Flowers of Shanghai

Directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Taiwan, 1998

A brief opening title sets the scene: late 19th century Shanghai's opulent Flower Houses, brothels attended by the wealthy. The film fades in on a group of men gossiping and playing rowdy drinking games. Silent, serene women stand around them, occasionally whispering among themselves or strategically contributing to the men's conversation. The camera drifts around the outskirts of the group, capturing the conversation's flow without emphasizing one particular person. It's a naturalistic scene that feels unscripted and unrehearsed - like the camera is a portal into an everyday moment in the past. The shot lasts nearly ten minutes uninterrupted.

It takes an unusually gifted director and cast to make a lengthy, un-showy sequence like that engaging, but Flowers of Shanghai immediately immersed me into its world. Each scene plays out in a similar way - the film fades out of one shot and into another, each a tableaux of life in Shanghai's flower houses that never feel enacted for the sake of an audience, but like discreet glimpses into past lives. This approach to historical recreation is not dramatically satisfying in the conventional sense. Flowers of Shanghai loosely follows several major characters, but they come and go, and major events often occur off-screen. Melodrama of any kind is elided, and despite taking place in a brothel no sex is shown. Like in real life, conversations are rambling and unrushed, and people often do not say what they really mean.

Flowers of Shanghai is more anthropological than dramatic. Through observation we slowly learn how this cloistered world operates. Each flower house is run by a madame who buys girls as young as 7 or 8. She trains them to become specialized courtesans called flower girls once they are teenagers. Flower girls are visited by wealthy patrons, who form relationships (or contracts) that are often semi-monogamous. The patrons support the girls, buying them clothes and jewelry, and the girls provide companionship, a sentimental education, and sex. The luckiest (and smartest) flower girls are bought, at an exorbitant price, out of the houses and into marriage - usually as a second or third wife, as no upper-class gentleman would take a courtesan as his first.

As in all his films, director Hou Hsiao-Hsien studies how individuals are shaped by, and survive within, their environments. We observe that the women who flourish as flower girls are practical businessmen, who know when to be charming and when to be cruel. The women who are incapable of adapting are beaten down ruthlessly. The men are careless and harsh, often without intending to be. Their hierarchal power is so ingrained and unquestioned that they aren't even aware of their cruelty. In this environment, falling in love is dangerous and short-lived, though it still happens. The glimpses of unselfconscious emotion in Flowers of Shanghai - whether tenderness or anger - are startling for their precious authenticity in a society ruled by money, status, and inequality.

Flowers of Shanghai is beautiful and suffocating. Every scene takes place indoors, with cinematography lit only by the light of oil lamps. Everything is lushly beautiful, from the flower girls' dresses to the ornate decor and lavish meals; but it's also overwhelming, a world smothered in things. The slow drift of the camera, droning strings score, and slow fades between scenes gives Flowers of Shanghai a soothing, hypnotic quality, like being lulled into an opium dream (that could just be a secondhand high from all the opium smoked in the movie).

Hou Hsiao-Hsien is unique in his vision as an artist. His films are both practical and poetic, as they rarely escape mundane realities but nevertheless become dreamy, mysterious experiences. Flowers of Shanghai is among his finest films - not as endearing as Cafe Lumiere or as awe-inspiring as The Assassin, but a powerful, vivid recreation of a long-gone world.

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 #2

To Live (Zhang Yimou, China, 1994)

Three decades in the life of a Chinese family, spanning the Chinese Civil War, the Communist takeover, and Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution. Fugui, Jiazhen and their children are not exceptionally heroic or important figures, they are entirely ordinary Chinese citizens. They're just trying to survive the tumultuous events of mid-20th century China, to raise a family and live quietly together, as happily as they can. It's all there in the title, they just want to live and nothing more. But even that was a dangerous, sometimes impossible task in their time. To Live shows bluntly how fearful and perilous a place Communist China could be, and how the people of China were misled by its utopian promises. The propagandistic language and groupthink insidiously sneaks into the private lives of families. The dictates of the Cultural Revolution destroys much of ancient Chinese culture - like Fugui being told to burn his beautiful, ornate puppets because they symbolize old feudal excesses, even though we have seen them bring so much joy to the community in his shadow puppetry shows. Mao claimed to be bringing about a true communal society, yet his rule weakened and outright destroyed the pillars of community, family and culture.

Unsurprisingly, the modern PRC government was not fond of To Live. It was banned in China and director Zhang Yimou, who had already gotten in trouble with censors for his earlier masterpiece Raise the Red Lantern, was banned from filmmaking for two years. Yimou protested this decision, saying that To Live was not necessarily anti-Communist. Indeed, To Live is not explicit in its criticisms or a political screed, it just portrays an era with honesty. But the PRC does not seem to encourage honesty about its country's history.

It's a shame, as Zhang Yimou no doubt made To Live primarily for Chinese audiences. It's an old-fashioned melodrama, and an exceptionally good one. The characters are relatable, likable and multi-faceted. And for all the tragedies and heartbreaks it contains, To Live is not at all hopeless or fatalistic. It's really a tribute to the everyday courage and resilience of one family, who find small but priceless measures of joy and happiness within the difficult situations they've been dealt. I hope that Chinese people have found ways to watch To Live regardless of its ban, it rightfully should be considered a national treasure.

The Brainiac (Chano Urueta, Mexico, 1962)

1661, New Spain. The Spanish Inquisition condemns Baron Vitrelius of Estara to be burned at the stake as a heretic and necromancer. While engulfed in flames, a bright comet passes overhead. The Baron cries out that, in 300 years when that comet passes by again, he will return and take his vengeance by killing the ancestors of those who have sentenced him to death. We flash forward to 1961 Mexico City. Astronomers are eagerly anticipating a rare sighting of a comet, but they are mystified when it appears then mysteriously disappears. In the desert a passerby notices a huge rock fall from the sky. A hideous, hairy alien beast steps out of the comet and sucks the poor guy's brains out with his giant forked tongue. He then transforms into none other than the Baron, back to enact his revenge! It will come as a surprise to no-one that the pretty lady astronomer is one of his intended victims.

