C'est arrivé près de chez vous (Man Bites Dog)

To say this movie is disturbing would be an understatement. A massive, gigantic understatement! But it is also a display of film-genius.

The movie is filmed in Black and White and is presented as a "documentary" of a serial killer. The film crew follows Benoit, the killer, around town as he recites poetry, muses on welfare and housing reform, ponders philosophy, and ... well, kills. Totally randomly.

He explains to the film crew the lessons he has learned about killing, how to stay low key, who to go after, and what potential victims are a waste of time. For Benoit, killing is an art form, but not one that should be undertaken frivolously.

There are scenes when his lunacy are briefly pierced by humanity - he counsels one of the film crew not to kill, because once you start it becomes a habit. In another scene he laments having killed a suburban family, because they had nothing good to steal, as it turned out. He proclaims that "there should be a law against" killing for no good reason.

Those who shy from blood and killing - about the most graphical violence you'll ever see "documented" in a film - should shy from this movie. But anyone with an interest in a glimpse at the darkest side of human nature will appreciate this film, not necessarily for its story or its darkness, but for its ability to make us think, and open our eyes to human behaviour we don't like to admit might exist.

During the course of the movie you become totally numb to the act of killing (or maming or torture or rape or any violent crime). It is no longer shocking when he kills yet another victim. It has become commonplace. You just sort of scratch your head and wonder - why this one? why now? why him? why her? This mental numbness is made possible by the way it is filmed - as though it were a documentary. Not long into the movie you begin to wonder if this is real, or just a movie. I wonder if this is the kind of numbness that soldiers experienced in wars like WWI, entrenched and under constant fire - to where the violence around become the norm. I read a book once called "My War Gone By, I Miss it So" (that's a whole 'nother review) in which a war-writer kept returning to the front because after experiencing violence all around him day after day after day, he could no longer live without it. In Man Bites Dog the killing is Benoit's addiction, but we, as viewers become complacent to it. We have been numbed to where it is no longer disturbing. Makes you scratch your head and wonder: is such detachment from emotion and what's right really possible???

To add to the realism, all the actors play characters with their real names. The killer's mother and grandparents in the movie - are really the actor's mother and grandparents in real life. During most of the filming they were not told it was about serial killing, just that they were in a movie with their son. So they just act normal around the son they love, only to find out in later scenes that the whole film is about killing. Imagine the look of shock on their faces to find this out - to them the story then is no longer acting but real: they've just discovered their son/grandson made a film about brutal killings and the shock shows in their faces.

Is it real? Is it a movie? What defines the difference?

When I told him about this movie, a friend mentioned that "society,as a whole, is already numb to brutal killing and violence." He's right about that. But this movie is so ridiculously brutal and violent it is more a mockery of our society's complacence to violence, not an endorsement.

Salinui chueok (Memories of Murder)

Beginning in the fall of 1986 and continuing for the next four years South Korea was haunted by the nation's first recorded serial killer. Preying upon women in a remote rural community the killer was both vicious and meticulous, strangling his victims with their own undergarments and leaving nothing of any use to the police investigating the crimes. The killer was never caught.

I do not envy any director trying to make a true crime film, particularly not one so high profile and so recent that the crimes still live on in the public consciousness. Stray too far in one direction and you devolve into saccharine sentimentality, go the other direction and you risk crass exploitation. Director Bong Joon-Ho avoided both of these traps by charting an altogether different route: he has made a film that is not about the killer or the crimes or the victims but one that is purely about the police officers charged with the case and the devastating emotional toll it took on their lives. In charting his unusual route Bong has created a bleak masterpiece, one that took home a stack of film awards in its native land but which has been largely neglected on these shores until now.

The film begins with the first body discovered, a woman strangled with her own stockings, raped, tightly bound, and hidden in a drainage culvert. The detective in charge of the case is Park Du-Man (Song Kang-Ho) and it is immediately clear that he is out of his depth, that the entire local police force, in fact, are out of their depth. The crime scene is chaos, crowded by reporters and locals trampling over potentially vital evidence. Park himself is not what you'd call a systematic investigator, scoffing at the scientific approach and trusting in his supposedly unerring eye at picking out criminals just by looking at them. He relies on swagger and bravado and the brute force of his uneducated assisting officer Jo Yong-Gu.

Serving as a foil to Park and Jo is Seo Tae-Yun (Kim Sang-Kyung) a detective from Seoul who has volunteered to assist with the investigation. Seo is the polar opposite of Park - methodical and rational - and it takes mere moments for the two to clash, clashes that lead to the two of them overlooking some key pieces of evidence.

