BBC Best Films of the 21st Century #8: Yi Yi

The BBC recently surveyed 177 international critics about their picks for the best films released since 2000. You can read the resulting list of 100 films here. Of course, no-one will ever entirely agree with cumulative lists like this, but it's a great place to start if you're interested in exploring the best of what modern movies have to offer. I will be reviewing the top 10 picks, and offer my opinion on what's great about them.

Directed by Edward Yang

Taiwan, 2000

Yi Yi was director Edward Yang's final film before his passing in 2007, at only 59 years old. Yang was one of a small group of young, ambitious filmmakers who emerged from Taiwan in the early 1980s collectively dubbed by critics the Taiwanese New Wave. With the loosening of censorship in Taiwan around that time, artists could finally explore the history and identity of their country with honesty. Yang and his peers made formally radical, ethically serious movies that were a reckoning with Taiwan's turbulent past and uncertain present.

If Hou Hsiao-Hsien is the Taiwanese New Wave's poet, Edward Yang is its novelist. His 1991 film A Brighter Summer Day is an intimately-scaled epic set among the youth of 1960s Taipei, who have formed street gangs to give them a sense of security and identity that their country, politically insecure and culturally stuck between China, Japan, and America, doesn't offer. A Brighter Summer Day has the richness of character and theme - and, at four hours long, the sheer size - of a great novel. Yang's 1986 film The Terrorizers is an unusually literate, clever exploration of modern urban living's dark side. It's the type of story that would become popular several decades later with the likes of Crash and Babel, a multi-stranded ensemble narrative about how contemporary life can make individuals simultaneously more interconnected and more alienated than ever before.

Yang's films are densely novelistic in their writing, but simple and precise in their visual storytelling. Before becoming a filmmaker, Yang had studied engineering and was fascinated by architecture. His films display the mind of an architect - his images are cleanly composed and aware of how space and shape can inform a scene's mood and meaning. He is always careful to situate characters within their surroundings, mostly in long shots that contextualize the characters and their behavior within the environments that shape them. Close-up images are rare in Yang's work, and always deliberately used. Yang also loved comic books and animation - his planned, tragically unfinished follow-up to Yi Yi was going to be an animated martial arts saga. Even his live-action films display the sensibility of a cartoonist, who tell their stories through single panels and express character and emotion with simplified pen-and-ink sketches. Lone images of Yi Yi tell mini-stories of their own, which gain broader meaning in dialogue with the surrounding images; characters' simple gestures express depths of comedy or tragedy. In other words, Edward Yang was a true craftsman - nothing in his films feel accidental.

Despite all the acclaim he's received, Edward Yang's movies are frustratingly difficult to find. Yi Yi was his only film to receive a theatrical release in the United States - sad, but perhaps not surprising. It might be his most easily accessible film, as it is less specifically tied to Taiwan in its meaning than Yang's previous works, and tells a universally relatable story. Yi Yi begins with a wedding and ends with a funeral, and between shows the stages of life - birth, childhood, adolesence, adulthood, old age - through three generations of the ordinary Jian family.

Between the family gatherings that bookend the film, the Jians are almost always shown separately. Like many modern families, the Jians may share a roof but live mostly in isolation from each other - not because there's a lack of love or open dysfunction between them, but because they each have their own burdens to quietly grapple with amid the many distractions of 21st century city life.

Immediately after her son A-Di's wedding, the Jian grandmother, the beloved backbone of the family, falls into a coma. Doctors are not optimistic about her recovery, but encourage the family to take turns talking to her - as she might still hear them and it could help her return to consciousness. Their one-sided conversations with her become like confessions, revealing their innermost questions and longings.

NJ, her son-in-law, is a melancholy and distracted but gentle man. He notes while talking to grandma that it feels like prayer - "I'm not sure if the other party is listening, and I'm not sure if I'm sincere enough." What NJ really craves is sincerity. He doesn't find it in his work - a dull career in the video game industry, surrounded by co-workers who lack any ambition or integrity beyond the pursuit of profit. His marriage has become a benign but lukewarm partnership lacking in romance or friendship. Two figures enter NJ's static life and shake him out of complacency. He runs into an ex-girlfriend, Sherry, the first love of his life, now a successful businesswoman married to an American. From this abrupt, awkward encounter it's clear that strong bittersweet feelings still exist between them. He meets up with Sherry again in Tokyo and they reminisce on their past together and the possibilities of their future. At the same time NJ meets Ota - a Japanese businessman who also works in video games, but does so with a creative spirit that does not segregate business from morals, or art from commerce. He lives with the kind of passionate, engaged authenticity that NJ desires in his own life. Their friendship, which develops over the course of business meetings that turn into philosophical discussions, is surprising and endearing.

NJ's wife, Min-Min, takes the duty of talking to her mother seriously, and every night talks about what she'd done that day. But this leads to an unexpected personal crisis - Min-Min realizes that every day of her life seems exactly the same, and that she has very little of interest to talk about. "How can there be so little?" she asks, disconsalate at the realization of her life's lack of purpose. Hoping to find meaning again, she retreats to a monastery for an extended stay. Both NJ and Min-Min have reached mid-life crises, regretting either the choices they've made or their lack of intention in life, and realizing with frightening clarity: this is it, and perhaps all it ever will be.

Min-Min's brother, A-Di, is a mess. He's newly married, but immediately rekindles a relationship with his equally damaged ex-girlfriend. He's deep in debt, getting scammed by his scummy friends, and generally in denial about the disaster he's made of his life. He brags to his comatose mother about his various accomplishments and all the money he's making, as if trying to convince her and above all himself that it's true, but falters and falls silent. Perhaps her nonresponsiveness makes the hollowness of his own words harder to ignore. A-Di is a pathetic but poignant illustration of a certain, and particularly male, type of insecurity and despair.

NJ and Min-Min's teenage daughter, Ting-Ting, feels personally responsible for her beloved grandma's condition. Her grandmother was discovered unconscious by the garbage bins outside, and Ting-Ting realizes that she had forgotten to take out the trash earlier that day. She sneaks into her grandmother's room at night and tearfully asks her to wake up, because then she will feel forgiven. Her guilty feelings are compounded when she innocently becomes involved in a romantic triangle with troubled neighbor girl Lili and a moody boy nicknamed Fatty, and witnesses glimpses of the sordid lives of her next-door neighbors. Her first steps into adulthood are fraught with danger and confusion. "Why is the world so different from what we thought it was?"