The whole thing is too absurd to not be enjoyable. The Baron's alien form is hysterical. It's obviously a guy wearing a rubber mask. The death scenes show the monster licking the back of a victim's head with his big fake tongue while they shriek. My favorite detail - the Baron keeps his victim's brains in a goblet stashed in his living room, just in case he wants a quick snack. It's a pretty dreadful movie, without the spooky atmosphere or on-a-budget creativity of the best B-movies, but is utterly daft enough to be fun.

Viewing Journal - April 2016 #4

Flash Gordon (Mike Hodges, United States, 1980)

I knew I was going to love this from its ridiculous start. A villainous voice whines that he is bored and wants a new plaything. His equally evil minion presents him with an obscure planet to toy with, "the inhabitants refer to it as the planet Earth", he sneers as contemptuously as possible. Cue comic book styled opening credits and Queen's earworm of a theme song (Flash! AAAH! Savior of the Universe!).

We discover that the villainous voice belongs to Ming the Merciless, an evil intergalactic emperor with wicked eyebrows. Ming is played by none other than Max von Sydow, known for his existentially despairing Swedish dramas with Ingmar Bergman, and few movie-related things are more delightful than hearing great thespian von Sydow deliver dialogue such as "Halt, Lizard Man! Escape is impossible!". 

Flash Gordon is absurd and aware of the fact. The sets are gaudily colored and elaborately fake, with spaceships that are obvious painted models. The plot is convoluted and nonsensical. The performances are hammy - especially Brian Blessed, the leader of the Hawk-Men who bellows all his dialogue in a ludicrous Scottish brogue. I have a fondness for old-school space operas in the Edgar Rice Burroughs vein, which are usually low on brains but high on fun and imagination, so I had a big goofy grin on my face throughout Flash Gordon.

Watch trailer here

Beau Travail (Claire Denis, France, 1999)

A sergeant of the French Legionnaire grows jealous of a young soldier's seemingly effortless skill and bravery. His envy grows, leading to tragedy. However, very little of the barebones plot is expressed through dialogue - Beau Travail often unfolds like a dance performance. As the soldiers perform their drills in the desert, Claire Denis films the ritualistic exercises like a modern dance. Beau Travail is beautifully photographed, with special attention paid to the gorgeously barren Djibouti landscapes, the idealized masculine bodies of the soldiers, and the faces of local African women, peering with bemusement at these foreigners beneath their colorful hijabs. It's all very lovely and very tasteful - maybe too tasteful? Macho competition is largely expressed through intimidating glares, and in one sequence the two men circle each other like territorial lions while opera soars on the soundtrack. Yet I was never persuaded of the intensity of Sergeant Galoup's hostile obsession with the young soldier. Beau Travail is intelligent and artfully made, but its themes - masculinity, conformity, neo-colonialism - felt too notional and neat to have much weight. And then there's the ending, which I'm not sure yet is beautiful or ridiculous or both. Either way, it's unwise to make definitive snap judgements about a Claire Denis film. Better to let them steep in your mind.

Watch trailer here

Valley of the Bees (Frantisek Vlacil, Czechoslovakia, 1968)

Mesmerizing from its opening credits, rolling over eerie reverse-negative images of a swarming beehive and scored to an ominous male choir. This sequence begins Valley of the Bees on an unsettling, offbeat note that it never wavers from. In medieval Europe, two men form an intense friendship within their strict religious order of Teutonic knights. Ondrej was placed in the order after his father threw him against a wall, then in regret promised to commit his son to God if his life was spared. His friend Armin is a former soldier of the Crusades, and a fanatic believer in his order's harsh form of Christianity. His friendship with Ondrej is possessive and quite probably underlaid by repressed sexual desire. Ondrej flees the order, losing faith in its holiness after a particularly brutal incident. He returns to his former home and marries - his new wife is, disturbingly, his stepmother and his father's widow, though they are the same age. Armin is disgusted by his friend's betrayal of the order and attempts to persuade him to return, eventually turning to violence fueled by jealousy and religious psychosis.

Valley of the Bees is a brutal immersion into medieval life. In Frantisek Vlacil's vision, medieval Europe offered only violent religious fundamentalism or amoral sensuality that is hardly less cruel. Perhaps the only exception comes from a blind woman that Armin meets in the wilderness, who lives comfortably with both sincere faith and healthy sensuality. He is alarmed by her lack of shame, yet she reacts to his extremism with sympathetic pity and kindness. Armin is an unforgettably frightening character. Late in the film, he has a discussion with a more reasonable priest where he reveals that he believes all men deserve to die since nobody can achieve moral perfection. "Let life be extinct. The angels will remain. No one has ever seen them, and yet I hear the beating of their wings." His desire for moral perfection is really fueled by a hatred of humanity, and above all hatred of himself. Armin is a chilling and still-relevant warning of religious purity descending into apocalyptic nihilism.

Beauty and the Beast (Juraj Herz, Czechoslovakia, 1978)

Nobody does dark, creepy fairy tales better than those crazy Czechs. This version of the old gothic romance exists on a hazy border between fairy tale and outright horror. It creates a marvelously sinister atmosphere on a small budget, helped greatly by a dramatic organ soundtrack. The Beast's castle is rotting and overgrown, the cursed forest is populated by the skeletons of dead trees and overhung with mist. Juraj Herz's conception of the Beast is much darker than the grouchy but essentially harmless big teddy bear of more well-known versions. The Beast is bird-like, with giant talons and a grotesque feathery body. In the opening scene, he slaughters a caravan of travelers trespassing in his forest - he is beastly both inside and out. Belle awakens a human, gentlemanly side of the Beast, but at the same time an evil, Gollum-like voice in his mind urges him to kill her and drink her blood. This is decidedly not a Disney version of the tale, yet the romantic heart of the story remains the same. It is still a story about the redemptive and transformative power of love. Though this Beauty and the Beast is not as great as the magical Jean Cocteau version from 1946 or the beloved Disney animation from 1991, it is another distinctive and creative take on the story. Worth seeing, especially for those who like their Romances spiked with horror.

