Monsoon Wedding (2002)

India, 2002
Directed by Mira Nair

I know that posting a French poster on an English language review of an Indian film doesn't make a whole lot of sense - but that poster captures the vibrancy, the color, and the overflowing spirit of Monsoon Wedding the best.

A middle upper class, modern Indian family gathers together to celebrate a traditional Punjabi wedding, an arranged marriage between a couple who hardly know each other. Their enormous family converges from all over the world - including different states of India, Australia and the United States. Monsoon Wedding zips between its many characters at this elaborate, four-day celebration, including the workers setting up the wedding and house servants. It is a constantly busy movie, rich with incidents small and large. Multiple character arcs unfold simultaneously. There is comedy, budding romance, and even some serious drama, as an appalling family secret is revealed. Although Monsoon Wedding is deeply culturally Indian, the stories it tells are universal. It is all about the frustration and joy of family. Warm-hearted, ebullient and accessible, this is the type of foreign film that even those who hate reading subtitles may end up loving.

Monsoon Wedding belongs in a tradition of of exuberant, messy wedding movies like Father of the Bride or My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Stylistically, it is reminiscent of Robert Altman. The camera is always roving about, moving between characters, around the house and its grounds, through the crowded streets of Delhi. The screen is teeming with life - conversations overlap, people weave in and out of scenes. However, in its attitude Monsoon Wedding couldn't be further from the cynicism of Altman. In spirit, it reminded me of the recent films of David O. Russell. Like Russell's films, Monsoon Wedding is irrepressibly energetic, an explosion of cheerful vulgarity and healthy sentimentality. And like The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook, it acknowledges the hardships and annoyances of family, but is ultimately a joyous celebration of familial love and togetherness.

Monsoon Wedding should be relatable to viewers of any cultural background, but it is specifically and uniquely Indian. It shows not only many family members coming together, but many different facets of India. Modernity and tradition, poverty and wealth, English and Hindi languages all mix together in a microcosm of contemporary India. Writer and director Mira Nair clearly made Monsoon Wedding as a love letter to her home city of Delhi, and it is gorgeous. Every scene pops with color and patterns - of henna, of marigolds, of bright saris. The Bollywood-influenced soundtrack is toe-tapping and infectious. Delhi looks so beautiful, and so rich with life, through Mira Nair's camera that I felt transported. I've never seen India, but now I ache to. This is the danger of watching foreign films, in particular ones as vivid as Monsoon Wedding - they can make you homesick for places you've never been!

It's always a delight to watch a feel-good movie that is not insipid or shallow, but earns its good vibes through sincere generosity of spirit. Monsoon Wedding is lively and heart-swelling, bursting with stories of family tenderness and courage, and swooning romanticism that makes most Hollywood romances look timid and stingy. What a joy to watch!

Rosetta (1999)

Belgium, 1999
Directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Rosetta premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1999. It was a small Belgian film set in the nondescript industrial town of Seraing, directed by sibling brothers who few had heard of yet, and not starring any big name actors. The story it tells is an intimate, grim one. Rosetta lives in a trailer park with her alcoholic mother. She is fiercely desperate for a job, any job, for a sense of normalcy, purpose, and escape from her dead-end existence. She will do anything to get work, making questionable decisions in the process. Rosetta, in what was considered a surprise at the time, won the Palme d'Or at Cannes for Best Film and Best Actress for its star, Emile Dequenne.

If you ever watched the show 30 Rock, reading the above synopsis you might have been reminded of Tracy Jordan's "Hard to Watch". Tracy Jordan the comedian, in an attempt to class up his public image, stars in a tragic Serious Film About Poverty, one that is actually shallow with nothing to say. Naturally, it wins a ton of awards. 30 Rock was on to something there. The world of independent and foreign films is rife with movies unfortunately similar to "Hard to Watch". The least obnoxious of these are probably sincere attempts at illuminating real social problems, but end up saying little more than "life can really suck, especially if you're poor". Gee, thanks movie! I didn't know that! Even worse are the films that have an exploitative or leering fascination with poverty and suffering, or use it as a pretentious feint towards being True Art yet are nothing but hollow, condescending vanity projects on the part of their creators. Rosetta, with the unrelenting misery of its titular character's life, seems at risk to become such a film. But there's something different about Rosetta, and all of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's films.