Ting-Ting's younger brother, Yang-Yang, is a curious and watchful little kid with the conscience of a budding artist. He does not initially talk to grandma - she cannot see what he does and cannot respond, so he fails to see the point. This gets him thinking, in his own childish but nonetheless serious and thoughtful way, about the reality of different perspectives. He asks his dad: since we cannot see out the back of our heads but only what's in front of us, do we only see half the truth? His dad gifts him with a camera, which Yang-Yang uses to explore the world around him. He especially likes photographing the back of people's heads. This confuses NJ until he hears Yang-Yang's simple explanation - "you can't see it, so I've shown you."

Yi Yi is three hours of a family's everyday doubts and struggles, which may sound heavy, but Edward Yang has created a film with a beautiful lightness of touch. It's long but uses that length well, to envelop the viewer in its world so it can become vividly detailed and alive. Yi Yi is meditative and never melodramatic, emotionally expressive but never manipulative. It's also threaded through with sly visual jokes. In one memorable scene, NJ is visited by Min-Min's spiritual guru. We see Yang-Yang playing in the bath with his tub toys while we hear the adults talking in the next room, the conversation dominated by the monk's didactic evangelizing about the superiority of monastic life. Yang-Yang sneaks past the grown-ups into the kitchen to find a funnel for his bathtub experiments, and his towel unceremoniously falls off at the same moment as the monk finally reach his point - his whole highfaulting speech has been a pretext for asking NJ for money. Yang-Yang's sudden nudity humorously coincides with the reveal of the monk's pretension. Yi Yi is full of similarly lovely, witty grace notes.

Yi Yi's subtitle for its American release was "A One and a Two", which is an attempt to translate the title's meaning in Chinese. The title is a Chinese character made of two slashes stacked on top of each other, each signifying the number 1 on their own but 2 when put together. This must have been deliberate wordplay on Edward Yang's part, as every character in Yi Yi is alone but simultaneously connected to the others, in more ways than they perceive. Take as an example the scene that cuts between NJ and Sherry swapping memories of their first date decades ago, and Ting-Ting embarking on a first date with Fatty. We hear NJ and Sherry talking about nervously holding hands for the first time, while we see Ting-Ting and Fatty doing exactly the same thing. The two couples become a mirror of each other, though one date is unfolding in Tokyo and one in Taipei, with hundreds of miles and decades in age separating them. They are united by the shared nervousness and excitement of their experiences, the scary romantic thrill of finding a private space with another person in the middle of a busy world. Yang finds similar connections between all the characters, their hopes and fears are somehow both unique and universally shared.

The beauty of Yi Yi lies in how it captures the patterns that tie the Jians to each other, though they often do not notice, being too perplexed by the disappointments and tragedies of life. But in the film's last act, the Jians begin to see themselves, and each other, more clearly. Min-Min and NJ realize that their attempts to escape did not bring them any more fulfillment - that the problem was not the reality of their lives, but how they perceived them. Ting-Ting experiences life's cruelty and unfairness, but also encounters grace in a climatic scene that could be a miracle. Considering that Yi Yi is entirely realistic up to that point, the break with everyday reality should be jarring, but it isn't. Yi Yi may be mundane on its surface but has a spiritual undercurrent that gives even the most everyday events a luminous quality. The miracle is portrayed as matter-of-factly as everything else, and is astonishing in its quiet, cathartic power.

Yang-Yang gets the final word in Yi Yi, as he finally decides to speak to grandma. Despite coming from the naive perspective of a little kid, his words carry great weight. "Do you know what I want to do when I grow up? I want to tell people things they don't know. Show them stuff they haven't seen. It'll be so much fun." That could be Edward Yang's mission statement. He achieved just that with Yi Yi - he looks at ordinary lives and discovers wonder and mystery there.

The BBC Top 10: 

1. Mulholland Drive
2. In the Mood for Love (previously reviewed)
3. There Will Be Blood
4. Spirited Away
5. Boyhood
6. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
7. The Tree of Life
8. Yi Yi
9. A Separation
10. No Country for Old Men

BBC Best Films of the 21st Century #9: A Separation

The BBC recently surveyed 177 international critics about their picks for the best films released since 2000. You can read the resulting list of 100 films here. Of course, no-one will ever entirely agree with cumulative lists like this, but it's a great place to start if you're interested in exploring the best of what modern movies have to offer. I will be reviewing the top 10 picks, and offer my opinion on what's great about them.

Directed by Asghar Farhadi
Iran, 2011

A Separation received exceptional acclaim and success on its release in 2011. The critical response was unanimously great, and the movie earned nearly 8 million dollars in the United States - a tiny amount compared to the average Hollywood release, but a smash hit compared to the average Middle Eastern film, which rarely crack a million in box office earnings. It was nominated for Best Screenplay at the Academy Awards - an uncommon achievement for a film not written in English - and won for Best Foreign Language Film, a first for an Iranian movie.

Part of A Separation's enthusiastic reception was likely due to its novelty with many non-Iranians. In the United States, Iran is known mostly for its repressive government and politics, for nuclear fears and sexism. A Separation was an eye-opener for many. It's an intimate study of everyday people who live in a culture alien to most outside Iran's borders. A Separation was less novel to those who had been following Iranian filmmaking - a unique film culture that produced artists like Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who had been making films of startling poetry and clarity since the 1970s despite restrictive censorship from their government. It was even less surprising to those who had seen previous Asghar Farhadi films like Fireworks Wednesday or About Elly, noteworthy for their multi-layered characters and intricate stories.

However, no matter how fascinating it is as a rare honest glimpse into a foreign culture, the main appeal of A Separation is not educational - it's just a tremendously good movie, the work of a master storyteller. Before becoming a filmmaker, Asghar Farhadi studied theater. His theater experience shows in his carefully structured, dialogue-driven screenplays. Farhadi's genius as a screenwriter lies in how he reveals the motivations of his characters and shows how everyone has reasonable cause to believe what they do, even as their individual perspectives fall disastrously short of the whole truth.

