Night of the Sunflowers

Is it actually possible that the Coen brothers, while in the process of scripting a movie like, say No Country For Old Men or Miller’s Crossing somehow got lost in a village in Spain, trading their way out in return for one of their scripts, and that script has made it out today into a brilliant thriller, so reminiscent of their style, only this time at the hands of an unknown Spanish filmmaker, in fact his very first directorial venture?? Jorge Sánchez-Cabezudo seems very denying, though. He could have, with such a prized script approached any big production house and claimed fame to someone else’s ingenuity. Why then, did he decide to start his work from where he finds himself at home, i.e. rural Spain? Why cast a bunch of unknown actors into a promising script? And what on earth made him venture so far out into the desolateness that he claims, is the becoming of the smaller villages within Spain? Perhaps, there lies an ulterior motive in this brilliant script. And perhaps he did, after all script the movie himself. It’s an insult to any American cinephile, who has no conceptual idea that countries across the Atlantic also make movies, and better ones too.

Night of the Sunflowers is not necessarily a character study. We simply have here, a series of unfortunate events that results out of a meeting by chance, between a rapist and murderer, and his next victim. The rapist will try to victimize a young woman, and who she is and where it all takes place play a decisive part in the violent events that will ensue. So this movie has several strong points. One of them is showing how someone completely unrelated to the rest of the main characters of the story, someone who meets one of those people (the young woman) by chance, can be the trigger for all we're about to see. Then, the structure is very attractive too, as the director tries to make full portraits of each important character and show us, not only what they're doing there, but where they come from, in every sense; he shows us what that person is like, their personality and motivations, and what they want, basically; then he drops that character into the spiral of events that have been started by the attack to the young woman, and so comes this suspenseful story, involving two speleologists, the girlfriend of their leader, a very honest and stern old cop and a dishonest, corrupt young one, and two old men who live in an otherwise derelict village.

Jorge Sánchez’s script takes us on a trail of deceit and murder, edging us to rationalize the circumstances in which these incidents take place. We somehow do exactly that, with no remorse as to the consequences, in the light of what we think is significant or obscure. All that rationalization later makes us feel guilty in a brilliant epiphany towards the end. Somehow, the source of all the evil here is shown as what comes with the arrival of outsiders into an otherwise placid village life. The difference between the natives and the townsfolk is so apparent; it’s literally chalked in black and white. On a later introspection, it is exactly this difference which boils down the series of crimes -unknowingly committed- to what is right and what is wrong. Somehow, we find ourselves at the receiving end of a basic moral instinct which we uphold when faced with a more societal setting. And that, according to Jorge Sánchez is a more obstinate, impervious and obscene act than the real crime we see here.

Walk on Water

Even as you start watching "Walk on water", a few apparent cues can reveal to you the true nature of the film's purpose. The film's title is biblical, the lead actor doesn't look like a villain he purports, there will be some sort of transformation in his outlook, and almost every other movie that comes out of Israel preaches peace.
Therefore, it doesn't take long for the curiosity to wane, and the questions of what and who turn into when and how. Eytan Fox applies almost all of his focus on the characters, adhering to strict, tested and tried formats of storytelling: initial depiction of principal character, bring about a new channel of action, apply his potentials to the plan of action, which would eventually affect him, take a toll on him, and finally render him changed..
However, the importance of this film cannot be denied a place amongst the handful of films that offer solutions instead of lamenting, to generations scarred by war and conflict. Here we have, a film examining the compromised relationship between Jews and Germans in a contemporary, modern society that is potentially thorny enough: a political thriller-cum-gay/straight-tolerance-fable examining the relationship that appears downright daunting.
Only a month since his wife's suicide, Mossad master assassin Eyal (Lior Ashkenazi) insists on taking on a new mission: finding the whereabouts of an aging Nazi, who has hid for decades in Argentina but has suddenly disappeared. The Israeli intelligent service suspects he may be trying to contact his family in Germany. The man's atoning granddaughter lives in an Israeli Kibbutz where her lanky brother Axel (Knut Berger) is due for a visit. Posing as Axel's tour guide, Eyal becomes his confidant and wiretaps his sister's apartment, gleaming information from "Hansel and Gretel," as Eyal derisively calls them. Axel - a Berlin teacher of immigrant children who also expresses sympathy for the Palestinian cause - is a loopy peacenik in Eyal's eyes. But the men do have something in common, ghosts in their closets: for Eyal, his murderous past; Axel, his family's involvement in the Holocaust.
And with the sexual tension blooming both ways between the two men, as well as between Eyal and Axel's sister, it's only a matter of time before the skeletons hidden inside deep closets come out to dance. And it takes all of their emotional control to prevent that from turning into a horrible pantomime.
At the very beginning of the film, we see Lior soon establishing himself in our perspective, as an Israeli Ethan Hunt slash James Bond alias Jason Bourne. He doesn't seem to involve too much of himself during the first half of the movie, only reaching out with emotional outbursts during the latter half. Knut Berger is a surprise, having not seen him in any German film I've watched; this young man was a revelation. He acts his part with ease, and controlled anger.
The characters change in dissatisfying ways, through verbal exchanges rather than through any organic character growth. In the end, the film desperately tries to establish a visual through-line with one of those dreadful montages comprised of scenes from the film you just saw. However, Fox does handle the climactic confrontation with some flourish, and he may yet be a talent to watch.
Eytan fox knew he was treading dangerous lines here with his characters. He also knew the point where every single diplomatic enmity can be broken down into basic human emotion. It's only a matter of finding the right equation to the right variables, one that leaves no room for undesirable factors. The void of equanimity alone would symbolize peace.

