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Reviews
Munyurangabo (2007)
Slow-moving with ending wallop
The opening scene of "Munyurangabo" passes very quickly, yet sets up the emotional conflict among its characters and within its central protagonist, Ngabo (not until the end is the relationship between the title of the film and this name revealed). I had to return a couple of times to understand the connection. It opens with Ngabo seeing a machete in the marketplace and observing two men fighting. Next we see Ngabo, machete in his lap, seated on a cement wall. He looks at the machete its tip covered in blood, and then again, and it is clean. Did he imagine the blood? Did the men in the market use it on each other?
Ngabo and his friend, Sangwa, set off on a trip. They begin with a physical and emotional closeness that very gradually disintegrates. Sangwa has spent their money on a new shirt, so they must hitchhike. Their goal is to kill a man, but will visit Sangwa's family (whom he has not seen in three years) along the way. As this visit is prolonged, the friends drift apart. The dialog is very spare, but each word and gesture is significant in driving the friends apart. Must Hutus and Tutsis inevitably remain enemies? When Ngabo continues his journey alone, his meeting with the Rwandan poet-laureate at a roadside shop provides the film's turning point.
The Rwandan genocide has long passed from the news media, but this film does much to reveal something about its effect on the generation that have grown up in it aftermath.
A Single Man (2009)
A period piece, and a mood
I was ten years old in 1962 and, scion of an academic family, recall overhearing snatches of adult conversation in muffled tones about homosexuality ("acey-ducey"), Christopher Isherwood, Castro, Soviet spies, building bomb shelters, Aldous Huxley. The dreamlike sequences into which such references intrude in Tom Ford's film- the decors, fashions, hairdos, evoke a host of hazy memories Without explanations, I feel a connection with the adult world I observed then, the repressive roles that enveloped this generation. Colin Firth carries in his entire being the weight of his age, having lost the one person who allowed him to break into an authentic self. Julianna Moore captures the pre-liberated frustrations of a women playing unsuccessfully at the "feminine mystique.".
Besides the acting, the fact that this film is the first effort of a fashion designer is the major source of the film's appeal. It is visually "dressed" in terms of settings, costumes, conversations, visual effects. There may be no lingering "meaning" to attach to its memory, but it provides a fully satisfying visual experience.
Le métis de Dieu (2013)
The discomforts of "God's Crossbreed"
I just saw this film at a Jewish film festival, and found it very thought-provoking and emotionally disquieting-- which I mean in a GOOD sense. I am neither Catholic nor Jewish, and so when I saw that the French title, "Le Metis de Dieu" points to a more universal phenomenon than the English title "The Jewish Cardinal," my cinephile self had more reason to regret the difficulty of procuring a broader distribution.
The psychological, historical, cultural, and philosophical complexities of this make the 90- something minute running time something of a marvel, and indeed leave the viewer wanting more, while already feeling treated to an experience that goes far beyond the genre of "biopic," or "docudrama" would lead one to expect. The eccentric, often petulant man, navigating between the different cultural identities within himself while confronting the real- world challenges that history has set in his path is a full-blooded, multidimensional character and not an object of reverence.
Meanwhile, as the camera travels from Orleans to Paris to Rome to Auschwitz and returning again to scenes of childhood and family, we witness a visual feast that surpasses our "made- for-TV" expectations.
Dunia (2005)
Thought-provoking
The film, "Dunia," brought back memories for me of the American 1970's, when feminism was on the rise, the first edition of "Our Bodies, Ourselves," came out, belly dancing became popular, and one of the records that circulated among the incipient belly-dancing community was entitled "How to Make Your Husband a Sultan." Amidst our own "consciousness-raising" at that time, there was very little awareness of real women's lives in Middle-Eastern communities. Today, there is far more reporting on the strictures imposed on women under "Sharia law," but still little comprehension of the lives of young women who dress like westerners, live in big cities, and are exposed to, and caught between, the contemporary secular and the traditional Islamic value systems.