A Separation begins with a simple but difficult ethical quandary. By the end, the varying truths and lies told have woven an enormous web of moral questions, which the characters have created and cannot escape. Nader and Simin want a divorce. She wants to leave the country to provide a better life for their young daughter, Termeh, and their visa expires soon. He needs to stay to care for his Alzheimer's-afflicted father. During the divorce, Simin leaves home to live with her mother. Due to her absence, Nader hires a young woman, Razieh, to become his father's caretaker while he's at work. One day Nader returns home to find Razieh gone, and his neglected father injured after a collapse. Razieh returns to a furious Nader, who also accuses her of stealing before violently shoving her out the front door. Nader later learns that Razieh ended up in the hospital, suffering a miscarriage soon after their argument. Razieh and her hotheaded husband, Hodjat, take Nader to court, accusing him of causing her miscarriage by his aggression - an accusation that, if proven, would equal a murder sentence.

If there's a running theme connecting the Iranian films I've seen, it's the quest for truth. What is truth? How do we determine it? Maybe this search for truth in Iranian film arises from the urgent importance placed on certain virtues in Islamic Middle Eastern cultures, such as righteousness, justice, and honor. Maybe it's a reaction to a government with a totalitarian claim on The Truth in all aspects of life: religious, social, individual. The best, most conscientious artists cross-examine the accepted mores of their societies, and Asghar Farhadi is particularly bold in that regard. A Separation is about the impossibility of determining a singular, objective truth. Everyone's version of the truth is formed by their own limited perspective, their self-interest, justifications, and misunderstandings.

Where do we find truth? Turning to official, society-mandated truth often provides no satisfying answers. A Separation's opening credits unfold over images of passports being scanned - the elements of an individual collated onto an official document, proof of a person's existence even as it flattens and dehumanizes them due to bureaucratic necessity. The government courts of A Separation - fascinatingly different from the legal system in America - apply rigid moral judgments, drawn from the Qur'an and Iranian law, to messy human lives that don't fit in such neat boxes of right and wrong.

But individual perspectives in A Separation are often no more truthful. The opening scene is the film in miniature. Nader and Simin tell their reasons for seeking divorce to a judge. The dissolution of their marriage has been caused by, ironically enough, devotion to family members. Simin wants a better, freer life for her daughter - when the judge huffily asks why she believes Iran would not provide a good future for Termeh, Simin's silence and confrontational stare speaks volumes. Nader wants to be a good son and not uproot his already-fragile father from his home, or place him in a hospital. Their decisions are motivated by good, right things, but have nevertheless brought them to an ugly, wrong place - a formerly loving couple, now divided and spiteful. Farhadi's staging of the scene is simple but brilliant - the couple sit facing the camera, putting the audience in the place of the judge. This immediately draws us, the viewers, into their dilemma, making us more than passive spectators but directly involving us as judges to their case.

I found my judgments, and sympathies, constantly shifting throughout the film. Nader's anger with Razieh was justified. She had neglected her job, putting his father in danger. We see the depths of love he has for his father when he returns home to find him sprawled on the floor, hardly breathing. Determining he is alive and not seriously injured, Nader cradles him in his arms, weeping with relief. His fury with Razieh is largely a way to vent his fear. But his violence is cruel and unjustified, and has unforeseen consequences.

Razieh's duplicity proves destructive to everyone around her. She lies to Hodjat about the nature of her job, since he would not approve of her working alone in a man's apartment. She does not tell the truth about why she left Nader's father alone. And she neglects to mention all the events leading up to her miscarriage, which would throw reasonable doubt onto Nader's complicity in the tragedy. But she also lives under enormous pressure from the impossible demands of her strict religiosity and oppressive husband - her circumstances force her to be duplicitous to survive. One small scene reveals much about Razieh. She calls some sort of religious hotline to get the Islam-approved answer to a problem: Nader's father has wet his pants and it is her duty to clean him - but he cannot undress himself, and it is a sin for her to be in the presence of an undressed man apart from her husband. She is caught between the threat of damnation and the necessities of life, and is not always honest in negotiating the two.

Similarly, her husband Hodjat's plight is sympathetic even as his behavior is despicable. He carries himself as a man who has been mistreated his whole life. He has lost his job and been jailed for failing to pay his creditors, resulting in a terrible bout of depression. He cannot find work and feels emasculated by his wife working to pay the bills behind his back. Hodjat has become hyper-religious and quick to anger to compensate for his failings. Once his wife loses her baby, he finds in Nader an easy scapegoat for all his problems. It is easy to characterize Nader - middle-class, educated, successful - as The Man, a symbol of all his oppressors. Similarly, it was easy for Nader to accuse Razieh of theft (wrongly, we learn) because he views her as lower-class and uneducated. The stark difference in their lives is illustrated by their apartments. Simin and Nader's home is well-furnished, marking them as comfortably middle-class, and filled with stacks of books, showing that they are educated. Razieh and Hodjat's apartment shows their poverty, with its barren walls and floors, and generations of their family living in a few small rooms. Considering the very different environments that have shaped them, when presented with the same sequence of events how could these people possibly arrive at the same conclusions?

Another characteristic that many Iranian films share is the prominent use of children as major characters. This is for a multitude of reasons - some of them subversive, as supposed children's films are less likely to be accused of anti-government / anti-Islamic content, so filmmakers can sneak social criticisms beneath censors' noses. Often it's for the sake of contrast, as the guileless, faithful perspective of children reveals the hypocrisy and cynicism of the adult world - and this is certainly true of A Separation. Termeh remains faithful to both her parents, watching them intently and trying to ascertain what is right. She is put in the impossible position of having to choose between them, and the terrible cost of divorce is written on her face.

A Separation is not always pleasant to watch, but I urge you to do so anyways. Farhadi's script deserves to be counted among the all-time great screenplays. It is full of perfectly-timed twists and revelations without ever feeling contrived, and creates the suspenseful urgency of a thriller not from the threat of violence but from moral dilemmas and the weight of characters' decisions. This is a movie of rare intelligence and integrity.

The BBC Top 10:

1. Mulholland Drive
2. In the Mood for Love (previously reviewed)
3. There Will Be Blood
4. Spirited Away
5. Boyhood
6. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
7. The Tree of Life
8. Yi Yi
9. A Separation
10. No Country for Old Men

BBC Best Films of the 21st Century #10: No Country for Old Men

The BBC recently surveyed 177 international critics about their picks for the best films released since 2000. You can read the resulting list of 100 films here. Of course, no-one will ever entirely agree with cumulative lists like this, but it's a great place to start if you're interested in exploring the best of what modern movies have to offer. I will be reviewing the top 10 picks, and offer my opinion on what's great about them.

Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
United States, 2007
*Review contains plot spoilers

I hadn't watched No Country for Old Men since its release nearly a decade ago, but I still vividly remembered every scene. It's that kind of movie: whatever you think of it, it makes a lasting impression.

It's intensely scary, to start with. No Country for Old Men builds tension with ruthless patience. Everything about the film has an eerie starkness. The action unfolds in vast Texas deserts and empty motel rooms. There is no score. Even a horror film score would have offered a certain comfort, informing the viewer how to feel, and unconsciously reminding them of the film's artifice. In No Country for Old Men, the silence is unsettling. Every small sound gains sinister significance - the hiss of a cattle stungun, the beeping of a tracking device, the muffled patter of shoeless feet on concrete. When shotgun blasts tear through the quiet with shocking violence, it's enough to give you a panic attack.

The story begins as a straightforward cat-and-mouse thriller. Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) stumbles on the aftermath of a botched drug deal in the desert - bullet-ridden corpses, abandoned stacks of cocaine, and a satchel full of hundred-dollar bills. He takes the money, unaware that a tracker is hidden in the cash, putting psychopathic bounty hunter Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) on his tail, while a world-weary lawman (Tommy Lee Jones) surveys the carnage they leave behind.

The performances are across-the-board excellent. Josh Brolin plays a prototypical Coen Brothers character - an everyman who, through his own foolish decisions and thoughtless ambition, gets into deep trouble. Tommy Lee Jones brings a wounded soul to Sheriff Bell, a good man who has been spiritually exhausted by all the violence and evil he encounters on the job. Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald puts on an impressively believable Texan accent as Llewelyn's wife Carla Jean, a woman who initially seems naive but reveals surprising depths of courage.

Yet the standout is clearly Javier Bardem as the evil Chigurh. Just as Llewelyn is a classic Coen character, Chigurh is an archetypal figure of Cormac McCarthy, who wrote the novel No Country for Old Men. He's an unfathomable figure of pure malignance, a walking embodiment of evil, but bizarrely principled in his predatory instincts - a cousin to the Judge of Blood Meridian or Malinka of The Counselor. Playing an individual of total evil is a challenge for any actor (see Cameron Diaz's admirably committed but not-quite-convincing performance in The Counselor as evidence of how it can fall flat), but Bardem rises to the challenge with terrifying results. It's partially his physical appearance - the handsome Bardem stifles his natural charisma behind a freakishly incongruous pageboy haircut and alarming bulbous eyes. He moves with the steady precision and quiet of a predatory cat. Chigurh is amused by his own sadism and enjoys toying with his prey. Most memorably, he cruelly taunts a bewildered old man working at a gas station. "What's the most you've ever lost in a coin toss?" Chigurh growls, cryptically making it known that the old man's life is on the line, for seemingly no other reason than his attempts at small talk were bothersome.

That sequence makes clear what a harmonic convergence of very distinctive artists No Country for Old Men is. It displays the Coen Brothers' penchant for quirky characters, rich regional language, and darkly comic dialogue; at the same time, it exemplifies Cormac McCarthy's terse prose and fatalistic philosophy. No Country for Old Men is as accomplished and technically brilliant as anything the Coen Brothers have directed. It's all in the details. I've already mentioned the immersive sound design, but Roger Deakins' cinematography is just as noteworthy. A chase through the desert, backlit by a budding sunrise, is all the more heart-stopping for its harsh beauty. Deakins' images capture a level of textured detail that feels hyperreal, recalling our animalistic heightened senses when in danger. No Country for Old Men is a masterwork of film craft.

As if typical of both McCarthy and the Coens, No Country for Old Men may begin as a simple thriller, but ultimately upends expectations. The entire film appears to be building towards a showdown between our protagonist and antagonist, one that never comes. The last act does resolve the story, but not in the dramatically satisfying way you would expect - it offers no catharsis. This may be generically disappointing, but it's exactly the point.

"You make your own destiny" about sums up the ethos of so many American westerns and action films. Even mistakes - like, for example, Llewelyn taking the money - can be corrected with determination and ingenuity, and our hero can ride off triumphantly into the sunset. Cormac McCarthy does not believe that. Llewelyn does, but it does not stop his fate - gunned down ingloriously, a scene that the Coens perversely leave off-screen. Sheriff Bell is ultimately disillusioned of that belief - he may be sheriff, but he is not truly in control. "It ain't all waiting on you. That's vanity."

Cormac McCarthy's unrelentingly bleak worldview sometimes strikes me as contrived, but it's also a necessary and humbling corrective to so much of America's mythology, which can be blindly and selfishly optimistic. Fate and evil can overtake anyone, no matter how clever or good. I've read before, though I can't recall where, that Cormac McCarthy has a Catholic conscience without the redemption. His stories are convicted of the existence of evil and mankind's weakness, and there is nothing we can do in our own power to escape either. The best we can do is, like Sheriff Bell, be resigned to the existence of evil and hold a faint hope for the afterlife - represented by his dream, where he searches for his late father through a snowstorm, knowing that he will be waiting for him with a warm fire ready. Or, like Carla Jean, we can stick to our principles even in the face of inescapable fate. "I ain't gonna call it. The coin don't have no say."

I'll admit that I yearned for a character equivalent to Fargo's Marge Gunderson or True Grit's Mattie Ross - two characters from other Coen Brothers films whose goodness really has power in a world overtaken by chaos and evil. Some might call that wish sentimental, but I think it's closer to the truth. No Country for Old Men demands and deserves respect. It's the work of masters at the peak of their powers. Yet I admire but do not love it - not in the way I love Fargo or True Grit, or even McCarthy's novel The Road, which may present a massively depressing vision of the apocalypse but leaves room in its moral universe for selfless love that transcends evil.

