Tale of Tales (Matteo Garrone, Italy, 2015)
An adaptation of three stories from Pentamerone, a 17th-century collection of fairy tales by courtier Giambattista Basile. Pentamerone included early versions of the Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Sleeping Beauty stories among many others; some of the tales were later adapted by the Brothers Grimm. The three stories adapted for Tale of Tales are less well known. For all their bizarre, surreal flourishes, they are ultimately simple moral fables, and often shockingly harsh ones. Don't forget, in the original Cinderella story, the evil stepsister cut off her toes to fit in the glass slipper.
Tale of Tales does not sand the edges off Giambattista Basile's stories. It is violent, bawdy, blackly comic and occasionally horrifying. Aesthetically, it also has its roots in 17th-century Italy. Though Tale of Tales is filmed in English with an international cast, including major stars like Salma Hayek and Vincent Cassel, it is quintessentially Italian in its baroque, carnivalesque style. Director Matteo Garrone shot the entire film on location in Italy, in real castles and ancient forests. This gives Tale of Tales a tactility that makes all its outrageous fantasy feel grounded in a persuasive reality. The sparsely used special effects are mostly excellent, especially considering the low budget. The various beasts in Tale of Tales - including a salamander-like sea dragon, a skeletal giant bat, and a pet flea that swells to the size of a baby hippopotamus - are gorgeously designed.
The stories themselves are compelling, though largely out of step with today's tastes - they have little in the way of modern psychologizing. All three center around kings and queens whose selfish desires bring destruction to those around them. In Tale of Tales, the most essential and beautiful relationships - between sisters, brothers, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons - are threatened by selfish impulses, by lust, vanity, status, possessiveness and carelessness. Like the best fairy tales, the themes may be ancient but will always be relevant.
Tale of Tales will not be for all tastes and it certainly isn't perfect, but I loved it. It's a singular film that thrilled my imagination. Though it premiered internationally last year, it's just made its way to U.S. theaters this month, and is also available for rental on Amazon and iTunes.
Watch trailer here (warning: brief nudity and some grotesque images)
Tale of Tales will not be for all tastes and it certainly isn't perfect, but I loved it. It's a singular film that thrilled my imagination. Though it premiered internationally last year, it's just made its way to U.S. theaters this month, and is also available for rental on Amazon and iTunes.
Watch trailer here (warning: brief nudity and some grotesque images)
The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Taiwan / China, 2015)
Even more so than Tale of Tales, The Assassin is a film out of time. It is also an adaptation of an even older text - Nie Yinniang, a martial arts story from 9th century China. It belongs to the wuxia genre, stories of magic and swordsmen with astonishing skills. However, those expecting another Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or another Hero will likely be disappointed. The Assassin is the quietest, most restrained action film ever made, if it even counts as an action film. Swordplay erupts suddenly, and ends just as quickly. Between the bursts of violence, The Assassin is still and calm, unfolding at a deliberate pace that will either be hypnotic or narcotizing depending on your tastes.
The plot is difficult to suss out on first viewing. Part of this is due to the setting, in Tang Dynasty era China where the politics and customs are so alien. It's also due to Hou Hsiao-Hsien's approach to storytelling. The Assassin jettisons all but the most essential exposition, which makes the connections between characters, and their often duplicitous motivations, initially perplexing. Hou presents people and events in an almost objective way - he does not suggest, through editing or music or camera angles, how the viewer should think or feel about anything. Traditional dramatic beats and emphases are elided, in favor of a meditative, composed approach to the story.
Yet, despite its labyrinthine plot, The Assassin has a simple emotional core. It's all about Yinniang, the assassin of the title. We first see her carry out an assassination in a black-and-white prologue, where she leaps from a grove of trees with terrible swiftness to dispatch a man on horseback. Yet in the very next scene, we learn that she is not always so ruthless. She lurks in the rafters of a corrupt official's house, watching him play tenderly with his young son. After seeing this, Yinniang cannot carry out the execution, leaving the man with a silent warning. Her master, a nun living in a mountainside monastery, scolds Yinniang for her sentimentality. As punishment, she is sent to kill her cousin Tian Ji'an, an official in the court of Weibo, a powerful province. We learn that Yinniang is the daughter of a powerful Weibo family. As a child she was promised in marriage to Tian Ji'an, but was betrayed and given to the nun to be trained as a killer. She returns to the court of her youth, a mysterious and mournful figure clad all in black. Yinniang hardly ever speaks, and as she bides her time and threateningly makes Tian Ji'an aware of her presence, we wonder what her intentions are. Will she or won't she kill her former betrothed? Does she still love him? She never reveals what she believes through words, only actions.
In the wuxia genre, warriors must transcend human connections and limitations to achieve perfection, and must be devoted to unyielding codes of behavior instead of following their individual desires. But Yinniang in The Assassin goes against the grain of most wuxia heroes. When she returns to Weibo, she re-enters a world of empty facades and power schemes, where everyone has a role to play. She realizes that she has only ever been a pawn - first of the court, then of her master. Yinniang rejects her assignment of impartial, inhuman justice, and decides to trust her instincts. She uses her skills to protect the good instead of eliminate the bad, and ultimately chooses humility over greatness, personal freedom over societal roles.
The Assassin is an extraordinarily immersive film. Hou Hsiao-Hsien obsessed over every detail of the production - costumes, interior design, rituals - to make everything authentic to the period. All the dialogue is an ancient Chinese dialect, the equivalent of a western period film's dialogue being entirely Old English. Ping Bin Lee's cinematography is vividly beauty. The Assassin is visually comparable to late-era Kurosawa films like Kagemusha and Ran, especially in its bright colors, and the stark contrast between the pomp and ceremony of human societies and the vast wildness of the natural world. The Assassin was filmed in remote regions of China, and its birch forests, rugged mountains and misty lakes are like a classic Chinese landscape painting brought to life. There is a sublime quality to this film's beauty.
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