As the film progresses and the body count continues to rise you can feel a sense of desperation slowly settle over the department. Under educated, under manned and woefully under equipped the local force is simply not up to the task. As the realisation that they will not find the evidence they so badly need begins to set in Park and Jo resort to planting evidence to bring in suspects Park picks out with his 'keen eye', suspects they then set out to extract coached confessions from. The process inevitably leads to public humiliation. Soon even Seo begins to lose his faith in reason and just as things bottom out they finally catch a break and settle on a prime suspect, one who truly appears likely to be their man. But can they make it stick? What sets Memories of Murder apart from the crowd are the rich performances from its leads and the sure hand of Bong Joon-Ho. Bong knows exactly what he wants to do with this film and he steers the ship with a firm hand. He has a keen eye for imagery but he consistently avoids the cheap resolve, the quick hit, in favour of a slowly building mood and the film is all the stronger because of it. Song and Kim are both stellar in their roles, giving their characters much needed depth. You can feel their frustration and helplessness continually growing and when the final crushing blow is delivered you can feel their utter despair at being abandoned by a system that they have given their lives to. Bong isn't just asking how this could happen, how someone could be as evil as this killer, but how could a government allow this to happen? How could the police not be given the tools and manpower they so obviously needed to protect the people? The DVD release has been given the standard Palm treatment. The transfer is strong and presented in anamorphic widescreen. The film is presented with both the original Korean language track in 2.0 stereo and an English dub in both 2.0 and 5.1. The English subtitles are solid, clearly translated and easy to read. The disc also includes a reel of cast and crew interviews discussing their characters and the creation of the film as well as an extensive reel of deleted scenes.

Memories of Murder is a minor masterpiece, a film that moved Bong immediately onto Korea's A-list of directing talent. It is richly detailed, beautifully performed and disturbing in precisely the way that people need to be disturbed in from time to time. Don't miss it.

Trailer:

Se7en

Se7en is a very complex and deep movie, while also being quite disturbing. Andrew Kevin Walker created one of the most original spec screenplays of all time, but it is the kind of story traditionally used more as a writing sample than actually made into a movie. But the creative team of director David Fincher believed in this extremely dark, uncompromising story, and made it just the way Walker wrote it.

The story revolves around two extremely well-drawn characters, David Mills (Brad Pitt) and William Somerset (Morgan Freeman). In one sense their relationship is the ultimate cliché -- the old veteran cop paired up with the brash rookie (though Mills is not actually a rookie, just new to the unnamed city where the movie takes place). But the contrast between these two characters is played out not for laughs or cheap drama but as the real working out of a moral question. Somerset, the lonely, cynical older detective, cares about people but has seen too much of the dark side of life to have much hope for society. Mills is not as intelligent as Somerset (kudos to Pitt for being willing to play a character that frequently looks foolish), and he lives by a simplistic belief in the power of law enforcement to change the world.

Throughout the movie, the two characters struggle with this conflict -- is human society basically rotten, and can one person do anything to make a difference? Somerset, an intelligent, well-read man, is smart enough to recognize the truth, however painful that is. Mills is the kind of person who has never truly questioned the simple "values" he was raised with. Somerset tries to educate him, tries to warn him, but ultimately fails.

In the end, it is only John Doe, the serial killer, who can teach Mills (and by extension the audience) the truth -- that this world is very often shockingly vicious and senselessly cruel. Doe and Somerset actually have similar views of society and the world, up to a point. But while Somerset still cares about his fellow human beings, Doe hates them, and takes out his rage in a series of gruesome murders based on the seven deadly sins.

This movie is about the investigation Mills and Somerset undertake of Doe's murders, his "sermon" to the world through serial killing. Ultimately, Mills and Somerset can only do so much to try to stop Doe; the killer always seems at least one step ahead of them, and stays that way until the very end of the movie. In a normal Hollywood film, Mills and Somerset would "win" in the end by catching Doe and setting the world right again. But Andy Walker had a quite different ending in mind, and Fincher and his team take the shocking conclusion all the way to the limit of tension and drama.

This movie, like Fincher's "Fight Club," was controversial for being violent and gruesome. Certainly there are a number of gruesome and disturbing images of murder victims' bodies, and many aspects of the story are very troubling, to say the least. But only one person is shown being killed on screen, and by far the worst of what happens in this story happens in the viewer's imagination. Unlike most films that have high levels of violence -- including, for example, Reservoir Dogs or Silence of the Lambs -- this movie genuinely attempts to grapple with the moral implications of what is being shown on screen. In direct contrast with, say Quentin Tarantino, who uses extreme violence for shock effect and to gain notoriety, Fincher actually shows less violence on screen and raises far more probing moral questions in the viewer's mind. I cannot think of any movie that contains as much genuine debate and discussion among the characters about crime and human morality as this one does -- while never becoming dull or preachy for a moment.