This film, made in 2005 by a Lebanese-French director who owes her renown to the world of documentary filmmaking, apparently underwent a tortuous path to its public showing. The fictional heroine, Dunia, embodies the contradictions of her society. We meet her at an audition for dancers who wish to represent Egypt in an International Belly Dancing Contest. We do not see much of her dancing before the judges at her audition, but hear their interview of her. When asked to SHOW more of emotions about the Arabic poetry she wishes to study in her voice and body, Dunia slips to the floor, wrapping her arms and clothing closely around her. The young woman articulates the contradictions with which she lives: the daughter of a famous dancer, she has never seen her own naked body -- the only naked female bodies she has seen have been in foreign movies, which she watches through her window on her neighbor's television in an apartment next door. (I had heard long ago, that Egyptian belly dancers must cover their mid-section. Therefore the very image we have of belly-dancing is challenged).
Dunia, as well as the young man who is enamored of her, are voyeurs rather than participants in the realm of the erotic. SHE observes other, less inhibited older and younger women; HE stalks her at her dance classes, ascending to the roof to look down at her undulating body. When he braves general opprobrium to come visit her alone in her apartment, attempts to kiss her, and strips off his own shirt in an attempt to arouse her, she rebuffs his advances. She asks if he would marry a non-virgin, even if it was he who had been her only lover. She prefers not to put his protestations of liberalism to the test. Of course, her own concession to tradition (she marries him), do not protect her from ingrained expectations of male dominance and female submission.
Dunia is fascinated by her academic adviser, a specialist on the stories Scheherezade spins in the classic "1001 Arabian nights," whose public protestations against censorship of literature incur the wrath of the public and cause a protester to blind him (significantly, the "seer" of the erotic in poetry is blinded). On the other hand, she watches in horror as the grandmother of a friend's pubescent daughter relentlessly pursues the opportunity to make "a lady" out of the girl by performing female circumcision on her.
Thus the complex layers of this film make it worthy of close attention -- viewing and re- viewing. It is a "bildungsroman" of a young Egyptian woman. Dunia claims to have grown up in Luxor, which was the ancient capital of Thebes. Her young adult trials take place in contemporary Cairo. Thus she embodies the entire history of Egypt, and her final epiphany is accompanied by her professor's admonition, "Never wear another person's clothes. Dunia, you are the world."
Johnny Stecchino (1991)
It's the context that counts
Yes Bengini is a master of comic timing and plasticity. And the script is a fantastic use of the comedy of double-entendre. But as a Sicilian friend has pointed out, the late 1980's-early 90's was a time of unparalleled violence and legal action against the Mafia, a time when the population was enveloped in fear with reports of killings almost a daily occurrence.
In the context of this earlier film, , Begnini's portrayal of concentration camps in Mussolini's Italy in "Life is Beautiful" acquires the weight of Chaplin's "Great Dictator." Fear loses some of its grasp when evildoers become the butt of comedy.
The Secret Life of Sergei Eisenstein (1987)
Documentary in context
While far from perfect, this documentary is of considerable value on its own merits. The historical-political context of Eisenstein's work is readily available, but his internal take on his evolution as an artist is not. It is worth noticing the provenance of the documentary: Italian director, Swiss producer -- i.e. a European take, outside the bipolar US_USSR relations of the time (the Soviet war in Afghanistan). It purports to be a visual "Cliff Notes" to his memoirs - so the source material predates the Cold War. Written shortly before the director's death, it could scarcely include commentary on the Stalin era, and by now the mere mention of homosexuality attached to one of Russia's cultural icons is "politically incorrect," to say the least.
I teach a course on "Foreign Film" and am most concerned with getting my students to look at visual matter through the eyes of others. I can provide a historical perspective, but this is one of the best supplements I have found so far.
Rasskazy (2012)
Creating a novel on film
This film was shown on the closing night of the Russian Film Symposium at Pittsburgh Filmmakers screening room, which was the ideal venue for such a film. This is the director's first major film and has been hailed as inaugurating a new period in Post-Soviet Russian filmmaking. As such, of course, its depths are scarcely perceptible without some knowledge of the Soviet past.
