehement course? People talk about childhood memories like they were filled with confetti showers, picture-perfect memories festooned with innocence and simpler days with all the time in the world to think about nothing, with every disposable resource at your command, to fulfill the one purpose that the world existed at your feet: you. If you now reflect upon your past with that sort of fondness you find inexplicable, were you honestly aware of how dear those moments really were when you were actually living them? And would you be reflecting on what you are today, twenty years from now with the same amount of relish that you bestow upon your childhood? Why then do we find it so hard to see our present in the same light as we would from a mere filament of memory? Definitely, memory is no equal a substitute for reality. Or maybe, that’s what memories are for, archiving ourselves, a multi-hued reconciliation statement that stands testimony to what we are today, whatever they may represent. Questions and answers such as these appear like soap bubbles in air, while you watch the life of Gunther Strobbe unfold from the past into what he is today: a frustrated author sitting at a table holding a publisher’s letter of regret, regret at not finding his work interesting enough to publish, regret at not finding his life interesting; because it’s a templated apology for sending off his own autobiography into the trash. And with that, Gunther knows his whole life has come a full circle: from a childhood carved out of a garbage dump to a trash-can containing his whole life, documented. What has brought him to this abhorring point in his life? What is it that makes his life-story lying in a trash-can look ironic? Let’s roll back a decade. Kenneth Vanbaeden is Gunther, 13. Welcome to the Strobbes. Here’s your mug of beer. Let’s listen to that Roy Orbison tape, please.
The Strobbes aren’t exactly nice people to live with, especially for a maturing boy like Gunther. His uncles Beefcake, Koen and Petrol seemingly have little or no purpose in their lives, apart from drinking enough beer everyday to turn their bodies into huge, live alcohol faucets; and engaging in bizarre community activities that culminate in,.. well what else but more beer and stupor-style-sex.
The Strobbes live for the moment. Time is never a quantifiable aspect of their lives, rather it’s a mere constance of proportion within which they simply exist. They’ve all landed back at their aged mother’s spare hearth due to their particular problems: blackout drinking, compulsive gambling, non-stop whoring and chronic fighting. Not exactly solid-citizen types and certainly no role-models for Gunther. Gunther’s mother had long since abandoned the family because of his father, Marcel who being the eldest among the Strobbe brothers is the booziest of the lot, quite literally an ashtray inside a beer-bucket type, perpetually drunk and smelling of sweat, urine and vomit. He makes even his rowdy siblings look cultured and sober. Gunther himself barely fourteen, has taken up alcohol ages ago. He shares his room with his uncle who has sex on the floor next to his bed and who feeds him beer for breakfast. You can’t but help becoming increasingly worried at the moral peril this boy lives in. Gunther faces the brunt of the social life outside his home and at school, where a wider society fails to see in him, a boy in need of help and shuns him aside as one among his uncles and the rowdy gang of misnomers. His one honest attempt at gaining the trust of a friend is thwarted when the parents disallow the frienship for fear of bad influences from a Strobbe.
It is to be understood that child welfare services have tried to extract the boy from such living conditions, with dire results that had involved a lot of violence. The Strobbes believe that their home, small as it is, is one of the best places for Gunther to grow up in. Now, this is not fraught without sufficient reasons. Uncouth and nasty as they are, the Strobbes are one fiercely loyal, tight-knight family, whose love for each other remains genuine, in spite of the fact that it is horribly flawed. They are proud of their family, whatever there is to feel proud of, and stress the importance of some sort of a heritage within their hippie-lifestyle. Gunther loves them for all they are, and this is what makes it all the more harder for him to break free. The only sane member of the household is the Grandma, (whose character is unfortunately not detailed upon, leaving much to the speculation of the viewer) who sees the paradox in Gunther’s affection for the family. And so with her help, it isn’t long before the boy decides to take things into his hands and leaves home for boarding school, after violent and emotional moments in the house.
A few years from when we first see him as the failed author, Gunther has now become a respected novelist who’s well into his fifth book. But he still doesn’t want to let go of his family, and at the same time, he feels furious for having been deprived of so much, that has made him the mess he is today. His girlfriend’s pregnancy makes him scared of the responsibility, one that awaits him when the baby comes. He feels that the baby will turn into something worse than what he is today, being raised by one such as himself with a scarred conscience. The grandma is now in a home for the aged, with Asperger’s syndrome. His father and uncle Beefcake are no more, having drunken themselves to death. Petrol and Koen still haven’t lost their ways, beer bottles in hand. It takes a lot to reach back into your past with an eraser in your hand. But whether our Gunther is emotionally strong to break free to be the father that he has learnt not to be is to be seen and applauded in this rare gem out of the frugal platter of movies that Belgium manages to offer every year.
The cinematography is a revelation. If all you’ve ever seen of Belgium are from movies like In Bruges, JCVD, Dominique Deruddere’s Everybody’s Famous!, Lucas Belvaux’s films and L’Iceberg, don’t jump molten-eyed into that vacation plane before you watch this gritty, grimy version. Rubens Impens has sculpted a landscape out of filth and gloom in true cinema verité style, with a balanced, artful use of color and texture. The dreary existence of people’s lives disturb you. The Strobbes seem like the only ones with a laughter-vein within them. Residential neighborhoods feel eerie and closeted. The predominant public have an air of perpetual, stubborn joblessness about them. Everyone displays a profile of dejection. People don’t talk freely. Courtesy is rationed. I’m not well versed with history lessons, but was there some kind of civil disturbance at that time (70’s-80’s), I wonder..
And here’s that soundtrack you could die to lay your hands on, if you’re a seventies fan of rock music. Jeff Neve’s original compositions are a delight. And what could be crazier than seeing three grown men, drunk up to their red noses, crying and bleating to Rob Orbinson performing “Pretty Woman” on the telly?
The heavy essence of nondoctrinance and reckless, stagnant lifestyles along with depressing themes of decay shouldn’t keep you away from a charming movie such as this one. You’d only feel sad and puzzled as to why the Strobbes had never thought of becoming full-bloom hippies, which would atleast give a clear non-conformist foundation for Gunther to build upon, rather than to coerce their fun into societal violence. And it’s even sadder because none of this is mere fiction.