I cannot finish this review without a word about Mr. Fincher's extraordinary visual talents. This is a man who ranks with the top handful of directors of all time in his knowledge and grasp of film-making technique. Everything from set design to lighting, selection of film stock and processing techniques, camera movement, frame composition, and editing work together to create an entirely new level of visual brilliance. Fincher's use of technique brings to mind nothing more than the work of Steven Spielberg in the 1970s, the last time a director this extraordinary burst onto the Hollywood scene. A whole generation has passed since then, and there is a new wave of techniques and tools available to the filmmaker of the nineties. Fincher uses every one of these tools to their utmost. The technical work and supporting actors are uniformly superb. This is a movie that works on every level. Andy Walker, having written a mind-blowing screenplay, must have been stunned when he saw the finished film. This movie will rock you to the core.

Gone Baby Gone

For his first time behind the camera as a director, the actor Ben Affleck has chosen a brooding, serious drama about missing children, wayward parents and idealism lost and regained. “Gone Baby Gone” is based on the novel by Dennis Lehane, who wrote the similarly themed “Mystic River,” which Clint Eastwood turned into a modern classic. If Mr. Affleck hasn’t raised his material to that rarefied level, he has taken a satisfyingly tough look into conscience, to those dark places where some men also go astray.

The story wants to break hearts: 4-year-old Amanda McCready, a blond doll, has disappeared without a trace amid the squalor of her South Boston neighborhood. The cops are out in formation, as are the television news vans, antennas raised high and all but trembling for blood. Staring into the cameras, the neighbors eagerly offer ready-made headlines and self-flattering condolences: they’re coming together, everyone loves Amanda. The days tick past and the child’s anxious aunt, Bea (Amy Madigan), seeks help from a local private investigator, Patrick Kenzie, a squirt who looks as if he just dropped out of college and is played without an ounce of actorly ingratiation by Casey Affleck, the director’s younger brother.

I’m not sure exactly when Casey Affleck became such a good actor. Steven Soderbergh tapped him a few years back for recurring third-banana duties in the “Ocean’s Eleven” films, and Gus Van Sant put him in “Gerry,” his 2002 avant-garde feature, in which Mr. Affleck roamed around a merciless desert landscape with Matt Damon, with whom he took turns playing Beavis and Butt-head, Vladimir and Estragon.

More recently he stole the show from Brad Pitt in the western “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.” One of the unusual things about his performance as Ford was its lack of sentimentality. He didn’t plead the character’s case or remind us of his own humanity; he just played the role.Most actors want you to love them, but Casey Affleck doesn’t seem to know that, or maybe he doesn’t care. Patrick doesn’t cuddle or kiss up. He takes the job Bea offers despite the reluctance of his live-in girlfriend and partner, Angie (a solid Michelle Monaghan), but he doesn’t look like anyone’s idea of a savior. With his sneakers and jeans and small-man’s swagger, he comes off like one of those toughs who never leave the neighborhood and would sooner swing a bat at your head than at a ball.Mr. Affleck is already deep into the character right from the start, but neither he nor his director let on all they know about Patrick. There’s something about this guy that needles, that helps keep an already tense story on edge.

Despite its terrible question marks — who stole Amanda and why, is she alive and for how long — “Gone Baby Gone” pays closer heed to the enigmas of soul and heart than to clues and guesswork. There are false leads, dead ends, brandished guns and nightmarish discoveries, as well as shadows and controlled camerawork, but mostly there are human frailties and thrown-away, forgotten lives. The screenplay by Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard whittles down but doesn’t reduce Mr. Lehane’s material, pulling out details and types that stick to the screen, including Amanda’s mother, Helene, played by a ferocious Amy Ryan. Talk about not wanting our love! Ugly in voice and deed, Helene is the underclass mother from hell, a hazard, a druggie, a villain in waiting.Helene is a nightmare, or at least the embodiment of a certain familiar fear: the bad woman (welfare queen) periodically held up as a symptom of some grave social disorder. Working with her supportive, encouraging director, Ms. Ryan plays with this stereotype and our sympathies to the breaking point. Deploying her broad Boston accent like a weapon, she whines and retreats, testing Patrick’s sympathy with each one of her pathetic excuses. It’s a gutsy, sensational performance that adds layers to an already spiky, provocative creation. At first you hate the woman and love the actress, though because Ms. Ryan and Ben Affleck are wise to the ways of scapegoating, you learn why that hate is misplaced.It isn’t all that surprising that Mr. Affleck is so good with his performers, or at least most of them. The film has been wonderfully populated with character actors like Titus Welliver, who plays Lionel, Helene’s straight-talking brother, and Michael K. Williams, one of the outstanding villains from the HBO drama “The Wire,” who shows up here as a friendly cop.