A writer presents his manuscript to a publishing house, which rejects it. One by one, however, members of the editorial board retrieve the manuscript from the waste basket, each reading a different one of the four short stories, which they endow with the physical details of their imaginations. Thus the film as a whole creates a novel in the mind of the viewer through visual details and unexpected juxtapositions. There is a good deal of humor, with a deeply ironic Russian edge.
Ischeznuvshaya imperiya (2008)
Middle-brow culture, Post-Soviet Style
Karen Shakhnazarov's films are all, in a sense, "period pieces." They find a solid place in international film festival culture without ever quite winning the prize. "Vanished Empire" had a particularly personal ring for me, since I began my long-time study in and out of Soviet/Post-Soviet Russia in the period this film depicts (circa 1974), and had an uncomfortably eerie sense of deja-vu throughout the film. Searching for an American parallel, I came up with "American Graffiti," where Richard Dreyfus's character is caught between remaining in his Middle-American hometown or heading off to an Eastern college (as he does) and returning many years later to write about it.
Shakhnazarov's film has a similarly autobiographical feel to it, although his young hero ends embracing, rather than rejecting, the culture from which he emerged: the Russian intelligentsia. The meticulous reproduction of the Soviet 1970's offers a vaguely satiric self- portrait, hinting at the educated class's role in preserving world culture and history while rejecting indoctrination into Soviet politics and values. Therefore, the young hero, Sergey's true love is not, as he believes, the "good girl," Lyuda, who prefers the ACTUAL recording of "Swan Lake" (a covert reference to the ballet's role in service to the state) contained in the black market record jacket of the Rolling Stone latest release to the Western contraband recording that Sergey has paid dearly for, expecting to win her affections. Sergey's instinctual pull towards rebellion keep him from romanic fulfillment, but bring him closer to his true self.
Instead, Sergey comes to love and honor his dying mother, and follows his grandfather's advice by making a pilgrimage to the archaeological site that represented his family's life's work.In the ancient desert sands, Sergey finds the source of his earlier hallucinatory, drug-induced vision.
Emblematic details (cars, records, ancient trinkets) speak to viewers with Shaknazarov's background. Reading them properly, however, requires something of the education Shaknazarov's hero gained in the intervening years between the "coming of age" story and the film's contemporary epilogue.
Six Blind Eyes (2011)
A conundrum
A fascinating dialog and brilliant as a thought piece, but virtually devoid of cinematic effects- perhaps this is a form of "blindness" in itself. A young man comes to the office of a psychiatrist asking for help, but refuses to fill out the the medical information for the receptionist, and insists that the conversation take place in the reception area, rather than move into the counselors inner office. Reminiscent of the HBO series "In Treatment," or "The Booth at the End," combined with an ancient Arab fable in which a young man consults a jinn for advice.The twist is, however that he refuses to take any "treatment," but instead insists that he be believed, and be provided a miraculous cure.
We only see TWO pairs of eyes, which see literally, but refuse to "see" in an abstract sense The third pair of eyes is presumably supplied by the viewer, although perhaps there is a hint at metaphysical blindness as well.
What we see is an office is setting that is contemporary, with few furnishings. The two men are dressed in robes, with awkwardly placed head-scarves. An abstract work of art hangs on the wall. Is appearance a form of disappearance, hiding in plain sight?
Belvedere (2010)
A close experience of Bosnian refugee life
This story takes place 15 years after the war. Although I was acquainted with the horrors of the war, I was NOT acquainted with the horrors of survival. The refugees 15 years after live in brick houses that from the outside look like low-cost townhouses, against a magnificent mountainous landscape. The only thing sustaining the life of these refugees is the care of those who survived, particularly the very you, and the interminable wait for the bones of their loved ones who fell victim and were interred in mass graves. As the bones are plowed up, they are bagged and trucked to the camp, where the wives and mothers await them daily.