By Fazil (at PassionForCinema.com)
To read the original article, click here

Qian li zou dan qi (Riding Alone for Thousand of Miles)

Ken Takakura can probably be a one-man hall of fame in Japan. Western audience will remember him most as the introvert detective of impeccable integrity who teams up with Michael Douglas in Black Rain (1989). Asian audience will remember him in his more recent work Poppoya (1999), where his portray of a dedicated railroader and a remorseful father does not leave a single pair of dry eyes in each and every screening. At the age of 75, he came out of retirement and went to China to make a picture (which he's never done before) that does not have one single professional actor besides himself. What enticed him to this folly? Zhang Yimou must be an important reason, if not the only reason.
Many hail "Riding alone for a thousand miles" as Zhang's return to his true self after making "Heroes" which is technically flashy but somewhat lacking in content, followed by "House of flying daggers" which is technically flashy and completely devoid of any meaningful content whatsoever. I welcome the Zhang in "Riding" but do not think it's really the same director that we used to know. The clock simply cannot be turned back and the times are changing. In "Riding" Zhang has brought us something new. It remains to be debated if this new film, which has been very successful in both China and Japan, is as honest as his earlier ones before the two disasters.
The story is simple. In a beautiful but lonely coastal village lives Takada (Ken Takakura), a fisherman who had deserted the city and not been in communication with his son for ten years. A call from his considerate daughter-in-law brings him to the hospital, only to find his son in sick bed refusing to see him. She gives him a video tape containing his son's TV program shot in Yunnan, to ease his disappointment. When the diagnosis of terminal cancer comes, Takada decides to go to Yunnan to finish shooting the performance of a Chinese opera singer, something that his son did not have time to do on the last expedition. The story is mainly on what he encounters in Yunnan on this quest. Zhang touches on several things in this contemporary story.
First of all, the main theme is clearly father-and-son, explored in not just one, but two stories. True to his old form, Zhang take a minimalized approach, which suits Takakura well. The other story is about the Chinese opera singer and his eight-year-old son. The interesting thing is that in the movie, we never see either pair of father and son together, but instead interaction between Takada and the little boy culminating in a touching parting scene.
There is good depth in the relationship between Takada and his son although the only communication we see in the movie is through his daughter-in-law. We are not told details of what led to the alienation between father and son but get a general understanding that the problem is rooted in both being stubbornly unwilling to reveal their feelings. When Takada finally goes to Yunnan, he finds out from people that his son was very much a loner there, being isolated by cultural and language barriers. It's by going through the same experience of loneliness that he finally feels being close to his son. On the other hand, when the son hears that his father is in Yunnan, it's not only just the appreciation of what is being done, but also (maybe even more importantly) the realization that his father is experiencing the same loneliness he once experienced before. He finally wants to see his father.
There are other things that Zhang has touched on. He is trying to show a modernized China, not so much on the material plane, but more on the mind set of the common people in the remote province. The obstacles Takada encounters initially are, although bureaucratic, not that unreasonable, and due a lot to just language barrier. People are genuinely kind and helpful, particularly after they have heard his tragic story. It's interesting that all the other actors use their real names in the movie, and probably play their real-life roles: tour company translator, local tour guide, government officials, village elders, probably even the prisoners! The cultural and language barrier here are portrayed as nothing more than a natural situation which can be easily overcome - e.g. finding a rooftop (probably the only one) in the remote village which gets cell phone signals so that Takada can call the tourist company translator for help in instant translation. To the ordinary people in the remote village in Yunnan, the arrival of a Japanese visitor is a great honour and the entire village is out to welcome him in a big feast.
Zhang has brought us something very different from anything we've seen from him before. Other than the tragic nature of the main story and the sad father-son alienation in the two story lines, this is an unabashed feel good movie. Let others be skeptical and cynical about it. Personally, I see nothing wrong with it.

London to Brighton

London to Brighton at first seems like a movie you would have always wanted to make after being inspired by watching Amorres Perros and Mike Leigh’s Naked, back-to-back, in good proportion and shortly after, having won a filming camera in a short-film contest. You don’t need sets or props to make a film like Naked or Amores Perros, you don’t really need a camera crew to aid you in making such a film. You just need a good story, and maybe some skill in scriptwriting (if one is sensible enough to know the difference). Apart from a bit of hard work, it’s fairly easy. That’s what the film makers want you to think. Or so YOU think. The non-linear, parallel story-line narrative has by now been used and over used so many times in movies these days; you might think the scriptwriters either have no sense of originality, or wanton disregard for content and more than desirable focus on hammering in their style until their films stop feeling like one and ends up looking like a mangled, uncouth, badly drafted film-school thesis. But too much of mainstream film-watching can flatten your mind, requiring you to look down upon those other films that are made with tighter budgets, with more worries than prospects. This was the kind of attitude with which I settled down to watch London to Brighton. The first ten minutes later, I was still stubborn to my opinion. I yawned.
Half-an hour later, I was watching the movie once again from the start, this time with a notepad file open on my toolbar.
The familiar, hazy uncertainness lingers for the first five minutes or so. Two prostitutes: One middle aged, the other no older than fifteen are thrown at your feet through the doors of a London cubicle toilet. The time is an unearthly 0230 hrs. The older lady is bleeding profusely. Her eye is swollen into a lemon-sized thing with a slit for the eye. The little girl looks so scared out of her senses; she’d dive headfirst into the toilet bowl if you told her it could help save her life. A while later, the two are on a train fleeing London and heading to Brighton. Fleeing, because the girl asks if Derek was following them.
Introducing Derek, a ruthless pimp in London, who gets contacted by an underworld criminal who looks like he’s fractured every single bone in his face, and is currently undergoing smile-therapy from a Japanese samurai. Two villains: one a pimp, the second by profession, two women fleeing and one bloody eye. Something fits. Flashbacks. Suddenly, you spot a pedophile in between. You already know that both women are on the run, which was evident from the prologue. A British indie film definitely has to have people chasing and tracking you, when you’re on the run. Title says London to Brighton, and you think well, there’s your plot. Well, not exactly. Not until you’re through all the way, with that wonderful culmination in the final reel.
Being adapted from a short-film titled ‘Royalty’ by Williams, the screenplay is as lean as a prize featherweight boxer, no saggy tag ons, no sub plots to bog the story down, just a hard as nails story, that drags you in very swiftly. The scenes intercut, between what’s happening and what happened in rapid, intriguing ways, but the most interesting aspect of the narration is something so trivial, you’d never notice it at first, and god forbid you never noticed even after you watched the film. It’s the linear handle in the form of the older lady’s lemon-sized swollen eye. If it weren’t for this little beacon, we would sure find a hard time figuring out when the events are unfolding, and you’d most certainly have to press that rewind button one too many times.
‘London to Brighton’ has been likened to Mike Leigh’s Naked, and perhaps this is an apt comparison, perhaps not. Both have very similar portrayals of Britain’s gutter-standard of living, yet both end up seeming quite philosophical towards the end. But what triggers the philosophical twists keep these two films apart as far as possible. What remains clear, however, is that Williams has served up a deliciously gritty and unflinching drama in the midst of chaos, which he occasionally pauses with wonderful slow-motion captures and dreamy shots of the windy barren boardwalk of Brighton.
The narrative somehow stays clear of Kelly’s brief ordeals to get ’some quick money’. We really don’t know if she’s disgusted by her own vocation, or has a very impersonal attitude, a behavioral format that keeps her mind sane. At least that’s what I could conceive, or why else would an emotionally hardened woman, who seems pretty experienced in her line of work suddenly look at this young girl in a sympathetic way?? And all this, after she practically broils the huge pot of sh*t herself: she actually goes scouting for juvenile girls and spots Joanne. She lures the little girl herself into the horrifying trap, with professional calmness. She buys the girl food and offers her ‘work’. In other words, she’s loaded the gun and cocked the hammer herself. And then, there comes the inevitable change of mind at the pimp’s client’s place. The pedophilic man was freaking sixty, and he was rich. Doesn’t that make things fairly clear that his motive is plain kink? Maybe Kelly was having second thoughts all the while, and she’s just too confused to think under the lamp. Or maybe she has a past, one that involves a child that she so badly wants to forget, that her way of going into denial is to bruise her own body by prostituting herself. Maybe the director wants us to know that psychologically, London isn’t all that happy and gay as we think it is, people there are living in quiet despair and ruined lifestyles, this being just the whipped cream atop a stale, fungus infested meat-pie. Atleast, I’d like to think the director was trying to make a point here. Other than this twinkle of a plot-hole, London to Brighton wastes no time in filing away your nail-points with its racy, harried camera work.
Bruised, realistic, harrowing and compelling, with very good performances put in by both the female lead actors: Georgia Groome, Lorraine Stanely and Johnny Harris; professional, by industry standards  – a very good watch. Makes you want to watch something excessively cheerful as soon as possible, once the credits roll. Considering the fact that I’ve been watching too many movies that brood and howl, I ran straight into Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s chocolate-candy coloured paris to watch Micmacs à tire-larigot