Viewing Journal - April 2016 #2

Spider-Man 2 (Sam Raimi, United States, 2004)

Only 12 years after its release, Spider-Man 2 seems downright retro within its genre. In my opinion, it's among the handful of great superhero movies, and one that exposes the unimaginative and clunky qualities of today's cinematic superhero juggernauts when held in comparison. Don't get me wrong - many Marvel and DC films of the past decade are decent fun, but it's become increasingly obvious that the genre suffers from bloat, formulaic storytelling, and either leaden self-seriousness or jokey self-awareness, as if anxious about being perceived as cheesy. Spider-Man 2 is nothing but sincere, in both its character drama - Peter Parker is an honest-to-goodness dork here and not the smug pseudo-nerd of the Amazing Spider-Man reboot, and all the more lovable for it - and in its old-school comic book aesthetic. It's also modest in stakes and storytelling, with only one villain and several action setpieces. The lack of franchise tie-ins and Giant Flying Objects Falling On Cities™ is refreshing. Spider-Man 2 has room to breathe as a stand-alone story, one that does not feel pieced together by a committee but has its own distinct personality.

Much of that personality comes from director Sam Raimi, whose pop-art style is perfect for a Spidey movie. Many frames look like live-action panels of a comic book, and I love that insane hospital sequence where we are reminded that yes, this is the same man who directed those crazy Evil Dead movies. That sequence introduces, in high style, a classic supervillain - Doc Ock, played with intelligent menace and charm by Alfred Molina. He is suited with four metallic, serpentine arms, animated with marvelously creepy expressiveness. I love how Doc Ock's character arc dovetails with Peter Parker's - both are torn between selfishness and self-sacrifice, leading to a final act where they battle aboard a speeding train and finally face off in a simple one-on-one climax. Both sequences hinge on characters deciding to sacrifice themselves for the sake of others, in redemptive acts of selfless bravery.

"He's just a kid...no older than my son." I love that moment. Spider-Man 2 is a great example of simple but moving - and fun - comic book storytelling.

Watch trailer here.

L'Atalante (Jean Vigo, France, 1934)

Its story could not be simpler. A village girl marries the captain of a canal barge, L'Atalante, and moves aboard the barge with him. It is also home to a small crew: a cabin boy and a tattooed sailor, Pere Jules. Once their honeymoon bliss fades, however, the girl begins to feel cooped up and yearns to see the world outside the cramped barge, to the perplexity of her rather provincial husband. This causes tension and a rash separation, which they both quickly regret - only when apart do they realize how truly fond they've grown of each other.

L'Atalante's simple and ancient story is the frame on which director Jean Vigo hangs all sorts of wonderful things. It is photographed with beautiful detail and texture, alive with mist and water and smoke. Pere Jules is a wildly entertaining supporting character, a garrulous drunken sailor who would be mere comic caricature if it weren't for the persuasive physicality and nuance of Michel Simon's performance. Jules is a larger-than-life figure, covered with crude and childish tattoos, spontaneously breaking out into dance and song. His cabin is cluttered with trinkets from all corners of the world, which he shows off to the girl with delight in one enchanting scene - "only the finest things", a marionette, a music box, a sawfish bill, crass posters of exotic beauties, even his old friend's pickled hands in a jar, "all I have left of him"! The barge is teeming with Jules's beloved cats, who basically steal the film. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a cat in half of L'Atalante's shots. They pop out of closets, curl up on beds, crawl casually across the background, or cling to Jules's back for dear life while he bouncily plays the accordion.

In part because of its simplicity, the central love story is beautiful. Both characters are entirely ordinary, living a working-class life that, although shot through with strangeness and poetry, is far from glamorous. Their connection is portrayed in an unadorned way by Vigo - neither make any great insights or romantic declarations, but their simple affection and desire for each other is felt keenly. In a surprisingly frank scene (see here), the two lovers sleep in separate beds far apart, and a series of cross-cuts expresses how much their bodies ache for each other. The wife tells her husband a folk superstition about being able to see your beloved's face in the water - he initially laughs her off and jokingly dumps his head into a river. Upon their separation, he desperately dives into the river and swims downward, hoping to glimpse her face again. On top of the husband swimming Vigo superimposes an image of his wife floating in her wedding dress (see here). It's movie magic at its most poignant. Once husband and wife are finally reunited, it's one of the most celebratory and well-earned happy endings in movie history.

Tragically, director Jean Vigo passed away from tuberculosis shortly after finishing L'Atalante, at only 29 years old. This was the only feature film he ever completed, and he knew he was dying as he made it. Even so, with only one film his career as a director and artist has more brilliance and power than most. L'Atalante is a masterpiece.

Watch trailer here.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, United States, 1997)

There's an odd trend in Steven Spielberg's career. He directs awe-inspiring, generation-defining adventure classics - Raiders of the Lost Ark and Jurassic Park - and follows them with oddly mean-spirited, tonally confused sequels - Temple of Doom and The Lost World. The drop in quality is even more obvious from Jurassic Park to The Lost World, a sequel than contains not an ounce of the wonder that made the original so beloved. The dinosaurs, filmed with awe-struck reverence in Jurassic Park, are now little more than generic scaly beasts to chase around and gobble up our protagonists. The fearsome velociraptors can now be dispatched with a well-timed gymnastics kick. Jurassic Park was mythic and fearfully respectful, The Lost World is just another dumb monster movie. Speaking of dumb, good Lord are the humans in The Lost World a full bench of idiots. Of particular note are the normally excellent Julianne Moore as the stupidest scientist this side of Prometheus and a grown man who runs in panic from a tiny snake into the waiting jaws of a tyrannosaur.