Just as memorable are two unfamiliar faces: the newcomer Jill Quigg, who has a few startling scenes as Helene’s comically, scarily belligerent friend Dottie; and the Boston rapper Slaine, whose cool, dead-eye performance as the drug dealer who leads Patrick right into the heart of darkness adds menace to one of the film’s strongest, most harrowing scenes.

Mr. Affleck trips up now and again, mostly with his older, famous peers Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman, who delivers one of the more unpersuasive performances of his career as the head of the police department’s missing-children division. The director does better with Mr. Harris, who plays a hotheaded detective in a distracting hairpiece, though again Mr. Affleck doesn’t control the performance as well as he does those of the other cast members. He also wavers when he lingers too long over the crumpled faces and bodies of what appear to be real South Boston natives.

Even so, one of the graces of “Gone Baby Gone” is its sensitivity to real struggle, to the lived-in spaces and worn-out consciences that can come when despair turns into nihilism. Mr. Affleck doesn’t live in these derelict realms, but, for the most part, he earns the right to visit.

No Country for Old Men

Cormac McCarthy's characteristically dry, laconic, and sometimes hilarious dialogue brightens the scenes of this superb and chilling thriller the Coen brothers have ably transferred to the screen with excellent help from Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Tones, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson, Kelly Macdonald, and others, including a salty second layer of minor characters who look like they sprang straight out of the sandy soil of West Texas.

McCarthy, unmistakably one of America's greatest living writers of fiction, lives vividly in this, the Coens' first literary adaptation. Some of his best novels, notably Blood Meridian (called by Yale critic Harold Bloom one of the 20th century's greatest novels), are so apocalyptic, so embedded in their glorious poetic prose, as to be virtually unfilmable. All the Pretty Horses, from his Border Trilogy, has been filmed with some success (Matt Damon works in his role; Penelope Cruz doesn't). No Country for Old Men is late McCarthy. Post-apocalyptic, maybe. Jones's disenchanted, aging sheriff says, "When you don't hear sir and ma'am any more pretty much everything else goes." Llewelyn Moss (Brolin), a fairly innocent but opportunistic man, is deer hunting (he's not a good shot; he can't catch one out of a whole herd of them) when he finds a sprawl of wrecked vehicles and corpses, including Mexicans and a dog. There's a truckload of heroin in plastic packages and a briefcase containing two million plus in $100 bills. Moss takes the money and hightails it in his truck.

Naturally there are people who want the money back. Not nice people.

The man they hire to go after it is called Anton Chigurh. Expertly played by Javier Bardem, he's a villain--but with a clear-cut morality all his own--who's invincible and probably unforgettable. Chigurh is like the Grim Reaper: he can decide your fate with the flip of a coin; he reflects the biblical side of Cormac McCarthy, but in a terrible modern corruption. The crooks also hire another hit man, Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson)--a mistake, because Chigurh resents the duplication. He is the last word, the anti-Christ. No man may come after him.

Out in these open spaces of West Texas--El Paso, the Mexican border--where Cormac McCarthy's innocent, pure-hearted cowboys used to roam in earlier decades, things have changed beyond recognition. This is 1977. It's a decade and a half since Vietnam. Lots of drugs and lots of money floating around; you don't hear sir and ma'am any more.

The story turns into a chase, Chgurh after Llewelyn Moss, the sheriff coming after them. And then Carson Wells, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and doomed, pops in to follow.

People have been talking about Bardem's pageboy haircut. Yes, it's creepy. Bardem makes Chigurh both threatening and inscrutable. It seems he'd as soon kill you as look at you. He has a long rifle with a silencer and a high-pressure cattle-killer device with a tank that looks like something a person with emphysema would carry around. It kills instantly with a pop in the head. He also uses it to shoot out door locks.

The film is more tense and suspenseful in the first half or so than in the grimly determined finale (all true to the book, if with a few details cut). By that time a lot of people have been killed and some wounded. This has some elements of the Coen's 'Fargo' and 'Blood Simple' (the latter introduced in an earlier NYFF) and thus with their most powerful work. But 'No Country' is an economical and faithful literary adaptation. Some Coen movies have been thin and frivolous lately. This is emphatically not, sure and riveting from the first few shots. Richard Deakins' photography, making much appropriate use of wide-angle lenses, is superb. Their distinguished source seems to have kept the Coens honest and serious (except for the dry humor built into McCarthy's talk). Unquestionably this will wind up being one of the best American films of the year. It's tight and vivid and suspenseful. It's great stuff. The images sing and stun. There's no distracting music, only the beauty and terror of real sounds.

Present for the NYFF press screening Q&A (moderator Lisa Schwartzbaum): Brolin, Jones, Macdonald, Bardem, and the brothers Coen, Ethan and Joel.