By Fazil (at PassionForCinema.com)
To read the original article, click here

'Festen' and the genius of Dogme 95

"Summertime – and the living is easy"…Rich family patriarch Helge Klingelfeldt is particularly anxious that his three grown children Christian, Michael and Helene, support his party 's festive mood by making a display of happy unity of the clan. Even downstairs staff is expected to somehow join in the general ambiance.
Night falls, and the master of ceremonies introduces himself and announces that dinner is served. Helge is met by spontaneous outbursts of applause and song. While everyone 's being seated, the kitchen staff add their finishing touches to the evening's festive meal. Fish steam, venison broil. The banquet begins. When Christian eventually clears his throat and calls for silence only he knows what is to come. A speech to shock, a speech to shatter. The most heart-breaking night in living memory is about to descend on the unsuspecting Klingenfeldts. However, irrespective of skeletons being mercilessly ripped out of the family closet, stiff upper lips prevail and in a highly macabre way the party keeps going on.
Festen is not only the first but arguably the best from the Dogme-films. It's a bit difficult to say much about the acting - not understanding Danish is a bit of a barrier- let alone Danish mores. Christian (Ulrich Thomsen) is played as the still centre - we find out about him from what others say- yet he holds our attention throughout. Thomas Bo Larsen as Michael the obnoxious younger brother puts in a full-blooded manic performance and Paprika Steen as their sister Helena gave her role plenty of depth. The father (Henning Moritzen) was a bit two-dimensional - not enough charm to offset his basic nastiness. Among the minor players, I particularly liked Lars Brygman as Lars, the reception clerk, who never loses his (somewhat stunned) composure even as he is lying fully clothed in a bathtub at the behest of Helena looking for ghosts in the ceiling. I also liked Helmuth (Klaus Bondam), the Danish idea of the comic German toastmaster, who after some particularly shocking revelations at the dinner table manages to suggest dessert, coffee and dancing in the lounge - and the stunned guests meekly comply.
The film's shaky, grainy, hand-held camera work and natural lighting (intrinsic to the Dogma movement) lends the film the intimate feeling of a "home movie" though the camera work is anything but amateurish. The camera intrusively views the action from a variety of angles both distant (high angle shots from the ceiling) and intimate (among those at the dinner table). The overall effect of this vérité style is an immediacy and rawness that magnifies the film's amalgam of emotions. As a result, the characters and their dilemmas become uncomfortably real and affecting. However, it is not solely the film's aesthetic that engenders a strong emotional reaction, it is also the intelligent script populated with well drawn characters and turbulent themes.
Festen was the first film which was made adhering to the rules of the Dogme 95 manifesto or rather the Dogme movement founded by the director Thomas Vintenberg, along with Lars Von Trier. Dogme is danish for dogma. It was basically meant as a fillip to spark off an interest in unknown filmmakers by suggesting that one can make a recognized film without being dependent on commissions or huge Hollywood budgets, depending on European government subsidies and television stations instead. The movement has been criticized for being a disguised attempt to gain media attention. Dogme was initiated to cause a stir and to make filmmakers and audiences re-think the art, effect and essence of film-making.
The audience may also be more engaged as they do not have overproduction to alienate them from the narrative, themes, and mood. To this end, Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg produced ten rules to which any Dogme film must conform. These rules, referred to as the "Vow of Chastity," are as follows:
1. Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found).
2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. (Music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shot).
3. The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. (The film must not take place where the camera is standing; shooting must take place where the film takes place).
4. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera).
5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.
6. The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)
7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to say that the film takes place here and now.)
8. Genre movies are not acceptable.
9. The film format must be Academy 35 mm.
10. The director must not be credited.
Vintenberg and Von Trier have shown what it takes to attain a monk-like asceticism when it comes to film-making. The result is for all to see. Festen, a.k.a Celebration can be watched for free at theauteurs.com.

By Fazil

XXY

Adapted from a short story by Sergio Bizzio, XXY is the story of Alex (Inés Efron), a fifteen year old intersexual born with genitalia characteristic of both male and female. Argentine director Lucia Puenzo, daughter of Luis Puenzo who directed The Official Story, though tackling a delicate subject has avoided sensationalism while crafting a deeply touching and poignant coming of age story about the pain of growing up without truly knowing who you are. Though minimal amounts of dialog are used and there are long periods of silence, XXY does not come across as being pretentious or strained. Rather it captures the uncertainty and awkwardness of teens with authenticity and awareness.

Alex's father Kraken (Ricardo Darin) is a marine biologist who wants to protect his daughter/son from the stares and questions of society and moves the family to a remote seaside residence in Uruguay. Now that Alex has become a teen, he wants to give her the right to choose whether to lead her life as a man or a woman while emphasizing that he loves her unconditionally and thinks she is "perfect" exactly the way she is and the way she is not. Alex seems to have made her choice by stopping the hormones that have kept her female but her mother Suli (Valeria Bertuccelli) pressures her to decide about surgery by inviting friends Ramiro and Erika (German Palacios and Carolina Pelleritti) from Buenos Aires to stay with them, one of whom is a doctor who specializes in plastic surgery, her invitation being on the pretext that she wants Ramiro to get to know Alex.

Along for the ride is their shy teenage son Alvaro, brilliantly portrayed by Martin Piroyansky who knows nothing of Alex's condition and has some sexual issues of his own. What is not anticipated, however, is that Alex and Alvaro will form an immediate emotional connection, though neither will admit it to the other, and in a beautifully controlled scene, have a sexual encounter with Alex revealing herself by playing the male role. Though the encounter was witnessed by her father, he is not judgmental only perplexed about what his proper role should be in Alex's life, and discusses Alex with a gas station owner who had to make a similar choice in his teens.