Mr. Nobody

“What did I do to deserve this?” Exactly, what did Jared Leto do to deserve this, to be digitally mauled into a frighteningly realistic depiction of himself, eighty years older? I’m unsure of who or what is the culprit here, actual makeup or CG or both, but the desired effect is a success. In fact, it’s rare to see Jared Leto onscreen in his real-life image. His name appears now and then in film-credits for little obscure roles that leave you wondering where the hell he was while you were watching a movie for the last two hours. His very face seems to have that perpetual air of vapidity that ensures he doesn’t linger too long in your memory. Anonymity is his cape of professionalism. Disfigurement seems to be his masquerade party. In Requiem for a Dream, his arm gets infected and gets chopped off surgically (and very graphically too). In Fight Club, his face gets punched-in so bad, he looks like Jeff Goldblum throughout the rest of the film. In Panic Room, he first gets his face sprayed by gasoline flames, and then gets shot at point blank range. In American Psycho, we’re spared the torture of the off-screen sludge that results when Leto gets his skull cloven by a psychopathic Patrick Bateman, with a scary-looking axe. Then there’s also Chapter 27, where we find the lanky 37-year old transmogrified into a fat, tubby adamant Mr.Chapman who murdered John Lennon. So it’s small surprise, and only seems apt (not ironic) that we’re asked this question when the Van Dormael-directed Mr.Nobody opens with a shot of our man’s dead body rolled into a morgue vault, with a remorseful question, ironic by choice: “What did I do to deserve this?”
However, the context of the question becomes apparent as Nobody here (apparently it’s a normal name, Nemo Nobody) proceeds to ask this question in one life and answer it in a second life, yet being able to decipher it in a third life, while predicting that he would ask, in a fourth. He asks himself this question, a thousand times during the length of this movie, and answers them all in a thousand ways for each one of those thousand-questions he spawns. We are made to believe that our hero is a hundred and seventeen year old man dying in a year that’s set in the future, on another planet, being the oldest person on earth at a time when humans have perfected quasi-immortality, while he reminisces on his past through both a hypnotist and a reporter. He speaks of choices that he could have made while he was still young, choices he did not take when they had presented themselves to him. He constructs alternate possibilities, alternate existences that could have been his life, had he taken those choices. Why and what makes him think back like this is anybody’s guess. Is his life filled with too much regret? Is it because he doesn’t remember getting old like this, and he is actually trying to piece together his life? We don’t even know for sure if the old man is simply drawing you into a maze of confusion. Van Dormael considers the proper way to figure this out would be a mind-bending sort of chronology, with an unpredictable kaleidoscope for a time-machine.
Mister Nobody is a deliberate exercise in seeing reality from multiple perspectives in a non-linear way all at the same time. –And knowing that it is ALL real at the same time.
So in this fashion, we find ourselves at the beginning of all things; the origin of the inception of the beginning of life: a heavenly place where Nemo is yet to be born, waiting for an angel to send him off to a couple, like maybe even delivered by pelican post, you know… Citing a butterfly effect, quite literally, the unlikely couple chance to meet amidst a rainy day (and what if they hadn’t?). Nemo comes into the world. He has premonitory dreams that precede the actual happening of instances, citing a rather weird reason that the angels failed to seal his lips before he was born. Most often he dreams people dying. Fast forward a couple of years. Nemo is nine, and discovers that his mom is seeing someone else. Eventually she and the father decide to split. And there’s a typical, yet not clichéd railway station scene where a toddler is standing between teary-eyed mummy and daddy, staring up at them like they’re beanstalks that have just sprouted for no reason or cause, while they ask him to simply make a choice, disregarding the gravity of the consequences. What does he do?
If he stays with his father, he grows into an unsociable geek as an adolescent. Mars, other planets and celestial objects shall seem to hold a fascination for him. He will learn to speak in disjointed thought processes. He will be the local weirdo. Somehow, he would end up with Elise (Clare Stone / Sarah Polley) and live through a painful marriage to a wife afflicted with chronic depression, while fathering three children. Out of love for her, he would travel to Mars to scatter her ashes in a delightfully futuristic scene aboard a space wheel, where the passengers are put into hibernation until they reach their destination. Maybe the space wheel blows up in space, maybe not. If it doesn’t, he would meet Anna (see next para) in Mars…and so on.