The BBC Top 10:

1. Mulholland Drive
2. In the Mood for Love (previously reviewed)
3. There Will Be Blood
4. Spirited Away
5. Boyhood
6. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
7. The Tree of Life
8. Yi Yi
9. A Separation
10. No Country for Old Men

The Night of the Hunter

Directed by Charles Laughton
United States, 1955

The Night of the Hunter was not successful in its initial release. Critics were mostly baffled by it, and audiences stayed away. It was the directorial debut of Charles Laughton, the famed British-American actor, as well as his last film. Its poor reception guaranteed that Laughton would not be given money to make another. He passed away in 1962. Since its release, The Night of the Hunter's reputation has slowly grown, and now it is considered among the all-time classics of American cinema. It belongs in fine company with many challenging films that were initially misunderstood or derided, to be later re-evaluated as masterpieces - Vertigo, Barry Lyndon, and The New World among them.

Like those films, The Night of the Hunter was out of step with tastes of the time. There was nothing else in 1955 comparable to it - and nothing since, either. It's impossible to pigeonhole in a certain genre or style. It's been called a horror, a film noir, a fairy tale, and it fits all those definitions. It is equally moulded by American folklore and the Old Testament, Nosferatu and Bambi. Perhaps Charles Laughton himself described it best, as a "nightmarish Mother Goose story".

It opens on a startlingly weird image - the floating head of wise old Lillian Gish, former starlet of silent cinema, imposed onto a starry sky. She is lecturing a group of eager children (also disembodied heads dangling in the cosmos), quoting the verse from Matthew about the danger of false prophets, who come dressed in sheep's clothing but inwardly are wolves. We then meet one of these wolves - Reverend Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum), a wandering preacher with a drawling baritone voice and the unctuous manners of a salesman. He's also a Bluebeard, a serial killer who preys upon lonely widows and steals their money. His latest target is Willa Harper, whose deceased husband, in a fit of Depression-era desperation, robbed a bank and murdered two people in the process. Powell, spending time behind bars for his latest act of petty theft, meets John Harper in jail before his execution. Harper unwittingly lets slip that the stolen money remains hidden back home. The only people who know where it lies are his young children, little John and Pearl. Reverend Powell has a new family to target.

As Reverend Powell, Robert Mitchum gives one of the all-time great villainous performances. He is a hateful character, frightening and darkly comic. Mitchum based the performance on people he met in the South - con artists who knew they would be believed as long as they spoke with conviction and brandished a Bible. Powell wields Biblical language like a weapon, and prays with an open jackknife clasped between his hands. He's enough of a charismatic personality that we understand why so many fall for his act. On his fingers he has tattooed L-O-V-E and H-A-T-E. With them he tells the story of right hand, left hand, pantomiming a battle between the two forces where Love ultimately triumphs. Powell is not a realistic character, but a mythic one - H-A-T-E in the flesh. He's a honey-tongued fiend around easily seduced adults, and a cartoonish Big Bad Wolf when alone with the children.

Laughton always emphasizes the innocence of John and Pearl even in the horror of their circumstances. Their mother is dead - a scene of morbid, horrific beauty shows her body at the bottom of a river, peacefully swaying among the reeds with a slit in her throat - and a devilish madman pursues them. The Night of the Hunter often adopts the naive perspective of the children - as in the incredible sequence where they flee Powell on a riverboat. The river is an obviously artificial set made with expressionist, dreamy exaggeration. Pearl sings eerily as the current carries them from danger - the moon and stars appear magically close while storybook animals graze on the shore. The children hear snatches of lullabies drifting from windows of passing farm houses, and see the silhouette of Reverend Powell on the horizon, relentlessly in pursuit. "Don't he never sleep", John wonders in terror. It's like a classic Disney musical took a very dark turn.

The children find shelter with Rachel Cooper, the old woman whose warning against false prophets we heard at the film's beginning. She has taken in several other vagabond children, raising them as her own. Lillian Gish, who had captivated audiences decades earlier in the silent melodramas of D.W. Griffith, is marvelous as Rachel. She's the only adult immune to Powell's snakelike charms, and his equally powerful antithesis - a strong, unshakable force for good, protecting the innocent against evil. "I'm a strong tree with branches for many birds," she says, "I'm good for something in this world and I know it too."

In the dead of night Powell appears in Rachel's yard, singing the gospel song "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms". In his voice the song becomes a threat, a menace to the sleeping children inside. Rachel sits on the porch with a shotgun, undaunted. She begins singing along, redeeming the lyrics as a sincere expression of faith. The duet becomes a showdown of good versus evil, one of the most powerful in film history.

The Night of the Hunter is among the great American movies, and a personal favorite of mine. It is beautiful and frightening, unforgettable for its cinematography, performances, and boldly unconventional storytelling.

Babette's Feast

Hello everyone! I've been on an extended (and unplanned) break from writing recently, but promise to return to regular blogging in the coming weeks!

And I was recently able to do a bit of writing elsewhere - I was honored by the opportunity to write a review of Babette's Feast for Chris Williams's blog on films and faith, Chrisicisms! You can read the review here.

The Films of Hayao Miyazaki: Part 2

Castle in the Sky (1986)

Hayao Miyazaki's follow up to Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind shares many similarities with its predecessor. Like Nausicaa, Castle in the Sky is set in a fantasy world that is equally of the past and the future. 19th century mining towns and farms exist alongside futuristic flying airships. The world of Castle in the Sky is designed with a steampunk aesthetic, equally inspired by medieval and Victorian European architecture and Flash Gordon sci-fi serials. Also like Nausicaa, Castle in the Sky has thinly veiled anti-nuclear power themes, along with Miyazaki's usual concern for respect and conservation of the natural world. However, Castle in the Sky is a breezier film than Nausicaa - more of a simple adventure story, where Nausicaa was a complex, Campbellian epic. It's still an adventure on a huge scale, but one that tells a straightforward good vs. evil story with broad humor and lighthearted characters.

It's a terrific adventure story too, a thrilling swashbuckler set in the endless skies instead of the high seas. Miyazaki's love of flight finds perhaps its most joyous expression here. The majority of Castle in the Sky takes place among the clouds - he clearly delights in animating a variety of retro-futuristic flying machines, and the landscape of the sky with its drifting clouds and roiling storms. Laputa, the titular castle in the sky (its name taken from Jonathan Swift's flying island in Gulliver's Travels), is one of Miyazaki's most marvelous creations. Laputa is an Atlantis of the sky, a lost city capable of terrible power. It's been overtaken by nature, watched over by a lone robot who tends to its vast gardens, a proto WALL-E. Miyazaki's imagination, and his skill in bringing his imaginings to life with rich beauty and detail, is astonishing.