For starters, the Dardennes know the milieu of Rosetta personally. They live in Seraing, and spent their early filmmaking careers as documentarians, largely chronicling the lives of fellow Belgians. Authenticity is felt in every scene of Rosetta. In fact, the film was so provocative to the Belgian public that people successfully petitioned for a new law upping the minimum wage for minors in Belgium. It was nicknamed the Rosetta Law. This is the rare film about social issues that actually triggered helpful change in the world, which is incredible.

Perhaps why Rosetta stirred people to action was because it is not directly political in nature - there is no didacticism or overarching socio-economic theme here. Any political implications arise from an utterly personal story, which is more persuasive and powerful. Rosetta is an intimate film - claustrophobically so. I don't think there is a single shot without Rosetta in it, most often in close-up. The camera follows closely behind her as she walks and runs, locking the viewer into her headspace.

It is also an enormously physical movie, relying as much on movement to tell its story as any action film. Rosetta is always moving. When she is fired from her first job, she refuses to leave the building, even fighting off the security guards when they try to escort her out. She is always running, peering around corners, crawling through holes in fences. When her mother is in withdrawal, she tries to escape the trailer to meet a man who will exchange alcohol for sex. Rosetta chases her and furiously tackles her to the ground. Fired from a second job, she assaults her boss in desperate frustration and clings to a sack of flour, refusing to give up. Rosetta is a fighter. She feels that if she ever stops moving forward, she will only fall deeper into the black hole of poverty. In the process, she has become a hardened person, ferociously single-minded in pursuit of her goal. This is the only way she knows how to survive. It's Rosetta against the world. In one heartbreaking scene, we briefly see through her defensive shell. Rosetta has made an awkward friendship with a co-worker, and sleeps on a sofa in his apartment one night. She is clearly relieved not to be in her trailer, and probably feels more secure than she has in a long time. Before falling asleep she whispers to herself. "Your name is Rosetta. My name is Rosetta. You have a job. I have a job. You have a friend. I have a friend. You have a normal life. I have a normal life. You will not fall by the wayside. I will not fall by the wayside. Goodnight. Goodnight." She is reminding herself that she has an identity. Her fight for a job is a fight to be recognized, to matter. It is tragic that nobody else in Rosetta's life says these encouraging words to her - she must say them to herself.

Paradoxically for a film that is so physical, Rosetta is not ultimately about her material situation. Rosetta begins and ends the film in an equally dire material state. It's about the awakening of a conscience. Rosetta is so determined to hold down a job that she ends up betraying one of the only people who was kind to her. She has no sense of morality beyond survival, and treats other people as either obstacles to her goal, or a means to an end of getting there. But after this hurtful betrayal, we begin to sense stirrings of something behind Rosetta's stoic facade - remorse? Regret? And in the quietly remarkable final shot, we see in her face something else entirely, as she is the recipient of a tiny but hugely meaningful act of grace. Perhaps this is the ultimate reason why Rosetta functions on a much higher level than "Hard to Watch" and its ilk - it transcends being just a study of a life in poverty, becoming a glimpse of a soul in transition.

Though the Dardenne brothers are not religious as far as I'm aware, their works resonate with Christian themes. Many of their films unfold like biblical parables. In Rosetta, beneath the seemingly objective, tangible approach the Dardennes take to storytelling, you sense a spirit moving through the characters and their world. In several of their movies, their characters reach a point of utter despair. They are ready to give up - then something happens to stop them. It could be coincidental, but it changes them. In Rosetta, she seems to finally realize something beyond her own urgent, desperate needs - perhaps she is beginning to hear a still, small voice within her.

Rosetta is the furthest thing from a feel-good movie. But its rewards are great - this is a film of immense power. And I cannot believe I've written this whole review without even mentioning how great Emile Dequenne is as Rosetta - there is not a trace of actorly vanity or artifice in her performance. 