As is almost inevitable for a Spielberg film there is an absentee dad and the rebonding of family through trial, but Spielberg has seemingly never cared less about his characters - including the returning Ian Malcolm, played by a visibly bored Jeff Goldblum, and his daughter Kelly, the aforementioned gymnast assassin who otherwise has no discernible personality. As is also inevitable of Spielberg, there are excellent moments amid the uncharacteristic mediocrity of the rest of the film - Moore kept from plunging to her death only by a slowly breaking pane of glass, invisible raptors cutting through tall grasses towards their prey. Apart from these inspired moments, I suspect that Spielberg did not have his heart in this project. Made between Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, perhaps it seemed too juvenile at that point in his career. And I don't know what to think about The Lost World's odd and perversely amusing sadistic streak. The dinosaurs of Jurassic Park inspired the terror and awe of wide-eyed kids, but in The Lost World the T-Rex will break into the kids' backyard and devour the family dog.

Watch trailer here.

Viewing Journal - April 2016

Brief reviews of several films I've watched in the past week - from now on, I think I will alternate between these shorter, looser reviews and longer, essay-type reviews. Curiously all of these movies were released in 1991, not something I realized until writing...

Point Break (Kathryn Bigelow, United States, 1991)

In a sane world, Point Break would be a disaster. Johnny Utah (that name!) is an undercover FBI agent who infiltrates a gang of surfing bank robbers dubbed the Ex-Presidents because of the rubber masks of Nixon, Reagan, etc. worn during heists. Despite his commitment to the mission, Johnny Utah finds himself drawn to the gangs' charismatic leader, Bodhi, an adrenaline junkie, dangerous criminal, surfer guru, and cool big brother wrapped up in one mega-bro package. This becomes quite the pickle for Johnny Utah, who cannot choose between duty and bromance. Which leads to the iconic moment (memorably referenced in Hot Fuzz) where Johnny Utah finally has Bodhi in his grasp but cannot act as he must, firing his gun into the air and bellowing in manly anguish, all while Bodhi's piercing blue eyes peer sagely at him through Ronald Reagan's plastic face.

The script is a load of nonsense, albeit fun, harmless nonsense. But Kathryn Bigelow's direction elevates Point Break above being a macho-campy guilty pleasure - this is a very well-crafted film. Bigelow is a true master of action setpieces (I'd point to her more recent The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty as further proof) and offers up several jaw-dropping thrill sequences in Point Break, most notably a breakneck foot race through Los Angeles and not one but two skydiving sequences; I'm baffled as to how the latter were even filmed. Across-the-board fun performances keep Point Break engaging as well, even though the cast is a bizarre mish-mash of acting styles. Gary Busey is reliably weird, Lori Petty is a living embodiment of 90s girl power sass, Patrick Swayze manages to make the ridiculously-written Bodhi convincingly charming and villainous, all while sporting a glorious feathered mane.

And of course, there's Keanu Reeves playing Keanu Reeves as always. Keanu Reeves's appeal is one of the unanswerable mysteries of the movies. Nobody would mistake him for a gifted thespian as his range is very limited. Whether playing a pothead teenager or a kung-fu fighting messiah, Jonathan Harker or John Wick, Keanu is always Keanu, responding to everything with the affable befuddlement of a stoner or a Zen master. Yet I'm always heartened by his presence in a film - any movie feels a little bit more lovable with Keanu. I can't explain why - is it just comfortable reliability? Maybe because he seems like a genuinely nice guy? I may never know.

Watch trailer here.

Night on Earth (Jim Jarmusch, United States, 1991)

Jim Jarmusch is a heroic American oddball. It's no wonder that many of his films, Night on Earth included, prominently feature the music of Tom Waits - like Waits, Jarmusch is a true original, an idiosyncratic artist who seems almost too cool for his own good, but dammit if he doesn't pull it off. Night on Earth is an anthology of five short films, each set in taxicabs in different European and American cities on the same night. In Los Angeles, a chain-smoking, foul-mouthed driver alternately repels and charms her buttoned-up Beverly Hills fare. In New York, culture clash and unexpected friendship is found between an East German immigrant fresh off the boat and a squabbling couple of Brooklynites. In Paris, a driver from the Ivory Coast is intrigued and puzzled by a confident, testy blind woman he picks up. In Rome, a manic, crazed driver insists on giving confession to a priest in the backseat, horrifying him with tales of his odd sexual history. In Helsinki, men bond drunkenly over their increasingly depressing sob stories.

Some of these stories are funny and some are sad, some add up to a moral lesson and some to a punchline. What they have in common is a distinctly Jarmusch hang-out vibe, leisurely and unhurried, pleased to just spend time with and observe these quirky characters. Night on Earth thrives in a romantically grungy atmosphere of cigarette smoke and city lights, in a transient space where very disparate people are thrown together. Jarmusch is fascinated by the brief relationships formed between travelers of the night, whether tense and mutually hostile or unexpectedly warm and empathetic.

Watch trailer here.

Raise the Red Lantern (Zhang Yimou, China, 1991)

In 1920 China, a young woman with limited options becomes the concubine of a wealthy man who lives in an enormous, walled-off compound. She enters a bizarre, insular world that she will never be allowed to leave, one that has functioned for generations according to archaic rituals. Tellingly, Raise the Red Lantern never shows the face of the wealthy man in close-up - he hardly registers as an individual, more as a representative of an ancient and unyielding patriarchal system. Instead, Raise the Red Lantern focuses on his new concubine, Songlian, and his three other mistresses. Each night red lanterns are raised outside one of their rooms, signifying that the master will be spending the night there - the women compete for his favors, since his attentions directly influence their limited but precious power within the household. The women can be terribly conniving and cruel, but we always remain sympathetic and aware that their narrow world has forced them to become so vicious, like rats in a trap.