The scenes of this life are appropriately filmed in black and white. They are interrupted by color sequences of the Serbian-run TV reality show "Big Brother," which one of the surviving young men has been accepted into, much to the disgust of his Bosnian family. This contrast is the film's major irony -- the only relief from the waiting for news of he dead is this vision of a motley crew of random strangers living on a TV set.
The impact of this film is, of course, emotionally powerful -- but the REAL reality of the situation only slowly took shape in my mind. Because of this lag, I gave it a 7 rather than an 8.
Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011)
Fun for adults, too!
On our way to an "adult" film (the theater turned out to be inaccessible), we ended up at "Mr. Popper's Penguins," which my friend remembered as a book that her now-29-year-old daughter had enjoyed. I can't remember an evening of more unadulterated, good-hearted laughs in ages.
Viewers should be cautioned to abandon any need for verisimilitude. This is not "March of the Penguin," although Jim Carrey does reference Morgan Freeman in one line. The human children, however, are delightfully true-to-life, in their enthusiasms and frustrations. The penguins, however, manage to exhibit a charming mixture of human-child mischief appropriate to their penguin natures -- sliding on any slippery surface, splashing wherever possible, finding refuge in any icy habitat available in a Manhattan apartment.
The dialogue is very well written and well paced. Jim Carrey is at his best -- annoyingly over- the-top as a slick sales executive, genuinely bonding with his surrogate children as time goes on -- a virtual "Marty Poppins." Angela Lansbury displays her mastery of her craft as a wealthy dowager quite unlike the charming "Jessica Fletcher" persona.
Wenecja (2010)
Coming of Age in Wartime as a Boy Among Women
A film well worth seeing, experiencing, piecing together. I offer some of the pieces, without yet being able to offer the "together." I just returned from a showing at the Cleveland International Film Festival, and was disturbed enough by the low aggregate scores on IMDb.com to attempt a review.
Venice is the Lost Paradise of Atlantis, the city of which young Marek dreams in 1939 as he trains to be a Defender of the Polish homeland. He writes his hopes for the future on a piece of paper that he inserts in the wishing wall of the Catholic church next to the boys' dormitory that houses him as the film begins. Meanwhile, father and mother abandon him to the decaying family estate that serves as a refuge for aunts, cousins, where he continues his refrain of "I don't want to be here." A flooded cellar provides a temporary fantasy escape to a paper Venice; steps beyond its confines introduce him to the world of brutality and horror from Nazi invaders and the intimations that Soviet liberators offer a threat of their own.
There is much beauty yet in the women and girls surrounding him, in the remnants of a cultured world in architecture and music. Many scenes are in sunlit nature or golden haze. Marek seems too young to make sense of the world of adults or of the budding sexuality of his more precocious female playmates, yet adult life choices confront him in the most importunate ways.
Kray (2010)
Quite watchable, but not worth an Oscar
This film clearly aims to present the immediate post-WWII Russian/Soviet landscape in a way that is not breathtakingly new, but satisfyingly authentic for middlebrow audiences, East and West. In this way, it reminds most of the Finno-Russian production, "The Cuckoo." The heroes are not larger than life, no better than they need to be (when the Russian heroine is asked why she prefers the newly arrived hero to her former lover, she answers, "because he has more of the devil in him"); the national prejudices create tension, project an atmosphere of cruelty, even brutality among characters who clearly have a stake in reaching mutual understanding. The cold is palpable, as is the primitive living conditions. No wonder the power and beauty of the locomotives provide romanticism and sense of adventure for all.
A large part of the suspense comes from just trying to figure out the back story and the relationships among the characters. The political atmosphere is understated enough, I think, so thoughtful audiences have something to "read between the lines," and those who want an adrenaline rush will not be disappointed.