My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

A big change of direction in Miyazaki's career. My Neighbor Totoro is unlike Miyazaki's previous films - where they were expansive, packed with action and conflict, Totoro is small in scope and essentially plotless. Despite its fantasy elements, Totoro exists in a real time and place, Japan in the 1950s. There are no villains, no battles, no big conflicts - just a regular family and a few magical creatures, whose existence is casually accepted.

Even those who have never seen a Miyazaki film might recognize Totoro, who has become internationally iconic. And no wonder - he's such an adorably designed creature, with his fat, round body, short arms and legs, and expressive mouth and eyes, which can be tiny or huge depending on his mood.

His behavior makes him even more endearing. I suspect that the best children's characters - Winnie the Pooh is another example - take themselves entirely seriously, no matter how comical they are. Totoro is never buffoonish or a jokester. Even in his most absurd moments - being alarmed by a toddler's roar despite his enormous size, attempting to keep dry from the rain by placing a small leaf on his head - he's very serious, which makes him all the more lovable. Part of Totoro's appeal, too, is that he's never explained. Is he a forest spirit? Is he a figment of the children's imagination? Miyazaki does not give him a backstory, or any psychological explanation. He just is. The young protagonists accept his existence with quick delight, and children watching the film will, too. Some things are more enchanting when left unexplained.

He's not the only wonderful creature in the film, either. There are the smaller Totoros, nervous and bunny-like in appearance, who scuttle after their giant friend like ducklings. Then there's the Catbus, a twelve-legged feline transport for the spirit world, with eyes like headlights and furry seats on the inside. His enormous Cheshire grin is mildly frightening and delightfully weird.

Every time one of these magical beings appears, My Neighbor Totoro rises to a whole new level of delight - but even without them, this would have been a great film. My Neighbor Totoro might be the best film about childhood ever made. The two central characters, young sisters, are among the most convincing children in animation. They act like real, energetic kids, exploring their new house and its grounds with ecstatic happiness and curiosity. Satsuki, the eldest, is the smart, responsible elder sister. She loves her sister and watches out for her, despite occasional annoyance with her. Mei is the younger sibling, always following Satsuki and clumsily imitating all she does and says. Mei in particular is a triumph of character animation. Her features may be cartoonish, but there is incredible realism to her expressions and movements. When she runs, stumbles, and crawls, she has the life-like physicality of a toddler, something that I imagine must be difficult to capture in animation.

My Neighbor Totoro is all about the everyday feelings and sensations of being a kid. How the smallest things could be a source of wonder - an acorn discovered on the ground, wiggling your fingers at tadpoles in a puddle; or of fear - a dark staircase leading to an attic, a storm shaking the windowpanes. It also expresses the uncomprehending sadness of children that life can sometimes be unfair. Satsuki and Mei's beloved mother is in the hospital for an extended stay, and both are afraid and angry that she cannot be safe at home. A scene where Mei cries in scared frustration is heart-piercing without resorting to any melodrama or manipulation, the moment just seems so real. With perhaps the exception of Malick's Tree of Life, I've never seen children represented so well on film. Even more so than its cuddly creatures, I suspect that is the true reason why My Neighbor Totoro strikes a chord with so many people. In many of its particulars it's very tied to Japanese life and culture, but it captures something universally relatable and deeply human.

The animation is just gorgeous, too. The animation style is softer than Miyazaki's previous films, with less bold colors and clear lines. Many frames look like a watercolor painting. My Neighbor Totoro beautifully evokes the Japanese countryside, the green foliage and fields, the buzzing insects, the changing quality of light as long afternoons draw to a close.

If it's not already obvious, My Neighbor Totoro is a movie that I hold dear. I loved it as a kid, and still do as an adult. It's a modest but masterful work of art.

Viewing Journal - May 2016 #5

Love & Friendship (Whit Stillman, United Kingdom, 2016)

I'm now convinced that Whit Stillman was born to write and direct Jane Austen adaptations. While watching Love & Friendship I realized he's been making Austen stories all along - comedies of manners that are both satirical and affectionate - only in contemporary settings. His unique wit flourishes even more in the 1790s, and when matched with Austen's beautifully drawn characters. I haven't yet read Lady Susan, which Love & Friendship is adapted from, but in some ways it's an atypical Austen story. Lady Susan is a devious and cheerfully amoral character, a social climber with a genius for manipulation. She begins and ends the film unrepentantly horrible, but she is so witty and charismatic that we can't help but be impressed by her scheming ways. Kate Beckinsale clearly had a blast playing this character, delivering Lady Susan's politely wicked dialogue with virtuosic comic timing. Love & Friendship also has a welcome absurdist, irreverent streak, more reminiscent of Oscar Wilde or screwball comedy than Jane Austen. Yet, more than any other Austen adaptation I've seen, Love & Friendship captures her humor - her genius for mining comedy out of the gap between what people say and what they actually mean. It's one of the funniest movies I've seen in ages.

Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse, United States / Hong Kong, 1973)

Despite considering myself a fan of Hong Kong kung fu flicks, I had never seen a single one starring the legendary Bruce Lee. Clearly I needed to correct this oversight. Enter the Dragon is a collaboration between East and West - made in Hong Kong with a local crew, but filmed in English with an American director and co-stars. It's a genre hybrid as well, both a martial arts extravaganza and a James Bond-style espionage thriller, with influences of so-called "blaxploitation" and psychedelia. About every B-movie genre popular in America or Hong Kong circa 1973 shows up in Enter the Dragon in one form or another. This democratic blending of East and West is typical of Lee, a citizen of both Hong Kong and the United States who was passionate about spreading the philosophy of martial arts across the globe. Enter the Dragon is also a total mess, though an exuberantly fun mess. I now see why Bruce Lee was such a star. He's not only an astonishing athlete but a magnetic screen presence. There's a mischief and wily intelligence in his eyes, and his lightning quick movements are mesmerizing. His body zigs when you expect it to zag; his bird-like shrieks in battle are amusing and terrifying.