For those who have yet to see a Dardenne brothers film, this is likely not the best place to start - their recent Two Days, One Night and The Kid with a Bike are equally incredible and more accessible. Within their plain-looking movies is a wealth of wisdom and compassion - I highly recommend seeking them out.

Another Year (2010)

United Kingdom, 2010
Directed by Mike Leigh 

Watching Another Year, I was reminded of certain people in my own family. They have a stable home. They love their children. They are involved in their community. Many of their friends, while lovely people in their own right, have not been so fortunate in their life's journey. Their family lives are stressful, they are anxious or insecure, they have debilitating financial or health issues. My relatives always extend welcome to them. Their doors are open, ready with a meal or a listening ear. They may grow exasperated with their friends' messy behavior, but their friendship is consistent and loving. They offer a peaceful space where their friends can be accepted unconditionally.

Mike Leigh's Another Year centers around one such couple: Tom and Gerri Hupple. The film drifts in and out of one year of their life - as they work (as an engineering geologist and therapist), tend to their garden, and spend time with their family members and friends, some of whom are terribly unhappy. There is no real plot to speak of, just observations as they go about their day to day lives. British filmmaker Mike Leigh is renowned for these kinds of meandering character studies. Leigh's approach to filmmaking is not entirely traditional. He begins with a premise, and basic ideas about characters. He then meets with his actors weeks before filming starts, and together they embark on a collaborative process of improvising and developing full personalities and backstories, and creating the flow of the story from there. In Mike Leigh's films, storytelling emerges from character, instead of characters being bent to the predetermined beats of a plot. The lengthy rehearsal process shows in the results. In Another Year, the weight of untold personal histories is felt in how these people dress, how they walk, how they interact. And the acting is uniformly terrific, even the smallest roles are played with subtle detail and depth. It is rare and revelatory to find a director and his actors work in such perfect unison.

It is equally rare and encouraging to see a good, healthy marriage in a film. Tom and Gerri Hupple are a long-time couple still very much in love. Their marriage is not idealized or perfect, but they have reached a place of peaceful, tender equilibrium with the other. It's hard to imagine them separately. They are good at their jobs. They are intelligent and compassionate. They have established healthy routines. They are growing old, but are content. Watching them garden, cook, drink tea and read together is endearing. I particularly fell in love with Gerri, played by the luminous Ruth Sheen. With her calm demeanor, sincere smile, and bright clothing, she is a source of warmth for everyone she meets, even the most difficult people.

Tom and Gerri's old friend Ken used to be happy, but those days are long gone. He comes to visit them in London. Many of his friends have passed away. He lives alone, has become obese and an alcoholic. He hates his job but does not quit, because other than work his life is a void. Tom offers a small helping hand but Ken dejectedly does not accept, perhaps out of embarrassment or self-hatred. There is only so much a friend can do. Gerri and Mary have been co-workers and friends for twenty years. After a divorce that ruined her financially, and a disastrous affair with a married man that ruined her emotionally, Mary is a nervous wreck. She too is an alcoholic, but clearly in denial. Every time that she smokes a cigarette, which is fairly often, she anxiously explains that she doesn't usually smoke and is trying to quit. Her desperate loneliness is tragically obvious and leads her into embarrassment, like when she unsubtly hits on Tom and Gerri's 30 year old son. Mary is the kind of person most people avoid like the plague, as she is incredibly irritating and draining to be around, but as played by a fearless Lesley Manville, she is impossible to hate. Her pain seems so real and raw that you want to reach through the screen and comfort her.

Another Year is about the unequal distribution of happiness. Why is it that some are so blessed to live fulfilling lives into old age, while others fall into despair and neglect, or never had happiness to begin with? Why are some blessed with the support of a loving spouse and children, while others are betrayed by those closest to them and have no one to care for? Personal choices and responsibility absolutely play a large part, but that cannot be the entirety of it. Those who have more must give of themselves, freely and without expecting anything in turn, to those who have less. After all, any one of us could be, or has been, in a similarly unfortunate position. We need to have understanding and patience with those less fortunate than ourselves. Another Year illustrates the need for hospitality. It is a comforting film for its lovely portrait of Tom and Gerri, but also a heartbreaking film for its refusal to sugarcoat the misery of others. It offers no easy solutions, just presents a bleak reality - but neither does it suggest that Ken or Mary are beyond hope.