Kraken's emotional support stands in sharp contrast with Ramiro. In one of the most gut-wrenching scenes in a long time, Ramiro is unspeakably cruel to Alvaro, telling him that he lacks talent and that, with dripping irony, he is glad he is attracted to Alex since he was beginning to think he was gay. Water symbolism runs throughout the film – Kraken, who is named after a mythological sea monster, rescues turtles from poachers and removes their shell to discover their sex. Alex has an aquarium filled with hermaphroditic clownfish and a collection of dolls with attached penises attached. None of this symbolism, however, adds much to a story that is told with subtlety and great sensitivity.

Winner of the Critics Week Grand Circle Award at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, XXY features an extraordinary performance by Inés Efron who manages to build empathy for her character while making Alex a symbol of all adolescents' search for acceptance. Director Lucia Puenzo has said that after reading the short story by Bizzio that she "couldn't get it out of her head". A film of haunting beauty and compassion that says that every human being deserves to be loved for who they are regardless of gender, physical deformity, or sexual orientation, it will also be hard to get out of your head.

Klass

Although sadly school violence has become all too common place in recent years, very few films have dared to examine it. Gus Van Sant did it thoughtfully and patiently in his Tarr inspired Elephant, which took home the Palm D'Or at Cannes when it debuted. That film dealt with the daily routines of a number of high school students on the day of the shooting. Conversely, Ilmar Raag's Klass details the weeks leading up to its sad climax, dissecting just how such an event can happen.

One day, after being chided by his girlfriend, Kaspar (Vallo Kirs) for helping pick on Joosep (Part Uusberg), he begins to change his ways, and sympathize with the boy. This causes his friends - the bullies - to turn on him, and soon both are the victims. Their daily routine consists of Kaspar trying to protect Joosep, and trying to stop their beatings. After weeks of torture, and a fateful trick used to assemble the two into a trap on a beach one day changes everything for everyone.

Director Raag uses a frenetic editing pace in many segments. Some scenes are masterfully created with cutaways timed nicely, while at other times the editing is too busy, trying to be too flashy. That can be a distraction, and I think takes away from the film. Raag also mixes up his soundtrack, at times using pounding techno music, sometimes working, good sometimes not. On the other hand, Raag also employs a few beautiful orchestral pieces, sparsely. Although I would have liked to see them used more throughout the film, when they do occasionally play I admit it does seem to make what's on screen just that much more poignant. Raag also uses some ambient strings here and there, usually playing one booming note at a time, which i thought was interesting. He seems to have a keen sense for tonally offbeat direction, which I like. If he can tone down his want of flash (which I do not really like), I think he has some serious potential.

Although i would have preferred Klass to be a quieter picture, I still think this is a very very strong film. It is unquestionably a modern film, dealing with somewhat modern issues. Some certainly will - and have - call into question some of the plausibility of the film. For example, teacher's rarely seem to be present. My answer to their quarrel would be that such realist logic need not apply here. Whereas Van Sant's Elephant was shot as documentary, Klass is shot as parable. It's about why otherwise good kids can to unthinkable things. Typically, these kids are no more evil than those who pushed them over the edge to begin with. Klass does something that is not uncommon in pictures, by making its villains worthy scum. Given that this is about a school shooting, that is actually quite a bold move. Raag makes his bullies despicable, putting the audience in the uncomfortable position of wanting to see them punished, and handily. It's all about empathy.

Even teacher's have a hand in such cruelty. Klass includes a couple moments of subtle hostility by one teacher, as Joosep expresses the vanity of individuals defining themselves by label. This is a not so direct theme throughout the film in fact. The teenagers, of course, are covered in head to toe with their brand name clothes, and chide Joosep for not wearing such clothes, yet harass him for wearing brand name sneakers - shoes fit for someone cooler than he.

This is a very strong film from Raag. It is well acted by its leads. It contains flashes of greatness. The film works best when it sticks to its story. Raag gets carried away with his direction at times, but despite it the film still works very well. It is a thoughtful film. It can be painfully cruel, but such subject matter deserves cruelty. When Kaspar and Joosep make that fateful walk into the school, their expressions are not of anger, but of profound sadness, which I suspect is what most must be truly feeling. I found the last few moments of this film dreadfully sad. When the shots are silenced, the heavy presence of inevitability sets in with the contemplation of all which has just happened. Such weight should be felt on all our shoulders. We've all been bullied, bullies, or the conscientious middle man at some point in our lives. Klass is one Estonian export that classrooms all over the world could benefit from.

By MacAindrais from Canada

O'Horten

If you've watched Alexander Payne's About Schmidt starring Jack Nicholson and found yourself comfortable with the pacing of the film, you'd be deligted with this Norwegian import of 2009. I made it a point to watch it myself after Roger Ebert classified it under his best foreign language films of the year. The humour was subtle, and the performance by Baard Owe was equally understated.

The film starts at the point where the lead character is on the threshold of his retirement, after a disciplined life of driving trains for 40 years. Here's a man who depends on monotony. He's never had a more exciting day in his life other than the few times he visits his senile mother in a nursing home.
As uncomfortable he is with his retirement, his social life is restricted to bartenders, a tobacconist, and his colleagues.
But things tend to stop being mundane right from the night of his retirement. A kid forces him to sleep over when he finds himself to be an intruder, he misses his last ever train route, he accompanies an old man, travels in a car driven by a blindfolded guy, adopts a dog... all under unusual circumstances which he never brought upon himself. Unlike other movies which brood about post retirement-depression, this one calls out for the protagonist to live out these years of monotonous bliss like he's got nothing to lose. Pretty decent film. Entertaining if you could really get under the skin of the character of Odd and learn to be him as the film progresses.

By Fazil

Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others)