Raise the Red Lantern immediately overwhelmed me with the painterly beauty and precision of its cinematography. Director Zhang Yimou alternates between dehumanizing wide shots and humanizing close-ups. In many wide shots, Songlian is overwhelmed by her surroundings, whether the labyrinthine halls of the mansion or the opulent decorations of her room. She seems less like an individual, and more like another piece of furniture - which, of course, is how she is treated in her new life, as merely an object, a purely functional thing instead of a human being. Yet Yimou also films Songlian with close-ups that affirm her identity - and as played by Chinese superstar Gong Li, Songlian is a gripping character. With only her eyes and her facial expressions Gong Li can express multitudes - guileless heartbreak and imperious cruelty, sadness and hope and fury. She can be both fascinatingly enigmatic and emotionally open. It's an astonishing performance.

Raise the Red Lantern is a beautiful film, but it's not the kind of beauty you can ease into; like the dainty-looking concubines, its surface is pristinely gorgeous but despair and rage are roiling beneath. Indeed, though it is PG-rated and no sex or violence is shown, Raise the Red Lantern is more chilling than many a horror film.

Watch trailer here.

The Films of Wong Kar-wai: Fallen Angels

Hong Kong, 1995
Directed by Wong Kar-wai

Wong Kar-wai originally conceived his two-part Chungking Express as three stories, but once the first two were developed, he decided that they were enough for a full film and cut out the third. This third story, about the relationship between a hitman and his female partner, developed into his next film. Fallen Angels could be seen as a continuation of Chungking Express - both are split into two stories, take place in the same Hong Kong neighborhood, and revolve around similar themes. But Fallen Angels is also a darker, weirder, more stylistically experimental film than its predecessor - the night to Chungking Express's day.

The first story is about a hitman (Leon Lai) and his partner (Michelle Reis). She tells him where his next hit is, collects cash for him, and cleans his apartment hideout, but they hardly ever meet in person. Despite wanting to keep their partnership an impersonal one, they grow infatuated with each other. Both characters are romantically alienated loners, taciturn and cool. The hitman kills his targets nonchalantly, in shoot-outs filmed with woozy style, not caring who they are or why they've been targeted. The second story stars Takeshi Kaneshiro (one of the cops of Chungking Express) as an eccentric mute who breaks into closed-up shops at night and illegally runs the business, aggressively (and amusingly) coercing customers into buying whatever he's selling. He falls in love with another spastic oddball (Charlie Yeung), but his affection is unrequited.

Even more than in Chungking Express, the two stories of Fallen Angels are strikingly different from each other. The hitman's story is surprisingly violent for Wong. The hitman and his partner are classic Wong characters - cool, introspective loners - but taken to a darker extreme. They are entirely detached from everyone and everything, nocturnal creatures living by their own codes, beautiful but doomed. Wong's style is moodier and more experimental than ever. He often films characters with a fish-eye lens, their faces looming in the foreground against a distant background of neon lights and colors. It's a disorienting but perfect way to portray their alienation through visuals, loners drifting through the seductively dangerous world of Hong Kong at night.

The second story is far more sentimental and funny, even becoming an outright slapstick comedy at points. Much of its charm is due to star Takeshi Kaneshiro, reminiscent of a young Cantonese Johnny Depp. His character, though he cannot speak, is quirky and extroverted. Where many Wong characters put protective barriers between themselves and others, the mute forces himself into others' lives, in amusingly obnoxious ways. He takes his failed romance with Charlie in stride, finding happiness wherever he can. The sweetest moments of Fallen Angels involve the mute's relationship with his father, and their odd but loving friendship.

Fallen Angels is an exuberant mess, digressive and tonally all over the map (it should be noted that this sort of 'messiness' is not unusual for Hong Kong cinema, which often combines comedy, action and drama in ways that might seem incompatible to those used to Hollywood standards, which generally sticks to one or two genres per film). Fallen Angels is more about individual sequences and moments than any overarching plot or theme. These moments are sometimes funny - like Takeshi Kaneshiro harassing unsuspecting passerby into becoming his customers despite their protests. And sometimes they are mesmerizing - like when Michelle Reis leans against a jukebox as a strangely sinister pop song puts her in a trance, and for a few minutes Fallen Angels becomes an abstract music video, lingering on Reis's languid swaying as the machine's fluorescent lights run across her reflective dress. Any narrative is forgotten in the hypnotic interplay of music and color and movement. One downside to Fallen Angels's scattershot approach is that the film is, understandably, uneven - the subplot about the hitman and his other love interest, Blondie (Karen Mok), falls flat. But any dull sequences quickly give way to some new wondrous moment of discovery.

Once again, Wong Kar-wai's love for his home city shines through. Like Chungking Express, Fallen Angels is a cinematic love letter to Hong Kong, though a far stranger and more fantastic one. Fallen Angels takes place almost entirely at night, in a frightening but beautiful vision of Hong Kong that seems more like a science fiction metropolis than a real world city. The mute says that "all the weirdos come out at night" - the characters are these nocturnal weirdos, scrounging a living outside the law and the mainstream, hoping to find simple human connections in the urban purgatory they live in.

The Films of Wong Kar-wai: Ashes of Time

Hong Kong, 1994
Directed by Wong Kar-wai

 Ashes of Time was a difficult production. The shoot took place in the middle of the scorching desert, and went way over budget and over schedule. Even after its initial release in 1994, the movie's journey was not complete - over a decade later Wong Kar-wai discovered that the original negatives of the film were in terrible shape, and desperately needed saving. In the process of restoration, he re-scored and re-edited the film, releasing it in 2008 as Ashes of Time Redux. The Redux version is, as far as I'm aware, the only available way to see the film in the United States, so I cannot compare the two versions.

In either version, the general response to Ashes of Time has deemed it beautiful but incoherent. I don't agree (with the latter part, at least), but it's an understandable response to an aggressively unusual film, and one whose context might be lost on western viewers. Ashes of Time is based on the fantasy novel The Legend of the Condor Heroes, which Wong has compared to The Lord of the Rings in terms of its popularity and influence in China, but is largely unknown elsewhere. It is not a direct adaptation of the book, but a sort of origin story. Wong wanted to explore how the characters became the legendary figures they are at the start of the book. Ashes of Time belongs to the wuxia genre, mythic stories of swordsmen and the chivalric codes they live by. However, Ashes of Time is not a straightforward wuxia adventure, but a deconstruction of the genre, less a tale of battle and honor than a classically Wong meditation on memory and loss.