Tabu (2012)

Portugal, 2012
Directed by Miguel Gomes

Tabu is a postmodernist bifurcated narrative that functions as a silent cinema pastiche, a meditation on memory and the inevitability of death, and an ironic criticism of Portuguese colonialism in Mozambique.

…where are you going? Wait, come back!

OK, I understand that the synopsis of Tabu will be thoroughly off-putting to many. Descriptors like “postmodernist”, “silent cinema pastiche”, “inevitability of death” and “ironic criticism of colonialism” will have most normal people running for the hills. It does sound ostentatiously obscure, or drearily self-righteous. And no doubt, many who watch the film will feel affirmed in that assumption, but thankfully that was not my experience with Tabu. Certainly my enjoyment of the film has to do with my at least partially belonging to its very tiny target audience, as I am a fan of silent films. But my admiration for Tabu goes beyond that. This is the best kind of postmodern storytelling. Its unusual aesthetics and self-reflexive narrative do not exist solely for their own sake, they comment upon the content of the story with how that story is told. And yes, there is an actual story, one with real soul and humanity. In other words, though it is odd, Tabu is not merely a dry intellectual exercise or cold art object.

Tabu opens with a brief prologue. A European man wanders through the African savannah with his African servants following. He is heartbroken and haunted by the ghost of his lost wife. He wanders into a river and is eaten by a crocodile. The Africans stare blankly, and then dance with glee over their newfound freedom. Legend has it that, ever since, a crocodile and a woman in European dress appear together in the moonlight, seeming to share a strange affinity. Though the prologue is unrelated to the characters of the rest of Tabu, it introduces several themes of the film: tragic romantic yearning, death, and the condescension of colonialism. It also introduces a sly, absurdist sense of humor that appears quietly throughout the film, as this brief sequence plays out in a deadpan, cheeky fashion.

Then the first half of the film begins, titled "Paradise Lost". We follow Pilar, a middle aged, lonely but good-hearted woman living in modern Portugal. She is a devout Catholic and social activist, genuinely concerned for the well-being of others. Pilar is a marvelous, interesting character who could sustain a good film on her own, but Tabu isn't actually about her. Pilar becomes increasingly involved in the life of her neighbor Aurora, a senile old woman. She is eccentric and unpleasant, casually racist towards her grouchy, put-upon African maid, Santa. Pilar pities Aurora, as she is clearly nearing the end of her life and has driven her children away with her unbearable behavior. Pilar listens to Aurora's paranoid stories, where she rambles about her strange dreams, paranoid delusions that Santa is performing voodoo rituals against her, and incoherent confessions of a guilt-ridden past. As she is dying, Aurora asks for Pilar to track down an old acquaintance of hers, Gian-Luca Ventura. Pilar does find Gian-Luca, an old man living in a nursing home. Gian-Luca tells Pilar and Santa the story of his and Aurora's relationship many years past.

Here begins the second part of Tabu, titled "Paradise". It takes place in colonial Mozambique in the 1960s. Aurora is a beautiful and spirited young woman, married to the owner of a ranch. She is a child of privilege and a renowned big game hunter with a brassy personality. Gian-Luca is a handsome wanderer, a vagabond and womanizer attracted to Africa's promise of freedom and an easy life. After Aurora's pet crocodile escapes and ends up in Gian-Luca's fountain, they begin a secret love affair. Their affair eventually has tragic consequences, and ends just as Portuguese rule in Africa is beginning to crumble due to native resistance. "Paradise" is told in a dramatically different style to "Paradise Lost". "Paradise Lost" is filmed in lush black-and-white, but otherwise is very straightforward in its presentation. "Paradise" is almost a silent film, with the exception of diegetic sound (the ever-present bird calls and buzzing bugs of Africa) and old Gian-Luca's narration of his story. But there is no dialogue, and Aurora and Gian-Luca behave like silent film actors, with broad and emphatic gestures and expressions. Why did director Miguel Gomes decide to portray Gian-Luca's story this way? I have a few ideas. One of them is very simple. In memories, we tend to remember events and sensory impressions more than words spoken. Since "Paradise" is entirely a recollection by Gian-Luca, it makes sense that it is told in the style of a silent film - the dialogue is forgotten and irrelevant, only the settings and characters' actions matter.