He sits like a man taking a hearing test, big headphones clamped over his ears, his body and face frozen, listening for a faraway sound. His name is Gerd Wiesler, and he is a captain in the Stasi, the notorious secret police of East Germany. The year is, appropriately, 1984, and he is Big Brother, watching. He sits in an attic day after day, night after night, spying on the people in the flat below.
The flat is occupied by a playwright named Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and his mistress, the actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck). Wiesler (Ulrich Muehe) first saw Dreyman at the opening of one of his plays, where he was informed by a colleague that Dreyman was a valuable man: "One of our only writers who is read in the West and is loyal to our government." How can that be? Wiesler wonders. Dreyman is good-looking, successful, with a beautiful lover; he must be getting away with something. Driven by suspicion, or perhaps by envy or simple curiosity, Wiesler has Dreyman's flat wired and begins an official eavesdropping inquiry.
He doesn't find a shred of evidence that Dreyman is disloyal. Not even in whispers. Not even in guarded allusions. Not even during pillow talk. The man obviously believes in the East German version of socialism, and the implication is that not even the Stasi can believe that. They are looking for dissent and subversion because, in a way, they think a man like Dreyman should be guilty of them. Perhaps they do not believe in East Germany themselves, but have simply chosen to play for the winning team.
Wiesler is a fascinating character. His face is a mask, trained by his life to reflect no emotion. Sometimes not even his eyes move. As played in Muehe's performance of infinite subtlety, he watches Dreyman as a cat awaits a mouse. And he begins to internalize their lives -- easy, because he has no life of his own, no lover, no hobby, no distraction from his single-minded job.
Although the movie won the best foreign-language film Oscar of 2006, you may not have seen it, so I will repress certain developments. I will say that Wiesler arrives at a choice, when his piggish superior officer, the government minister Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thieme), develops a lust for Christa-Maria and orders Wiesler to pin something, anything, on Dreyman so that his rival will be eliminated. But there is nothing to pin on him. A loyal spy must be true to his trade, and now Wiesler is asked to be false to prove his loyalty.
The thing is, Wiesler has no one he can really talk to. He lives in a world of such paranoia that the slightest slip can be disastrous. Consider a scene in the Stasi cafeteria when a young officer unwisely cracks an anti-government joke; Wiesler goes through the motions of laughter, and then coldly asks for the man's name. The same could happen to Wiesler. So as he proceeds through his crisis, he has no one to confide in, and there is no interior monologue to inform us of his thoughts. There is only that blank face, and the smallest indications of what he might be thinking. And then instinctive decisions that choose his course for him.
The Berlin Wall falls in 1989 (the event is seen here), and the story continues for few more years to an ironic and surprisingly satisfactory conclusion. But the movie is relevant today, as our government ignores habeas corpus, practices secret torture, and asks for the right to wiretap and eavesdrop on its citizens. Such tactics did not save East Germany; they destroyed it, by making it a country its most loyal citizens could no longer believe in. Driven by the specter of aggression from without, it countered it with aggression from within, as sort of an anti-toxin. Fearing that its citizens were disloyal, it inspired them to be. True, its enemies were real. But the West never dropped the bomb, and East Germany and the other Soviet republics imploded after essentially bombing themselves.
"The Lives of Others" is a powerful but quiet film, constructed of hidden thoughts and secret desires. It begins with Wiesler teaching a class in the theory and practice of interrogation; one chilling detail is that suspects are forced to sit on their hands, so that the chair cushion can be saved for possible use by bloodhounds. It shows how the Wall finally fell, not with a bang, but because of whispers.

Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman

This is a grim yet utterly riveting film about the infamous executioner and hangman, Albert Pierrepoint. Timothy Spall delivers a compelling and outstanding performance and a surprisingly complex executioner, in surely his finest ever performance. The delightful and enchanting Juliet Stevenson is perfect as Pierrepoint's wife, Annie.

Like his earlier Danielle Cable: Eyewitness (2003), the Granada TV director Adrian Shergold has surpassed himself in his favourite genre of crime. This offering was filmed at Ealing Studios, of all places.

Pierrepoint is a fruit and veg delivery man in the humble, northern English streets of Rochdale, normally, except when he gets the call to go and hang someone, usually in London or HMP Strangeways in Manchester. He is unsurpassed as a technician of death, perfectly estimating the length of rope, etc., depending on the height and build of the person to be executed. You could call him the L S Lowry of killers, an ordinary man with a certain skill when it comes to looking at and handling other people.

He begins as a sort of trainee - who would be the instructor is this line of work? - yet sees each of his peers fade once confronted with the absolute horror of their new job, leaving him the consummate professional, always on hand when the Home Office needs a job done. For Pierrepoint, it is a vocation.

Pierrepoint always takes a deep professional pride in his work, seeing the condemned person as deserving of dignity and respect in death, no matter what their deeds in life. This creates a strange paradox, as he is forced to be clinical and brutal in helping that person to their end. However, given his professional expertise, that end is much quicker and more comfortable than other executioners and methods.

So, after 13 years in the job - merely half way through his career, which saw him hang an incredible 608 people (including the innocent Timothy Evans, and also Ruth Ellis, amongst others) - Pierrepoint is called upon to be the official British hangman at the Nuremberg Tribunals in the aftermath of World War Two. This is where he has to dispatch truly monstrous and evil people; extermination camp guards and the like. This is also where, for me, the film steps up a level.

In Nuremberg, Pierrepoint has to dispatch up to ten war criminals a day. It is a massive job on a scale for which he did not go prepared.

The British army have constructed a scaffold above ground – unlike the usual discreet prison cell and trap-door gallows – and the guilty are to go by the couple, side-by-side. And this is all to take place in one enormous, cavernous – and very apt, if you excuse the pun – aircraft hanger. The British have created a vast cathedral of hanging, the scaffold as its pulpit and Pierrepoint as its archbishop of retribution.

Nevertheless, Pierrepoint performs his dreadful task with professional brilliance, at great pains to insist on the dignity of the guilty once dead; he is horrified when some are expected to be disposed of without even a wooden coffin: 'No, that's not right', exclaims Spall, the epitome of northern disdain.

For me, the shot of the film – the true emblematic, classy shot that shows the difference between Pierrepoint and everyone else, not least his assistant (a military attaché) sitting beside him as they relax with a cigarette after yet another execution – takes place in this hanger, the cathedral of execution, the height of Pierrepoint's career.

In a close shot, Pierrepoint and his military assistant sit at either end of a table, enjoying a smoke. The military man attempts a philosophical discussion of the magnitude of what they've done. Pierrepoint has no comprehension at all, separated as he is from his assistant by the contents of the rest of the screen – the scaffold in the background, deserted after a day's work.

Pierrepoint was a lonely man yet had a typically northern showman's instinct; with his friend Tish, they perform a Flanagan and Allen style musical medley in the pub. Tish is his only friend in the world, probably more so than his wife.

The most touching scene of the film is at the end when Pierrepoint has to execute James 'Tish' Corbitt (he never knew his true name until then).

By frankiehudson from UK

Black Friday

Calling Black Friday a bollywood film is possibly the worst possible remark you could make on a film that kicks open so many manholes on the tarmac of this dirt-road that's become of the Indian judicial system. Black Friday never made it to many theaters in India. But thanks to a bunch of movie critics, people like Anurag Kashyap who are passionate about film making, people who elevate it's status beyond that of plain simple entertaiment slash art included 'power' in its definition, and the Locarno International Film Festival, Black Friday reaches out to people like me three years after it was 'released', touches my heart, caresses it, toys it with some pitch black humour, then ceaslessly sticks needles in it and makes it bleed in agony.

I'm not a mumbaiite, haven't even visited the city. But there's so much I hear everyday about 'the city that never sleeps' of this part of the world, in every form of human communiqe possible. Media used in a loosely generalized term could be just one of them. When people refer to it as the cultural heart of india, I sometimes begin to think of it in literal terms. So literally in fact that a pinch of that heart might spew something so basic and human on your face. That definetly is not human blood. And I'm talking about enough whatever it is that floods the entire nation's capitals, inundate it's roads, turn corporate offices and government buildings, legislative assemblies and courts of justice, slums and prisons into swamps of humanity. Messed up, fucked up and jinxed, but amoebiac, and rolling along like a huge, crazy, magnetic juggernaut that draws everyone and everything in it's path towards that heart. Everyone is affected by something in it, rather than something in it affecting everyone. And that's exactly what turns it into that juggernaut fuelled by crazy cosmos. And those who we see in this film are definitely not a part of that. Or atleast, I pray they shouldn't be.