 

Ashes of Time is similar to Wong's earlier film Days of Being Wild in structure. Both center around one man played by Leslie Cheung who meets other people and becomes involved in their stories. Like Yuddy in Days of Being Wild, Ou-yang Feng in Ashes of Time is cool and cynical on the surface, but trapped in his own feelings of heartbreak and rejection. Ou-yang Feng is a lone swordsman in the desert wilderness, who makes a living by hiring assassins for people with grudges. The traveling swordsmen he meets are formidable killers with supernatural skills, but are every bit as miserable and haunted by their pasts as Ou-yang.

Ashes of Time is all about memory, and the impermanence of things. Nearly all the characters live in regret, either running away from or wallowing in memories of lost love (the sole exception, Jacky Cheung's character, is the only one who finds happiness by the end). The film takes place over the course of a year, as time slips away through the passing of the seasons. Visual motifs express the temporary nature of the world - Ashes of Time constantly returns to images of shifting sand, billowing water, the movement of shadow and light.

Needless to say, if you're looking for a thrilling adventure you should probably look elsewhere. There are fight scenes in Ashes of Time - good ones too, though filmed in a way that renders them nearly abstract - but action is not the focus here. The characters' battles with others do not matter so much as their even more embattled and conflicted inner selves - the film opens with a Buddhist proverb, "The flag is still. The wind is calm. It is the heart of man that is in turmoil." This inner turmoil is made incarnate in one character, Mu-rong Yang (Brigitte Lin), a woman who claims to have a twin brother Mu-rong Yin that she wants dead, yet they are actually the same person. In the film's most ecstatically gorgeous sequence, Yin / Yang magically walks across the surface of a lake and battles her own reflection, because she has found no more difficult opponent elsewhere. Her sword thrusts are so powerful that the surface of the lake erupts into geysers of water with each strike.

Even by Wong Kar-wai's stylish standards, Ashes of Time is a gorgeous film. Daunting landscapes and close-ups of faces are filmed with equal beauty and detail. The colors have a hallucinogenic vibrancy, and the dreamy images are edited together like a kaleidoscopic collage. It's a beautiful enigma, a film where it is a pleasure to get lost in its rich textures and moods.

The Films of Wong Kar-wai: Chungking Express

Hong Kong, 1994
Directed by Wong Kar-Wai

During the making of his wuxia epic Ashes of Time, a difficult production that went way over schedule and budget, Wong Kar-wai took a three month break to direct another movie, just to re-energize his creativity. The result is Chungking Express, which was completed and released before Ashes of Time. The movie was a hit, and for many western audiences their introduction to Wong Kar-wai. Quentin Tarantino was a huge fan and proponent, and helped to bring the film to the States. It's clear why Tarantino is such a fan; like his Pulp Fiction released the same year, Chungking Express is a kinetic blast of moviemaking innovation for its own sake, giddy with the possibilities of what movies can do. The quick, on-the-fly production shows in the film's spontaneous, experimental energy and in its unusual structure. Chungking Express is split in two parts, each a separate short story unfolding in the same hectic Hong Kong neighborhood.

The first story centers around the freshly heartbroken Cop 223 (Takeshi Kaneshiro) and a female drug dealer (Brigitte Lin) who always wears sunglasses and a blonde wig. Cop 223, when he's not chasing down criminals, wallows in amusing self-pity and expresses his heartbreak in odd ways - calling up every girl he's ever known, collecting pineapples because they were his ex-girlfriend's favorite fruit. Meanwhile, a drug deal goes sour for the mysterious dealer and she must go on the run. A few chase scenes, shootouts, and a very innocuous kidnapping occur, but the details of the double-crossing and criminal underworld don't matter, Wong is just having fun splashing punchy pulp fiction cliches across the screen. Cop 223 and the Woman with No Name eventually meet in a bar late at night, knowing nothing about each other. You expect that they will hook up, and there will be a dramatic reveal about lovers on the opposite sides of the law - but what actually happens is far simpler and sweeter than that.

The second story is the longer of the two, and is a straightforward romantic comedy without the crime thriller flourishes of the first. Cop 663 (Tony Leung) has also recently been dumped, and now morosely sleepwalks through life. While on duty he often drops by a food stand where Faye (Faye Wong) works, a mischievous scamp who takes a liking to him. After his ex-girlfriend drops off her keys at the stand, Faye starts breaking into Cop 663's apartment while he's not there, cleaning it, restocking his pantry and replacing his old and broken-down belongings. Cop 663 is so oblivious that he initially doesn't notice.

The vision of mid-90s Hong Kong in Chungking Express pops off the screen. It's a world of neon lights, bustling markets, Chinese and British and Indians rubbing shoulders, cramped apartments and 24/7 chopsocky food stands. It's bewildering and loud and seedy, but overflowing with life, and filmed so beautifully by Wong and cinematographer Christopher Doyle. Despite the mass of humanity in this crazy metropolis, all the characters are quite lonely. Perhaps because of the overwhelming zoo surrounding them, they create their own private worlds to cope, out of whatever flotsam they can cling to. Cop 223 obsessively collects tins of pineapple that expire on May 1st, his birthday and the one-month anniversary of his breakup. Faye loudly blasts the Mamas and the Papas' "California Dreamin" on the radio at her tedious job, creating a protective bubble of sound so she doesn't have to think. Cop 663 talks to the inanimate objects in his apartment to cheer himself up. Wong views his characters' self-created little worlds with fond amusement.

Both stories in Chungking Express are about the miraculous connections that can happen in such a sprawling, chaotic place, when the paths of isolated people somehow intersect. Sometimes these connections are brief ones - Cop 223 and the Woman with No Name remain strangers, but now with a treasured memory about a moment of shared kindness and relief from loneliness. And in the second story, we hope that Cop 663 and Faye will find their way to romance, despite the (often self imposed) obstacles in their way. Watching these oddballs circle closer and closer to each other is great fun, and leads to one of the great romantic endings in the movies. The final scene of Chungking Express puts a big blissful grin on my face every time.