Silent film is also a perfect fit with melodramatic storytelling. And "Paradise", with its archetypal characters, Europeans in an exotic setting, and tale of betrayal and scandal, certainly counts as a melodrama. But there are odd conflicts of style within "Paradise". The melodramatic going-ons of the European colonists are shown in a romantic and stylized light, but are steadily interrupted by brief intrusions of documentary-style footage of Africans picking crops, cleaning houses, and waiting on the main characters. They are not portrayed in a melodramatic fashion whatsoever. In fact, the Europeans and Africans seem to exist in two different films awkwardly laid on top of each other. Furthering the distance between them, almost no interactions between colonists and Africans are seen. The stylistic distinction on Miguel Gomes's part is pointedly intentional. Just as the silent film melodrama of the lovers' affair does not fit stylistically with the unromantic portrait of Africa, the occupation of the colonists is a phony construct not organic to Africa or its people. Tabu walks a fine tightrope with skill, and never overplays or calls attention to its ironies. The melodrama is engaging and moving in its own right - the characters and their emotions, though heightened, are never less than sincerely portrayed. But simultaneously the film undermines their story by subtly but unmistakably portraying it as a romantic falsehood.

Correlations could also be made between the affair of Aurora and Gian-Luca and the dissolution of Portuguese rule in Africa. Their affair is passionate, but based upon folly and selfishness. There was moral rot inside it from the very beginning, thus it was doomed to failure. It leads to tragedy, and the useless murder of another European character. In their own artificial world, the colonizers began to destroy themselves. Like Aurora and Gian-Luca's foolish romantic fling, colonization was built upon lies. Tabu seems to suggest that the falsity in its foundations began to destroy it from within before the inevitable African revolution even began.

The two halves of Tabu are very different in the stories they tell and how they tell them, but they complement and illuminate each other in fascinating ways. After watching "Paradise", much of the dying Aurora's inexplicable behavior in "Paradise Lost" makes sense - her panicked guilt and casual racism especially. In her condescending treatment of Santa, who does not attempt to hide her contempt for her employer, are the pathetic, dying remnants of a colonial worldview. And since we only ever saw the old Aurora and Gian-Luca, now dotty and wasting away, through Pilar's perspective, Tabu provokes thought about the stories everyone carries. Nobody would have ever guessed that the irritating old Aurora had lived so wildly, and had so many adventures and regrets in her past.

Available to watch on Netflix.

Badlands (1973)

United States, 1973
Directed by Terrence Malick

 Here's a review I wrote for Badlands a while back:

I am currently enrolled in a film class – for our film screening this week we watched Badlands. I was pleasantly surprised, as Badlands is the debut film of my favorite living director, Terrence Malick. It is the film of his I am least familiar with, as I had only seen it once previously and several years ago – watching it again on a theater-sized screen was a wild experience. I was captivated by it. Yet writing a review of any Terrence Malick movie intimidates me. All of his films are wholly unique and deceptively complex, and their peculiar magic must be experienced and cannot be captured or summarized in words – but I’ll give it a try anyways, and hopefully won’t butcher the attempt horribly. Also: keep in mind, while Malick’s movies are not very traditionally plotted and thus difficult to “spoil”, I might discuss plot and narrative details that could be considered spoilers. So, be warned.