Black Friday's prologue is an interrogation sequence that's subtly hilarious at first. As the detainee begins to blabber something in disjointed sentences, you find yourself horrified at the fact that you know what he's blabbering about. You suddenly begin to understand very clearly what the policeman is seemingly incapable of understanding. Naturally he considers all this nonsense and continues beating him, while we whisper to ourselves 'holy shit, why doesn't the motherfucker listen?'. The following scene is the scene of the blasts moments before the blood pours. Things seems so normal like as if you're watching 1993 Bombay through a CCTV camera panning these important places. The stuff that you see is every day's happenstance. The more you feel the normalcy, the more you get nervous. You know whats going to happen, because youre safe and comfortable in the future tense of this moment. You wait for it to happen, not wanting to be surprised but it succeeds in catching you unawares. A truly frightening moment in Indian cinema. And when it happens, a small part of you feels a sense of relief, while the bigger you cringes and sighs. Black Friday has descended upon Bombay. It's one-thirty in the afternoon, on the 12th of March, 1993. Curtains raise. Fire-extinguisher ready at hand, caution please.

Anurag has cleverly divided his film into chapters, as done in the book (by Husseini Zaidi) on which the movie is based. The labyrinthine police investigation, if treated in any other way could have otherwise started to feel dull, drab and dis-interesting to a movie audience more attuned to heroes, heroines, villians, fights and songs. Kashyap has just made it easier for you to digest the foaming truth. Clues, apprehensions, interrogations and confessions.. it's a huge bloody dossier by the time you re-witness the blasts towards the end of the film in a haunting epilogue. And to lovingly strip that dossier off any bureaucratic wrapper, there are the character portrayals that can challenge even the best performances of our very own, ridiculous, boringly annual film-fare awardees.

First there is Kay Kay as Inspector Rakesh Maria. He ain't your typical goody-goody-policewallah. Yet, he achieves what his role was intended for. Pressure. He makes the audience reel under the burden placed on his shoulders. So much that you feel like slapping that female journalist who glibly challenges him with human rights violation against the detainees in an interview.

Then there are Aditya Srivastava and Pawan Malhotra who portray Badshah Khan and the underworld don Tiger Memon (Spelled as Tiger Menon in the DVD for 'legal' purposes). At the beginning both these men infuse so much wrath into their characters, you begin to question after a while, the very essence of their humanity. You feel repulsed at the very notion of coming within proximity of these people. They then open their hearts out to you. You now touch your forehead and feel stupid for judging people with your conceptions. That's the purpose of these characters. Make the audience see what exactly is that which makes these people take that eye for an eye.

And finally, there is Vijay Maurya. Ah, if only there could be another film about the blasts, with a more surreal, hypothetical ending, I'd cast him as the feared Dawood Ibrahim once again and have him caned on-screen for every life the real don has cost us. Atleast that could be an empty, but visual treat for everybody. That is, in case the man himself dies a peaceful death without any remorse, far away from the eyes of the Indian judicial system. That's the effect Mr. Vijay has on you. He has a screen-time of less than five minutes. And in those minutes, you feel scared of him. You feel angry at him. You are horrifyingly awed by his power of prescence. And your body freezes as you realize the terror he so coolly, and precisely orchestrates over innocent human lives, all this a meagre by-product of the deadly commerce he indulges in. Snap. Just like that.

The camerawork is grainy, and efforts have been made to give the '90s Bombay' look to today's Mumbai. The interrogation scenes in fluorescent red gives an eerie, uneasy feel. The chase sequences are downright brilliant. If you've marveled at Danny Boyle's opening slum-roller-roaster ride at the beginning of Slumdog Millionaire, know now that those scenes were bases upon the 12-minute police chase through the crowded Dharavi slum that gets both hilarious and exhausting. That's because you're meant to feel exhausted. The film has no songs but is still as long as your everyday Hindi film. The pacing is fantastic though. Kashyap's direction, his witty lines, puns and his basic, obvious intention spews honesty for his work. He's proud of what he does, and why not?

The indian cinema industry holds an annual farce fete called the Indian Filmfare awards. They have curious categories of awards like Best Action, Best Dialogue, Best Scene of the Year, Best Story and of course, alongside all this, an entirely unique category: Best Screenplay. Beats me, who the fuck started this all shit. Not that I really care for these awards, but the amount of recognition and money it garners for movies that could be churned out of a rickety roadside potter's wheel of clay. All that is denied for movies like Black Friday. I mean, for example if Aditya Srivastava was ever nominated for his performance, god bless him, he probably wouldn't have won even if he wore a tux sewn out of currency notes. It's because of the fact that the very people who we witness in this movie, still rule is land, or rather whats underneath that.. with fists of iron.

Thankfully, less polluted lands like Cannes and Venice choose to honour people like Mr. Kashyap in their recognition of quality film making. Kashyap was a member of the jury at the Venice Film Festival in 2004 and once again this year.

By Fazil [http://kmfazil.tk]

Underground

Underground is a 1995 Yugoslavian film by bosnian Emir Kusturica. It won the golden palm at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. Here is my take on the movie: Firstly, if you look at the original title of the script (done by Kovacevic, NOT Kusturica) which is also given as the opening sequence line, you see that it is an allegory (the title is Once Upon A Time There Was A Country), so I don't see the point of calling the film historically wrong... It was never meant to be historically right, otherwise it would have to leave out all the consequent exaggerations so typical of Kusturica - the length of time spent in the basement, the more theatrical than movie-like acting, the visual motives and so on. This maybe a bit difficult to accept as there are some documentary sequences in there, but I see it more of a context building element than an attempt to mislead the viewer about Yugoslav history.

Secondly, people seem to like the first third of the movie for its humorous elements and I guess because they can follow the plot easily (the whole WW2 theme in the exposition, I must admit, I enjoyed as well)... The second third starts as the Allies bomb Belgrade and kill more than the Nazis did 4 years before that, so maybe the Western people are inclined to disagree with the rest based on this line, I don't know...

Thirdly, I don't see where the Serbian propaganda element kicks in ... If you think the documentary sequences of Slovenia and Croatia welcoming the Germans with glee, and Serbia fiendishly being left out, is done purposefully for slandering the Croats and Slovenes, I hate to disappoint you, but Serbia saw no such celebration, so there is nothing of that kind to show... Instead the plot balances this out as it is set in Belgrade, where the supposed wartime "heroes" of the story (never ethnically identified as Serbs) collaborate with the occupation forces when they have a personal interest in doing so, and vice versa. Again, historically there were antifascist elements throughout Yugoslavia, but it's also a fact that Croatia became a fascist independent state at the time.

Somebody mentioned the Muslim element as being totally absent, and I agree with that to an extent, but Kovacevic's novel was finished in early 1991, before the war in Bosnia escalated into what we now know. And, besides, Muslims were not considered a nation but a religious group until the end of WW2, and since there is no mention of the Caholic or Orthodox church in the movie, I don't see why there should be mention of Muslims.