This is easily Wong Kar-wai's cheeriest film, not just because of the sweet stories and likable performers, but because of Wong's giddy style. Chungking Express is as mid-90s in its MTV aesthetic as it is possible to get - it's dated, but in a nostalgic and charming way rather than an embarrassing one. There's even a Cantonese cover of the Cranberries' "Dreams" on the soundtrack (sung by star Faye Wong, who is a popular pop artist in Hong Kong). The synthesis of cool editing tricks, lovely camerawork, and catchy pop songs make Chungking Express addictive to watch. It's the kind of idiosyncratic movie that not everyone will enjoy, but those who do will love it with a cultish fervor. 

The Films of Wong Kar-Wai: Days of Being Wild

Hong Kong, 1990
Directed by Wong Kar-Wai 

 Wong Kar-Wai is arguably the most popular, internationally acclaimed and influential Hong Kong director of all-time. He is known for his distinctive style, driven by music and color, and for his films' consistent themes of romantic yearning and memory. Wong's debut film was the 1988 gangster melodrama As Tears Go By, starring Maggie Cheung and Andy Lau. It's an entertaining, well-crafted movie, with hints of the stylistic verve and melancholy romanticism that would become Wong's trademarks, but on the whole is mostly typical of its genre. His second film, Days of Being Wild, is the first to fully display Wong's unique personality as an artist.

Set in Hong Kong in the early 1960s, which vividly comes to life through small details - bright red Coca-Cola coolers, form-fitting print dresses and bob hairstyles, Western cafes, lounge and latin music. Days of Being Wild immediately draws you into an immersive sense of time and place. You can almost feel the humidity radiating off the screen, the oppressive heaviness of tropical nights. In this languid and lush atmosphere, a romantic roundelay unfolds among an ensemble of Hong Kong's most iconic actors. At the center of it all is Yuddy, played by the late Leslie Cheung, a troubled, detached young man. He was adopted by a high-class escort (Rebecca Pan), who refuses to tell him who his biological mother is. Yuddy is a womanizer, seducing the quiet Su Lizhen (Maggie Cheung) and showgirl Mimi (Carina Lau), before dumping both when they become too attached for his liking. And during their worst times of heartbreak both women are pined for by other men - policeman Tide (Andy Lau) becomes friends with Su Lizhen, and Mimi is pursued by Zeb (Jacky Cheung), a friend of Yuddy who is jealous of his influence over women.

On paper, the web of relationships in Days of Being Wild sounds like a tangled soap opera; however, Wong structures his film like a series of interwoven stories. The story of one relationship flows into another story, each one like free-standing but connected movements in a symphony, always circling back to Yuddy. Leslie Cheung's performance as Yuddy feels iconic. He's often been called the James Dean of Hong Kong because of his good looks and his troubled-but-cool persona - in fact, Days of Being Wild's title was taken from the Cantonese title of Dean's Rebel Without a Cause. But unlike Dean's handsome misfit in Rebel, Yuddy is not a heroic character but a tragically misguided and destructive one. He is both protective of and cruel to his adopted mother, a manipulative woman who is hardly perfect, but cares for him in her own flawed way. He enjoys the thrill of seducing women but has no interest in them beyond that. Twice in the film his narration tells the story of a bird: "I've heard there is a kind of bird with no legs. All it can do is fly and fly. When it gets tired, it sleeps on the wind. This bird can only land once in its whole life. That's the moment it dies." Clearly he pictures himself as the bird - a vagabond and free spirit, coolly detached from everyone and everything. Late in the film he tells the story to Andy Lau's character, who mocks Yuddy's tragically romantic self-mythologizing. "You think you're some kind of bird?" Yuddy may be a loner but for all his posturing he's really just an angry kid who feels rejected by the world. He envisions a separate life where he was not given up by his family in the Philippines, one where he truly belongs somewhere. Yuddy's 'cool and charismatic' act is magnetic enough that it's clear why people are drawn to him, yet it's the silent moments where Leslie Cheung shows his vulnerability that make him engaging.

What connects all the characters in Days of Being Wild is their search for belonging. Yuddy wants to find his biological mother in the Philippines, his mother wants a man to support her, Su Lizhen and Mimi want Yuddy and Zeb wants to be him, Tide wants Su Lizhen and becomes a sailor just to wander and find his place. Several of the characters have relocated from somewhere else, like the Philippines or Macau. Days of Being Wild captures the dislocation that many must have felt in Hong Kong in this era, where so many people had to relocate after the huge upheavals of World War II and the Chinese Civil War. A sense of yearning hangs over Days of Being Wild as thickly as the tropical humidity.

Wong Kar-Wai takes all his characters' dissatisfaction and melancholy and tells it with the wistful, bittersweet romanticism of a good pop song about heartbreak. The smooth camerawork, intimate close-ups and gorgeous soundtrack give Days of Being Wild a hypnotic quality. Considering that it's only Wong Kar-Wai's second film, Days of Being Wild is remarkably confident, a beautifully crafted gem and early example of his brilliance as a filmmaker.

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)

United States, 1999
Directed by George Lucas

It's difficult to know how to review a Star Wars film. They are among the most widely-seen, beloved, and (in the case of the prequel trilogy) notorious films of all-time. There is so much hype and passionately held opinions surrounding these movies that it seems impossible to view them separate from their cultural influence, as stand alone stories. But I'll give it my best shot.