Had he leapt on the train to follow his mother, on the other hand, he would have fallen deeply in love with Anna (Juno Temple / Diane Kruger) who would later spring a pleasant surprise on him when she moves into his house as his step-sister. In an intensely romantic setup, à la Julio Medem’s Lovers of the Arctic Circle, their underage, incestual love would end with them tragically losing each other for years, until they find each other again as young adults.
A third, apparently negative possibility has Nemo choose to become rich instead of happy, and he pairs with an Asian woman in a loveless marriage that ends in senseless tragedy with him getting involved with some bad guys and getting shot while he is still in his bathtub.
Choices are cruel. That doesn’t deem them painful luggage for life. Thinking about all the things you ‘could have done’ or ‘might have become’ while you’re about to die might seem a plausible, yet far-fetched rosary of the imagination, to yield to all your deepest fantasies. However, you can’t possibly come up with a coulda-shoulda-woulda list of probabilities of such detail and depth without having lived through a part of it yourself. And that’s where we hang on, every beautiful frame serving as tenterhooks for us to clamber higher, with the knowledge that you don’t know if the old man is lying to us, or if he’s actually taken a specific path along those choices and has lived through it. Plausible, yes and no.
And just when you think that the whole rendering of this string theory-styled flowchart of life, by a morose looking centenarian could be too far-fetched for visceral comfort, there comes the harbinger of a plot twist. You suddenly find yourself within a “Dream is Collapsing” scene right out of Inception. The future isn’t real, his adulthood isn’t real. None of the possibilities are real. His kids, his string theories, his adolescent experiences, first love, his car accident, wives, families, households, space travel, Mars, Anna, Jeanie, Elise everything and everyone isn’t real. He’s still the nine year old who is running along the train to stop his mother from leaving daddy. And ALL what we saw happened as “imagination” inside that little brain. Why would you spoil a story in such a fashion? Just because you needed an explanation as to why the reporter interviewing Nemo in the year 2092 is using a recorder straight out of 1975? Or is it because the angels failed to place the cleft-seal on his lips, thus allowing him the knowledge of  “everything”?
Save this last jab, I must say Mr. Nobody ends up being another one of those movies that appear meticulously and lovingly made, yet flawed in its idea. This is a story in which exists primarily in order for the writer/director to explore the science of reality, and things like strong characters and realistic emotions are usually given short shrift. If you are hoping that Van Dormael’s complex script will provide answers then you will be disappointed. He is only interested in planting the questions in your mind and providing you with the tools to formulate your own answers. The script incorporates references to almost every school of thought known to man. This includes such things as string theory, the butterfly effect, the Big Crunch, entropy, etc. While Nemo wonders why time only goes in one direction, and ponders the possibility of smoke returning into a cigarette, the filmmakers have no trouble turning the hands of time backwards and forwards. But this is never done for cheap thrills; everything comes back to the idea that human life is precious in all its complications, and every choice we make has its consequences. Needless to say Mr. Nobody is a film that begs for repeat viewing in order to grasp all the various philosophical and scientific thoughts that are in play.
And for this, Mr. Dormael has certainly hired the right guys to make tidy work of the editing and special effects. The wide-angle shots bring such mayhem of colours into perspective, that even though it might look artificial, yet not artificial enough to appear surreal, it’s nevertheless, gorgeous and endlessly astonishing. Mr. Nobody is the ideal kind of film to own on Blu-ray. Exceptionally imaginative, acutely funny and startling, this production reeks of intelligence and craftsmanship, breaks down linear storytelling into bits, only to shuffle the whole thing in a brilliantly orchestrated masterpiece. Everything feels unique from the way the film is edited down to the way the story unfolds. For all its flaws, Mr. Nobody is the best looking movie I’ve seen in a VERY long time. It is indeed something special and should be treated as such.