Black Swan (2010)
Anything stupendous is worthy of admiration
...including stupidity. For two-thirds of this movie I was thinking "this is a stupid movie;" about one-third was genuinely mesmerizing. The main theme is best reflected in the choreographer's remark to the heroine early in the film "You must kill the sweet girl Nina in order to play the Black Swan." There was a brilliant film in here somewhere, in the intersection between the plot of the ballet "Swan Lake" and the contemporary story of rivalry among would-be prima ballerinas, but this wasn't it, unfortunately--although all the components were there. The evil sorcerer's magic spell is cast through alcohol spiked with "Ecstasy;" Prince Charming and Svengali intersect.
The film's aesthetic sense is one more likely to appeal to aficionados of horror films than those expecting a logic more typical of psychological thrillers: taut it ain't. We know that not everything is beautiful at the ballet from the dancers' point of view, but neither do the conflicts behind the scenes amount to mythological tales of good and evil. It doth make me mad.
Dixia de tiankong (2008)
Well worth the view
A film about the lives of Chinese miners is not likely to attract mainstream viewers, but I suspect that this is the closest glimpse into contemporary China we are likely to get. And touchingly universal. Visually, it is a series of marvelously-framed photographs and brief snatches of dialog, to which the viewer must gradually develop a narrative line. In the background -- the effects of the one-child policy, which puts a premium on marriageable females, who must sell themselves to the highest bidder; then the lure and inaccessibility of the big city (Beijing); the incapability of small-town gossip as well as the town's only employer -- the coal mines.
Unter Bauern (2009)
Effective realism
This film is a screen adaptation of the memoir of a German Holocaust survivor and, except for the opening and closing scenes is a straightforward narrative, chronicling the family's experiences during the period following their narrow escape from deportation eastward to a concentration camp from which they know there is no return.
The first scene sets up the back story of the end of WWI, when the Jewish horse trader and German farmer serve their country and are awarded the Iron Cross for valor. A narrative voice explains the central irony of military service being rewarded by country that would later persecute or exterminate its heroes.
The farmer's family faces conflicting loyalties -- a son who goes off to war on the Eastern Front at the same time as the parents take in the horse traders wife and daughter, along with various other displaced persons; a daughter in the first blush of romance with a Nazi activist and his cause. The Jewish husband and wife, meanwhile, suffer the separation and perils of an assumed identity (in the case of the wife and daughter) and isolation, hiding, constant vigilance (in the case of the husband).
This film invites the viewer to live through these events with the family, and never over-dramatizes - which may account for the lack of enthusiasm of younger viewers. But the performances have much psychological depth as well as a ring of truth in all its scenes.
Great Performances: Macbeth (2010)
A Macbeth like no other
A visually brutal adaptation of a theatrical production that combines the experience of stylized European director's theater with the documentary-film imagery of war, Stalinist totalitarianism, dystopian landscapes. The result is not as much a drama (although the acting itself is riveting) as a series of rapidly-changing tableaux that bring a striking newness to Shakespeare's language. Sir Patrick Stewart performs the role of a lifetime. As a Shakespearian actor, he manipulates Shakespeare's words so that they ring authentically, as if we are hearing them for the first time.
This Macbeth channels the early Polish Roman Polanski, the imaginings of a Stanley Kubrick, the gritty grayness of 1984. It HAD to be shown as a PBS "Great Performances," for I cannot imagine it attracting a commercial audience, or even a film festival one, since it seems more like an brilliant artistic experiment that might have its most successful showing in the context of a museum. It is complex, worthy of endless dissection of words and images. My experience of it had less emotion involvement than fascination with creative process behind the filmmaking.