The Most Dangerous Game (Ernest B. Schoedsack and Irving Pichel, United States, 1932)

I love these horror-thrillers made in the early 30s, before the Production Code clamped down on what Hollywood films could show. Though tame by today's ultra-violent standards, The Most Dangerous Game remains an entertaining thriller that must have shocked audiences of 1932. Based on a famous and influential short story (which I have yet to read) with a perfectly simple, sinister premise: a wealthy madman and big game hunter entraps shipwrecked people on his private island to hunt them. If they survive a single night, he will release them - but none have survived before! Though it's only an hour long, The Most Dangerous Game spends much of its runtime building up to the hunt, as shipwrecked survivors are trapped inside Count Zaroff's gothic castle. The evil Zaroff is played by an over-the-top Leslie Banks; his bug-eyed expressions and preposterous Russian accent are difficult to take seriously but quite entertaining, especially next to Joel McCrea's stiffly stoic leading man. The really good parts arrive in the final twenty minutes, in a cat-and-mouse showdown in the jungle. The Most Dangerous Game was filmed on the same sets as King Kong - Kong would use the sets during the day, and Game at night. It's clearly an artificial jungle, but with all the grandiose charm and dream-like exaggeration of Old Hollywood. It's the perfect setting for an action-packed climax, as our heroes set elaborate booby traps, flee from hounds across logs bridging canyons, and do battle at the edge of a giant waterfall. The final fight is unusually realistic for the time, with sweaty, flailing desperation that looks unchoreographed.

Flirting (John Duigan, Australia, 1991)

Ignore the frivolous title. Flirting is the rare teenage comedy that treats its adolescent characters with dignity, as intelligent and thoughtful people. In 1965 Australia, two boarding schools, one all male and one all female, face each other across a lake. Danny is a gawky kid, intelligent, not athletic, teased by fellow students, though he's mostly unfazed by them. Thandiwe has just arrived to Australia from Uganda, and stands out from her peers for her race, her sophistication and irreverent humor. Both are attracted by the rebellious qualities of the other, and over a series of awkward and charming encounters grow to love each other. Flirting is the kind of well-observed film where even minor characters come alive as real, specific people, where you will laugh and cringe with fond recognition at their behavior. Noah Taylor and Thandie Newton give sensitive, lively performances as the leads, while Nicole Kidman and a baby-faced Naomi Watts appear in small early roles. Director John Duigan brings to Flirting a quiet beauty unique for its genre - like when Danny sneaks out at night to meet Thandiwe, rowing across a shimmering starlit lake out of a fairy tale.

Viewing Journal - May 2016 #4

Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1960)

Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung fu film. -Werner Herzog

There's no argument against Breathless being a trendsetter. Its fourth wall breaks, sporadic cuts, and meandering approach to a crime narrative - spending more time on digressive conversations and mundane moments than suspense or melodrama - showed the film world of 1960 that not all films need to be made the same way. Film could break free of adherence to classical literary or theatrical storytelling. Breathless was a phenomenon among critics and movie lovers. It has inspired many subsequent classics, among them Penn's Bonnie and Clyde, Malick's Badlands, Kar-wai's Chungking Express, and Tarantino's Pulp Fiction.

But trends fade, and stylistic innovations cease to be shocking if not built on a solid foundation. Once the initial buzz of its 60s chic-cool wears off, Breathless is a massive bore. Michel is among the most obnoxious protagonists I can think of. He's a try-hard poser and petty thief who whines when women don't immediately give him sex. Of course, great films can have unlikable main characters if they offer insight or hard-earned compassion, but I suspect I was supposed to be dazzled by Michel and his cynical affectations. I was not. Breathless flaunts its male chauvinism like a badge of honor. Women are persistently objectified, and Michel's sort-of girlfriend, Patricia, is a spineless "unfaithful woman" and a nonsensically written character.

I could forgive a lot if Breathless was fun, but despite all its spontaneous stylistic flourishes I found it insufferably tedious. Dialogue rotates between passive aggressive flirtations and inane philosophical non-sequiturs. The unconventional editing obliterates many rules about how to edit a film, but without much purpose beyond breaking the rules. Its random jump cuts and narrative elisions have little beauty or meaning in themselves. Indeed, Breathless as a whole seems intentionally devoid of meaning except when compared in a critical framework to other, more conventional films. I am uninterested in that approach to art. I would take a well-crafted generic film over this any day - or a non-generic film that actually has intrinsic meaning.

Regardless, I would never discourage a cinephile from watching Breathless. It is an important film for its place in the history of the medium, and my irritation seems to be the minority response. Jean-Luc Godard and I just don't get along. As far as French New Wave filmmakers go, I'll stick with Truffaut, Varda and Melville. Their films are every bit as clever as Godard's, but have real soul.

Carol (Todd Haynes, United States, 2015)

Todd Haynes strikes me as unique among contemporary filmmakers, in that his films are often just as influenced by artworks of different mediums as by other films. Carol, his latest, is set in the 1950s, but aesthetically shows less in common with melodramatic and romantic films made during the decade than it does with photography and paintings. Todd Haynes has cited 50s New York photographers such as Saul Leiter and Vivan Maier as inspirations, and even though I know next to nothing about photography, their influence on Carol's cinematography is apparent.

Many shots in Carol also reminded me of the paintings of Edward Hopper.

The influence of great photographers and painters of mid-century America gives Carol a unique visual appeal. There is little nostalgic sheen in its portrayal of 1950s New York, which looks grimy and grey, though enlivened by brightly colored women's fashions of the era. But Haynes and cinematographer Edward Lachman's borrowing of other artists' visual motifs is for more than just style. In both Saul Leiter's photography and Carol, people are often photographed behind reflective windows. These images show both the private world - individuals alone with their thoughts - and a bustling public world, separate but existing in the same place. And like in Edward Hopper's paintings, Carol often shoots characters from afar in public spaces, making us voyeuristic observers of people in moments of reflection. Through its cinematography, Carol shows private worlds existing within a public sphere; it also makes us aware that these individuals are always being watched by society at large, and must be cautious lest they reveal too much.

Carol is an adaptation of The Price of Salt, a 1952 novel by Patricia Highsmith. Highsmith was best known for her thrillers about sociopaths, such as Strangers on a Train and the Tom Ripley books. The Price of Salt is unique among her work because the thriller elements are minimized, and unique among 1950s literature because it is a forthright lesbian romance with a hopeful ending. Lesbian fiction did exist at the time, but usually was coded in its language and ended in tragedy, punishing the characters for their transgression and restoring moral order (or just appeasing censors). Highsmith published the novel under a pseudonym - she did not want to be labeled as a lesbian author, but she was gay and much of the story was veiled autobiography. Though I have not read The Price of Salt, it is clear that Carol's characters and insights are derived from lived experience.