I understand most Wasterners consider communism to be the Soviet kind everywhere, but I saw this movie as a commentary remark on the inequality of the proclaimed and the apparent, not of communism or Yugoslav socialism, or any -ism for that matter. Petar Popara is proclaimed an electrician, Marko Dren a poet, neither one a real politician, but both of them high ranking communists. They are petty criminals before the war who only get into the party ranks to continue their criminal activities when the war starts. Marko, the educated one, continues his criminal activities by using slave labor of the basement inhabitants to make and traffic guns after the war. He is a typical opportunist since he does this for personal gain, lies to the wretched people below that they have to do it for the war effort, and keeps Petar Popara inside in order to be with Natalija up above. This is just what makes the characters and relationships so complex, and in my opinion, the reason why this movie has a universal story. If any propaganda is shown, this one is the anti-war, anti-politician kind.

Back to the story, I especially liked the Old Man character as he is the insider. He is the only one who knows what's going on above, yet stays in the basement, he is Marko's accomplice, and he "steals time" by winding the clock backwards, which as I see it, is a comment on the Balkans always lagging behind the rest of the world based on misguided trust in people who claim to be the saviors and are "on your side." The basement youth is totally oblivious to the world, as exemplified by Jovan, Petar's son, born on the first day of the basement exodus, with the side story of going out with his dad to fight the "goddamn Germans" and not knowing the difference between the sun and the moon, based on his fathers stories and drawings(myths and realities of history as told by the idolized wise).

As for the movie being co-produced by the Serbian Broadcasting Company, I can safely say that Serbian cinematography and movie productions in the nineties were definitely not purely regime-oriented. How else would you explain RTS having co-produced Pretty Villages - Pretty Flames? Based on all this, I can't say that this movie is even in the same league as Tanovic's Oscar Winner No Man's Land someone recommended instead of Underground. That movie is a simple story of civil war told in a simple good guys - bad buys way. If I were as cynical as some other reviewers here, I could say that it was Muslim propaganda, as many other US produced movies on the Bosnian war subject, as it openly gives the impression that Serbs are the root of all evil, they are stupid and only do things if you hold a gun to their head, whereas Bosnian Muslims are fun-loving pro-Western dudes forced into waging war, but would rather listen to the Rolling Stones, and they are so altruistic that they would even help the enemy in the ditch. Talk about historically wrong...

The author is from serbia and goes under the pen-name of BOJAN-.

Auf Der Anderen Seite (At the Edge of Heaven)

This is one of those movies that speak to your soul directly. Excellent scenario and directing, a wonderful use of the "helplessness" and "missing half" theme, and a strong moral implication related to today's ideological arena.

The complex story is well-woven and under the control of the scenarist. The storyline revolves around four or five characters, creating a couple of different stories that go on. No one among the characters are aware of the full complexity of the situation they are in, and they keep missing their destiny by a couple of seconds or by a couple of meters. The audience is fully aware of what is going on, and this creates a feeling of helplessness. One main theme therefore is that: Helplessness in the face of chance meetings - or lack thereof.

One of the main characters, arguably the main character, Nejat Aksu, (acted by Baki Davrak), is reminiscent of the writer/director himself. He is a professor in a German university, and his emotional or behavioral ties with his rural Turkish background are split. As a loner, the audience does not hear much his opinions or feelings on the issue; we have to judge by small changes of expression in close shoot-ups. He has lost his "Mediterranean" expressiveness. In contrast, Lutte's (acted by Patrycia Ziolkowska) behavior becomes more and more aggressive, as she moves geographically (and mentally) towards Turkey.

One note of interest is that all characters have a "missing half", somewhere else in the movie, but fail to get to that half, and even die trying. Nejat Aksu has lost a mother, and then loses his father. The maternal figure is there with Lutte, but Lutte is missing the father and a certain strength of will to take steps, as she later confesses in her journal. Ayten Öztürk is also missing the mother, probably she is missing a lover as well - she is unrested - she is in fact "a person you likes to struggle" as commented by Susanne Staub. Lutte's mother, Susanne Staub (by Hanna Schygulla) is missing a daughter eventually. This contributes to the feeling of helplessness, but also adds a moral tone, implying that solutions to our life problems can be lying closer than it would appear to us.

A very touching scene in the movie is when Susanne is in front of the window, watching the Muslim man walk to the prayer. She is explained by Nejat Aksu the significance of the festivities, and she realizes that she is closer to Turkey than she imagines. In that scene, she takes a step towards making a posthumous peace with her daughter, which she direly needs. The scene is symbolic in the sense that it reflects the political arena.

The writer and the director Akin is an acute observer. The contrast between Istanbul and Bremen are first laid out with striking effectiveness, then the similarities in the human emotional range are brought out to contribute to the reconciliation towards the end. In effect, the audience is presented with a moral tone: To find the missing half, you have to actually "travel", geographically and mentally, to the other half, and make your peace with it. The other half, is of course, Germany and Turkey, West and East.

The end is particular: Two important questions are unresolved. Are we then to assume that our characters are lost without hope? No, because Susanne Staub and Nejat Aksu have already taken the first steps to "reconcile with their missing half".

One possibly negative point about the movie is that the director's image of the Turkish police force and lawyers is outdated by probably twenty five years. However, this is to be overlooked for the sake of cinematic language and the story.

The movie is a rare piece. It tells a story of lost chances, with an ongoing theme of "missing half" and "miss by a couple of inches". However, we have reconciliation at the end, creating a feeling of optimism but also unresolved issues which helps to add the moral tone of: "You have to go towards your missing half to reconcile".

by Sinan_Ozel from Turkey

Das Experiment (The Experminent)

Taxi driver and freelance journalist Tarek Fahd spots an advert in a newspaper for volunteers to take part in a psychological experiment over two weeks. He arrives along with a group of others, to be divided up into prisoners and guards before being placed into a simulated prison and provided with rules, Tarek being prisoner number 77. Initially everyone is enjoying themselves but soon the guards tire of the prisoners taking the p*ss and decide it is time to clamp down on their behaviour. As they realize that they have no limit on their powers, the actions of the guards become increasingly brutal and uncaring.

Based on the infamous experiments carried out at Stanford in the 1970's, this film had it all going for it in terms of being an effective thriller while also looking at the ways that human nature will gravitate towards the cruel once they are placed in positions of power. I decided to watch this film because it seemed interesting on this basis but also very topical considering the behaviour of the US soldiers in the Iraq prisons – mostly poor 'white trash' types who were corrupted when they suddenly found themselves in a position they had never been in before – control. Like them, the characters here gradually get more extreme – just like they did in the real experiment as well. With this topicality it is no surprise that I was easily taken in by the film and was never really bored by it. Being a thriller in its own right, the film has to settle into the eventual action conclusion but even this works pretty well and doesn't detract from what has gone before in terms of interest.

This is not to say it is perfect, because it could have been much better than it was. The constant cutting to Tarek's girlfriend now and in flashback only took away from the film and she could have still played her part at the end with much less time during the main body of the film. Also it became a little too far-fetched for the sake of drama – a recent television drama in the UK did it differently by actually recreating the same experiment as opposed to this film which needed to go harder and faster in order to reach the eventual running and fighting stage! But it still works and, to be honest, it is well worth seeking out for the 'human nature' aspect alone – it had a special resonance in Germany but it is hard not to be put in a thoughtful mood given recent events in Iraqi military prisons.