Badlands is loosely based on the real-life murder spree of 20-something Charles Starkweather and his teenage girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate in the late 50′s, or more accurately “inspired by” – the names and many of the events were changed, and the true story inspiration is not even mentioned or acknowledged in the film. Badlands belongs in a tradition of “criminal lovers on the run” movies, such as Bonnie and Clyde which was released to enormous controversy and popularity several years earlier. Despite the similarity of their narratives, the approach of Badlands and Bonnie and Clyde to their subject matter is starkly different. Bonnie and Clyde forthrightly romanticizes the two killers – they are played by gorgeous sex-symbol actors, and their passion is portrayed as pure and beautiful. Bonnie and Clyde perhaps doesn’t condone their murders, but it certainly glamorizes their violent us-against-the-world attitude and turns the infamous duo into tragic, sexy rebels. It is a very exciting and aesthetically amazing movie, but its attitude is amoral. Badlands bluntly refuses to make its young killers at all cool or desirable. They are sad, pathetic, even laughable. Kit is a charismatic but aimless young man who believes himself to look like James Dean, who spouts out advice and witticisms that increasingly reveal themselves to be irrelevant noise used to disguise his lack of purpose, and whose slightly “off” geniality barely conceals his bottled-up rage. Kit does all the killing, yet his girlfriend Holly is, in her own quiet way, just as frightening. She is an utter blank slate, someone who apparently never developed a personality or moral compass, who follows Kit into horrible situations just because he pays attention to her. They fall into their status as serial killers casually, with no visible motives aside from boredom and moral obliviousness. Kit and Holly are not motivated by hate, but by general purposelessness in life. If you have spent any time around restlessly angry kids with violent tendencies, Kit and Holly’s moral vacuousness and lack of awareness of other human beings as actual human beings will ring frighteningly true. The violence in Badlands is presented with similar un-romantic bluntness. The murders are nonchalant, neither exciting nor immediately horrifying, but anticlimactic and clumsy. Violence here is not a grim spectacle or a thrill – it is sad and stupid, an obvious and avoidable waste of life. While the off-kilter approach to violence makes Badlands less thrilling than Bonnie and Clyde and multitudes of violent Hollywood films, it makes for a haunting, unnerving experience. This is a vivid portrait of the banality of evil.

I admire Badlands for its deliberate refusal to sensationalize or glamorize violence, but what elevates it to a classic (and a surprisingly easy-to-watch film considering its disturbing content) is the remarkable artistry. Normally, director’s debut films, even the great ones, have amateurish edges or undeveloped ideas. This is not the case with Badlands, which is brilliantly crafted and hugely creative on every level. Some aesthetic techniques appear here that become staples of all of Malick’s works. One is voiceover. All of Malick’s films have narration, by one or multiple characters, that reveals their sometimes profound, sometimes mundane thoughts and is not always reliable. Badlands is narrated by Holly, in a flat, emotionless tone of voice. Her thoughts are innocent and guileless, replete with mundane recounting of day-to-day events and clumsy attempts at poetry. Holly's narration reads like the average diary of a naive, fanciful young girl, excepting the dreadful events they describe. The disconnect between the form and the content of Holly's narration creates eerie irony. The music is similarly ironic. One repeating theme is a jaunty, peppy classical music piece that would seem more at home over a montage of “this is what I did at summer camp today” than the events of Badlands. Yet the irony in both the voiceover and theme music is not smug or jokey, but a chilling way to contrast the dumb naivete of Holly and Kit and the wretchedness of their actions.

In what would become another recurring feature of Malick's films, Badlands always calls attention to the environment surrounding the characters. After their first murder, Kit and Holly flee into the woods and build a treehouse to live in. This is the most idyllic stretch of the film. They raise chickens, fish, laze around, and dance to rock music on the radio like two regular teens. Terrence Malick’s films often focus on characters discovering or trying to recreate lost, Edenic states of being, in innocence, peace and simplicity, before their own sinfulness snatches it away. While his later, more religious films are more explicit about this idea, the dreamily gorgeous woodland hideout scenes in Badlands are an early example. Later in the film, Kit and Holly aimlessly drive through the vast badlands of Montana to escape police. Their lone figures are constantly contrasted to the vast landscape and skies that overwhelm them – their foolishness seems almost inconsequential in the grand scope of the universe.

I’ve gotten this far into my review without even mentioning Martin Sheen or Sissy Spacek. Neither were famous at the time, and both are outstanding – Sheen in particular, making his character equal parts charming, comically absurd, and scarily amoral. Their very odd but very human performances, along with Malick’s sensitive, thoughtful direction and the beautiful photography, make Badlands a masterpiece. It is definitely not my favorite of Malick’s works – it is less spiritual and emotional than anything else he’s made, and too bleak to watch as often, but is just as accomplished and preternaturally perfect.