Carol is a love story about Therese, a shopgirl, and the titular Carol. They meet at the department store and Therese is immediately drawn to this striking, intelligent woman, though it takes a while before she realizes why. Carol is among the most moving on-screen love stories of recent years for a variety of reasons, not least of all how well-drawn the two women are. The disparities between them are vast. Therese is younger, middle-class, inexperienced and uncertain of herself. Carol is middle-aged, wealthy, experienced and confident. One is hesitantly engaged, one is undergoing a divorce and custody battle of a beloved daughter. The initial stages of their romance are more of a one-sided seduction, the elegant and wily Carol drawing in the awestruck Therese with ease. But Carol's society lady manners hide vulnerabilities that slowly reveal themselves - and as Therese grows in confidence and discovers inner strength, it becomes apparent that Carol is the one with everything to lose. Carol beautifully captures the danger of falling in love - giving your self to another, for them to accept or reject. This is especially perilous in Therese and Carol's case, where they must keep a low profile within society or else their relationship will incur dangers other than heartbreak. It culminates in a lovely series of last shots, where they are finally on equal footing as their eyes meet.

Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara are wonderful. Mara communicates so much with only her eyes and gestures. I would say "Blanchett has never been better!", except she's been this perfect before - as Galadriel, as Bob Dylan, as Queen Elizabeth. What an insanely talented woman! Their performances, along with Todd Hayne's beautiful and sensitive direction and Phyllis Nagy's excellent script, made Carol one of the truly great films of last year.

The Films of Hayao Miyazaki: Part 1

Over the next few weeks, I will be re-watching and reviewing all the feature films of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, internationally acclaimed as perhaps the world's greatest animator and among my personal favorite filmmakers.

Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro (1979)

The Castle of Cagliostro was Hayao Miyazaki's first feature length animation, though he had been working in the medium for years creating television episodes. It's based on a pre-existing property - the Lupin III manga series, which had been popular in Japan since the 1960s, inspiring a television show and several films. All the Lupin III adventures center around a mischievous gentleman thief and his escapades, which unfold in a fantastic Eastern vision of continental Europe inspired by pulp serials and James Bond. The Castle of Cagliostro is less purely a result of Miyazaki's imagination than his later films - many of the themes and character types that would define his work are not present in this more generic adventure. It feels less like a deeply personal passion project than a job for hire from a budding animator. The animation, too, looks more cartoony than his later films, lacking their richness and painterly beauty.

Yet it's equally clear that Miyazaki gave his all to make The Castle of Cagliostro the best film it could be. The animation might be cheaper, but it's excellent considering the budgetary limitations. The backgrounds have real scale, depth and detail, and the simply-designed, caricatured characters are fun and expressive in a style unique to cartoons. The silly adventure story is generic, but in the best way - it revels in the most fun elements of its genre. The Castle of Cagliostro is restlessly action-packed and gleefully goofy. It is filled with all the most delightful cliches of swashbuckling adventure stories - trap doors and secret passageways, damsels in distress and nefarious henchmen, car chases and heroes dangling from great heights - all done with high-spirited style. It may look simple or unaccomplished compared to Miyazaki's more ambitious subsequent work, but taken on its own terms The Castle of Cagliostro is marvelous fun.

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984)

Like The Castle of Cagliostro, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind is based on a pre-existing source - this time one of Miyazaki's creation, an epic manga series he wrote. He compressed and simplified his sprawling saga into one two-hour film, and the result, although not Miyazaki's first film, is the true introduction to his unique vision as an artist.

Nausicaa is set in a futuristic world that is equal parts Star Wars and Mad Max. A long-ago man-made disaster has poisoned the earth. Small pockets of civilization are threatened by ever-expanding toxic jungles, lethal to humans and inhabited by enormous insects. Our titular character is the princess of one of these human strongholds, the Valley of the Wind, an agricultural, utopian society amid the wastelands. The peaceful Valley is disrupted by an airship crash-landing in their midst, carrying strange cargo - an enormous beating heart. The ship belongs to the Tolmekians, a military state who are planning to grow a giant, a living weapon of mass destruction to wipe out the toxic jungle. We learn that these ancient giants were what destroyed so much of the earth in the first place.

Nausicaa is a big step forward from The Castle of Cagliostro in sophistication. It tells a complicated story on a massive scale, with urgently expressed environmental and pacifist themes. It struck me on this viewing that, in a certain sense, Nausicaa is the type of film Avatar wanted to be. It is both an action-packed adventure and an unabashed message movie. Yet Avatar swerved into annoying pontification in expressing its environmental, anti-colonial messages, and was simplistic and hypocritical in its us-versus-them violent conflict. In Nausicaa, Miyazaki's concerns arise organically out of the world and characters he creates. The reasons for warfare are not simple. The most villainous characters in Nausicaa have humanity and legitimate reasons for the beliefs they hold - their faith in the ends justifying the means is what leads them astray. Even the hideous giant insects are allowed to have dignity; they are never portrayed by Miyazaki as other than dangerous wild animals, but they have nobility in their animal natures. Many films preach non-violence while reveling in violence, but Nausicaa consistently upholds empathy and self-sacrifice over force and might.

Miyazaki protagonists are often brave, intelligent young women, and Nausicaa is among the most memorable. She is feminine and powerful, skilled but humble. Though an excellent fighter, she almost always prefers to be diplomatic - the one instance where she does erupt in violent anger nearly leads to disaster. Her vengeful fury would be presented as empowering by many a less thoughtful film, especially since the reasons behind it are entirely sympathetic, but Miyazaki is too conscientious a storyteller to make things that easy.

Hayao Miyazaki's imagination as a creator of worlds seems boundless. The animation, while it does not have quite the same painterly richness as Miyazaki films to come, offers up sequence after sequence of astonishing beauty and originality. I'm especially fond of the design of the Ohmu, enormous trilobite-like insects whose eyes glow blue when peaceful and red when enraged. Their scale and power is awesome in a way only a master animator could capture. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind pulls me in to the world it creates with each viewing. This is a major work from a very special artist and storyteller, though even better was to come.