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

Paprika

It is hard not to be decked by this film. The first few minutes blast past with such mind-bending, visual élan that it could almost, in itself, stand as an elliptical and enervating short subject. PAPRIKA, the latest anime film from Satoshi Kon (PERFECT BLUE, TOKYO GODFATHERS, PARANOIA AGENT), loosely based on the serial-novel by famed Japanese sci-fi writer Yasutaka Tsutsui, is pure visual ambrosia. While the movie is sure to leave you scratching your head even as you careen from one 2-D, 3-D, CGI animated set-piece to the next, there’s no doubt the movie is one benevolent bully dressed to the cinematic nines. Whether anime/fantastic cinema buffs accept it as a psyberpunkish cautionary tale regarding the conflict of unfettered aspirations vs. soulless technology, or as a definitive statement on the endless possibilities of dreams and cinema, will depend on the viewer’s ability to deal with the overpowering “spice” of the end product’s neuron-battering bravura (this is very much a “head movie”).

Dreams are a mystically pure place where one can live out their fantasies without giving in to the limits of the real world. Countless individuals have tried to analyze, re-enact, and even control their own dreams. What if you could take what’s in your head when you sleep and upload them to a computer? Opening the doors to a realm so unparalleled could bring to life your wildest fantasies and your most terrifying nightmares. Would this be amazing? Or incredibly dangerous? Paprika is a movie that invokes this scenario, combining fantasy dream worlds with a high tech invention that allows people a window into their dreams. Paprika stands teetering on the edge of reality, with the deep ocean that is the dream world beneath her.

With a straightforward narrative that, like a lucid dream, carries enough odd detail to hint at surreal depths, Paprika teases. The titular character is a dream psychologist who is also a dream: she taps into patients' minds, finding centers to their labyrinths. By day Paprika is Atsuko, clinical psychologist and genius (so proclaimed by a jealous coworker) who, along with Tokita, a ginormous, childlike engineer, perfects the DC-Mini, a device which allows direct access to dreams.

Paprika is special. She doesn't need the device to be in people's dreams. Maybe she's just the prototype for a skill set. Maybe dreams are connected already, and she just rides the wave. She uses her power as therapy to gain insight into the meanings of her patients' recurring nightmares.

However, a stolen DC-Mini prototype is being used for a different purpose: to spread an insanity sickness, which causes near-suicidal delusions in the form of waking dreams. Before they can rescue the world from a collective nightmare which threatens all mankind, Paprika, Atsuko, fat Tokita, and Detective Kogima must come to terms with their desires, and with the meanings of shared dreams.

This is certainly one of the most beautiful-looking Anime' features I've ever seen. The bizarre and surreal imagery really does seem like a nightmare come vividly to life on the screen. To my grateful eyes, with the disturbingly violent and sexual images - as well as constant flashes of an otherworldly circus parade featuring household appliances, stuffed animals, and a giant geisha doll that lets out a deathly, ear-shattering shriek - "Paprika" further ensures that this is animation strictly for adults and not children.

Paprika is a paean to movies. There are references to Tarzan, From Russia with Love, Godzilla, Vertigo, and Spirited Away among many others. Even the musical score is a surprise – it's electronic of course, but without the usual coffee-house angst. The quality of the animation is excellent and the detective, Konakawa, has a plain-looking mug that expresses surprisingly subtle emotions without resorting to the squishy-squashy exaggerations that are typical of Disney.

The Tokyo-trashing climax culminates in a mysterious confrontation between masculine and feminine dualities. There are other confrontations too; between maturity and immaturity, aspiration and disappointment, heart and intellect, and a fascinating argument between Dr. Chiba and Paprika about which of them is in charge. At no time in this movie is the distinction between reality and dreams ever clear, and when it is all you leave confused but grinning from ear to ear.

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