The cast are roundly good and all slip one way or the other in a convincing manner. Beibtreu is good once he gets past the stage where he is making trouble for the sake of it – this is necessary to speed the descent into cruelty but it was laid on a bit thick at the start. After this his performance is much more evenly balanced and he is a good lead. I struggled to pick up the names of all the others because they were mostly unknown to me but the head guard was very good while the rest of the cast did more than just deliver their pigeon-holed characters, where really they could have been nothing more than 'prisoner who goes crazy', 'timid guard', 'angry guard', 'silent prisoner' etc – they weren't, they were all pretty real people.

Overall this is not the best thing to come to if you are after a sort of documentary drama about the original experiment but it is still a very good film. It is exciting and dramatic while still having a bit of a brain on it – an asset made more interesting by what we have seen in Iraq over the past few months with guards becoming even worse than those we see in this film! Not a perfect film but a well made one that is interesting, involving and exciting and one that is well worth looking up.

The author writes under the pen-name of 'bob the moo' from Birmingham, UK

Far From Heaven

A man and his wife enter the office of a man who could possibly save the man from a life threatening illness. THe process includes many visits with a psychiatrist and possibly some electro-shock therapy. No, this person does not have schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder. This man is a homosexual.

Yes, it is true, this man is considered "sick" but that is just one of the many skewed attitudes of the 1950's that director Todd Haynes brings to light in Far From Heaven. Julianne Moore plays Cathy Whitaker, the wife of Frank Whitaker, Dennis Quaid, who are the proud parents of two children. The live the life that people envied. A nice home, money, success, and happiness. All of that comes crashing down when Cathy discovers her husband is not who he really is.

Cathy goes to Frank's work to drop off some dinner only to discover that her husband is in the arms of another man. Frank says that he is "sick" and wants treatment. Cathy, the "super wife" is behind him 100 percent, as if he really had an illness to beat. Frnak is ashamed and doesn't want support, just some privacy while he goes through session after session of therapy to try and make him "normal".

To add to this difficulty, the family gardener passes away and his son Raymond, Dennis Haysbert, takes over. Cathy comes to confide in Raymond and find peace of mind in his attitude and his overall good nature. The neighborhood looks down on their friendship and casts a shadow on the household. Raymond, a black man, is much like Cathy, seeing not color, but people. Even in New Haven, Connecticut, the feeling of white superiority still runs through the veins of its inhabitants.

The movie from start to finish is wonderful. It is a roller-coaster of emotions. Moore, Quaid, and Haysbert give fantastic performances. Even Patricia Clarkson, who plays Cathy one true friend in the neighborhood gives a delightful performance.

It's not just the acting that gives this movie it's lift off of the ground. Haynes direction and the art direction of the film create a pallet of colors and emotions that set the mood for each seen. The film opens in autumn. The leaves are shades of red, yellow, and orange, a true autumnal foliage like you would see on a Vermont postcard. The clothing is a perfect time capsule of the 50's. Haynes also uses a lot of colored lights to directly influence the mood of a scene. The green neon light of the gay bar Frank enters gives a strange feel like an alien world. The blue light that comes in through the windows in his office at night and in their home after a party means something dramatic is taking place.

Elmer Bernstein has racked up 14 nominations for his music, including a win for Throughly Modern Millie. His score for this film is the current that pushes the story along. Like so many great composers, he doesn't create music but a character. Everything is different with the right score to back up a great story.A story and a script that Haynes wrote so beautifully. He captured the lingo that kids used in the 50's and gave us a look at how kind people can be and how despicable some are.

The issues that Haynes tackles in the film are still around today, just not taken so seriously. It is hard to think that only 50 years ago, homosexuals were looked at as sick people and the African-American community was still not welcome. To this day there are still hints of this feeling around the country, but most is left to be talked about in the privacy of our own homes.

Whether or not you are straight or gay, black or white, democrat or republican, we all are people. Haynes shows that even if two people are in harmony, it is the outside influences that can rip them apart. Hatred and tolerance cannot coexist.

La Cité des enfants perdus

A soulless man named Krank who was long ago created by a brilliant but unstable scientist is struggling to remain alive. His inability to dream has made him age at an accelerated pace, and the only way he can halt this process is by stealing the dreams of children. He is aided in this endeavour by the other creations of the scientist: six identical goofy-looking clones, one midget and wide-faced wife named Mrs Bismuth, and a super-intelligent brain which lives in a fish-tank and sees using an old-school bendable camera lens. Krank appears successful at stealing children's dreams, but he is not a happy man because all the dreams he captures are nightmares by children who are obviously traumatized by the kidnapping process.

Meanwhile, Krank's hunting ground, the city of lost children, is a treacherous place; Krank's "cyclops" henchmen are always trying to capture children for his purposes. We follow the story of a young girl named Miette (meaning "crumb" in French) who belongs to a small and resourceful gang of children who are exploited by Siamese witch-like twin sisters who run a school where the children steal for them. Miette befriends a simple-talking strongman named Mr. One (Ron Perlman, aka Hellboy) who is looking for his kidnapped little brother Denree. As the story progresses, Miette must escape from the clutches of the evil Siamese twin witches, while also helping One find his long-lost Denree.

The movie features terrific acting by all involved. Especially noteworthy is the high quality of the child actors. Further, although the dialogue is simplified in the subtitles for the sake of easy reading, it is very imaginative. Of special note is the scene where one of the clones is describing a dream to Krank. Many dialogue quirks help to give the movie a unique and memorable feel, such as the writer's fondness for making insults out of calling others the name of an unfavourable animal. City also features great casting, with every actor having a look which suits the character ideally (note the one gluttonous and very cute boy). But perhaps the best aspect of the movie is its cinematography. Every shot is done impeccably, and the look and feel of the movie is very much in the surrealist vein in which the directors intended. Make no mistake, this is a full-fledge dark fairy-tale fantasy movie. Finally, the classical score complements the movie very well.

If there is anything that detracts from the movie, it would be the lack of focus. The movie hops from one scene to another without allowing enough development of any particular story thread early on. As such, we don't get a good grasp of what the story is really about until later in the movie. For many, this will mean the movie will fail to hold their interest early on, and they may be tempted to give up. For those that don't give up, however, they will find the story to be quite satisfying. And for those willing to give the movie a second viewing, they may be able to fill all the story gaps that they missed the first time around. Much like most Cohen brothers movies, this is one of those movies that improves after the first viewing. Also, much like other movies that improve after first viewing, this is one of those movies that makes the top ten on many film-buff's top movies list.

The following movies/stories have major similarities to City: Brazil, for its own lack of focus and its similar retro-futuristic feel (note the hyper-intelligent brain's look as well as the cyclops'); Dark City, for its similar cinematographic style; Frankenstein, for its "scientist creates something awful and tragic" theme; and Amelie, for its imaginative similarities stemming from the director in common. Terry Gilliam himself made the following comment on City of Lost Children: "the most astounding visuals of 1995, 1996, and possibly 1982." Genre: Fantasy. Verdict: 8/10.