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace begins a new prequel trilogy, one that is strikingly different than the original Star Wars trilogy. The original films very closely follow the Hero's Journey template outlined by Joseph Campbell. The Hero's Journey begins with an ordinary man with an unexceptional life - like Luke the farmer on Tatooine. Our hero hears a call to adventure and is taken under the wing of a mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi. He then crosses the threshold into a whole new world and is thrust into a grand battle of good versus evil, the Rebel Alliance against the evil Galactic Empire. After being severely tested and tempted, he defeats the forces of evil and restores peace and balance to his world. The prequel films are an equally archetypal and classical form of storytelling, the tragedy. Our tragic hero is Anakin Skywalker, Luke's father. He is a man who rises to greatness as a Jedi Knight, but falls to the Dark Side and is transformed into Darth Vader. Anakin fits the model of the tragic hero outlined by Aristotle - he is a basically good man whose fall comes about not by vice or depravity, but character flaws and errors of judgment that lead to destruction. The Phantom Menace is the beginning of this tragic tale - Anakin Skywalker is an innocent child just discovering his great powers, and the Galactic Republic is experiencing the first stirrings of dissent that will lead to war and the formation of the Galactic Empire.

Considering the darker and more complex nature of its story, you would expect The Phantom Menace to be a more nuanced or adult Star Wars. Yet The Phantom Menace is actually the most child-oriented, lighthearted film of the entire saga. In itself, this is not really a problem - after all, Anakin is still an innocent child in The Phantom Menace, the characters have little sense of the tragedy to come, and good storytelling accessible for any age is all too rare. But in execution The Phantom Menace is bizarrely at odds with itself. The simplistic characters, declarative and nuance-free dialogue, and goofy slapstick humor place The Phantom Menace firmly in "kiddie movie" territory. But the plot centers around an intergalactic trade blockade that is actually a front for the future Emperor Palpatine to secure power, and the discovery of the boy who will become Darth Vader and kill two of the film's major characters, Padme and Obi-Wan. I'm not claiming that George Lucas shouldn't have tried to make The Phantom Menace fun or accessible in the face of its dark subject matter - of course he should have, it's Star Wars. But The Phantom Menace never strikes a good balance. Dry political discussions are followed by manic slapstick action sequences, making for an unpleasantly schizophrenic experience. I'm not sure whether George Lucas vastly misunderstood his own story, or was making a misguided attempt at appealing to children out of commercial concerns and in the process alienated many adults. Either way, The Phantom Menace is a disappointing missed opportunity - an elemental story rich with potential, told in a broken, awkward way.

The poor storytelling extends to the characters, who are uninteresting at best and at worst...um, we'll get to that in a minute.

Let's start with Anakin Skywalker himself. Bringing Anakin to life would be no easy task for a writer or child actor. He is just a young boy, but one who must show potential for greatness - for good and for evil. But Anakin in The Phantom Menace is a complete failure of a character, like the star of a cornball 90s kid movie anachronistically plopped into an epic space opera. It wouldn't be fair to put the blame on Jake Lloyd, just a kid who was likely acting as he was directed to. But, sadly, he never convinces on any level, leaving a vapid blank space where an engaging main character should be. Since the core of the prequel trilogy is Anakin's transformation, this is a big problem.

Bland characters are the norm in The Phantom Menace. Talented actors like Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor are adrift playing personality-free ciphers. Jedi master Qui-Gon Jinn is the most engaging, due to Liam Neeson's authoritative screen presence, but is just as poorly written as the rest. An invaluable ingredient of the original trilogy's success was the characters - Han Solo, Leia, Luke and the rest of the crew had vibrant individual personalities, and delightful chemistry when put together. The protagonists of The Phantom Menace are wooden and dull, never giving us a reason to care. But they're nothing compared to this...

...the unholy monstrosity known as Jar-Jar Binks. Everything about Jar-Jar is off-putting. Starting with his design - the lanky body, the yellow cat eyes perched on crab-like stalks, the duck bill with incongruous human teeth - he is intended to be the lovably goofy comic relief, but is too much an uncanny nightmare of a creation to be anything but unnerving. His personality is even worse than his appearance - he is a screeching idiot who destroys all in his path, tagging along with the heroes for no discernible reason. Even if he had attempted to do so, Mr. Lucas could not have concocted a more perfectly obnoxious character than Jar-Jar. Every minute of his screen-time (which add up to a mercilessly large number, considering his unimportance to the narrative) is painful.

The Phantom Menace mishandles the Star Wars mythology just as much as it botches the characters; which is, perhaps, an even more crushing disappointment. The Star Wars universe is expanded very little, or only in uninspired directions. The new worlds lack the lived-in, authentic creativity of the various planets in the originals - Naboo looks like a fantasy world screensaver and Coruscant is just a bland futuristic cityscape. The Jedi Order never is as awe-inspiring as it should be - they seem less like mystical warriors and a force for good, and more like dull, humorless bureaucrats. And the introduction of midichlorians - "microscopic life-forms that reside within the cells of all living things and communicate with the Force" - is an unwelcome, mystique-deflating explanation of how the Force works. The mysterious spirituality of the Force is what made it so awesome in the first place!

The amount of time The Phantom Menace spends explaining Trade Federations, blockades, peace treaties and the Galactic Senate, without making clear what's actually at stake or why any of it matters, is baffling. The political turmoil of the Republic, and the sinister scheming of Palpatine behind the conflict, could have been gripping if told coherently and with an appropriate sense of dread and tension, but in The Phantom Menace all the plotting is relayed through tedious, confusing exposition dumps.

Yet there are bright spots amid the gloom. Brief moments of The Phantom Menace tap into the gleeful excitement that is classic Star Wars - where pulpy, old-school science fiction meets grand, mythic storytelling. The clear highlight of the film is at the end, when Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon fight Darth Maul. Although Darth Maul has limited screentime he is the most memorable figure of The Phantom Menace, with his tattooed body, demonic horns, and that double-sided lightsaber, which every 10 year old boy thought was the coolest thing ever. They battle in an enormous metallic hall that looks like a set from Metropolis, as operatic singing blares on the soundtrack. In a few minutes there is stirring heroism and tragedy, and the type of exhilaration that only the best high fantasy can provide. A shame that the film surrounding that terrific scene is so lifeless.

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.