Poltory komnaty ili Sentimentalnoe puteshestvie na Rodinu (2009)
A filmmaker's dialogue with poetic language and filmic image
English readers of Joseph Brodsky's Book of essays that won him the Nobel Prize(Less than One) will recognize the film's title as coming from an essay in the book: "A Room and a Half." It is both a real and a symbolic space to which the poet never returned. The Filmmaker's fantasy-plot, however, takes off by withholding one of the most famous of Brodsky's poetic line "To St. Basil's (Vasilievsky) Island I will come to die." For those familiar with these lines, their absence becomes a form of suspense - until the are spoken in the last scenes. The historical canvas of Brodsky's like unfolds against a stylistic montage from Shadow-silhouette cut-out of the prerevolutionary poetic-aristocratic world of Anna Akhmatova, Dmitri Merezhkovsky, etc. to the use of this avant-garde art form in service of the October Revolution. The Stalin-era film is the orange-tinged film stock of that era; the animation of the crows in the snow seems lifted from master animators of the 1970s. As a biography the film make me think most of Andrei Tarkovsky's "Mirror," which brings together the scraps of images, paintings, poetry in an attempt to find a new wholeness with stream-of-consciousness connections, seamlessly connecting documentary images of the real Brodsky and his friends (as in th scene shot in the Restaurant Russian Samovar" on 53rd St.), with imaginary meeting of parents and child in the afterlife.
Avatar (2009)
Fantastic cinematography marred by simplistic screen writing
The planet of Pandora is a visual wonder, and the 3-D effects mesmerizing. I found myself alternating between bring stunned by the images and angered by the way Cameron drew on every cliché in the book. Me - G.I. Joe Six-Pack, You baby-blue Noble Savage. My guys bring you Apocalypse Now. I may be dumb, but I have heart and a good body. The guys in charged are corporate capitalist rapists of paradise, and they think YOU're the primitive ones. I'm sorry, but I'm the hero, so I'd rather wipe out my side's technology, along with the poor slobs who are hired to run it.
Is this REALLY the intellectual level our audiences operate on? I'd rather think that it was the rush to make the most of the special effects that forced the director to give the back-story such short shrift. Can't we have three-dimensional characters and credible moral ambiguity along with the 3-D camera-work?
Il gattopardo (1963)
Visually stunning, historically complex
I saw the film on DVD in the Criterion version, so I assume, at 3 hours, 5 minutes, this is the most complete version available. As long as the film is, I would recommend pausing it occasionally to appreciate the lighting, costuming, dramatic scenes, and faces, for it is like going through an art gallery of 19th century genre paintings. Not surprisingly, the main character played by Burt Lancaster does much of his reflection standing in front of works of art, and the visual assault of ball scene makes the viewer feel the same dizziness and disorientation that this former social leopard feels. Expecting a work of neo-realism, a la The Bicycle Thief, I found the film hard to get into at first, especially as I grasped at the straws of knowledge of Italian history available to me. A modern American viewer indeed would need a short background history to be able to get into the film's majestic flow. As masterfully as the actors play their parts (Burt Lancaster is a visual lion, if not an animal leopard; Claudia Cardinale stunning and earthy, Alain Delon roguishly charming), it is the ways in which they are caught in the sweep of history that move the film forward. Visconti harmonizes all the elements in such a way that I really felt the need to review the film over and over in my mind, if not on screen. The role of Catholicism frames the film, the intricacies of class intrude in many ways. It is hard for the viewer not to get lost in details on the way to the film's conclusion.
Tsar (2009)
Best seen in the context of Russian film history
I saw that this film had won the Nike award (Russian equivalent of Oscar), so took advantage of a showing on the Russian channel on DirectTV (unsubtitled). I checked out the "Hollywood Reporter's" review of the showing in Cannes, and the first line of that review corresponds to the first comment I would post myself, relating it to Tarkovsky's "Andrei Rublev"(1967) and Eisenstein's "Ivan the Terrible." (1944)
While the title of the film is "Tsar," the personality of the Metropolitan Fillip, played by Oleg Yankovsky, really dominates. Ivan is viewed through Andrei's eyes, and is judged by his values. Like Tarkovsky's "Rublev" Fillip attempts to find spiritual meaning in the harshness of his times, and Ivan at first come across as an object of pity to whom the church father attempts to give spiritual guidance. The film presents of trinity of "Holy Fools" (Iurodyvye), who traditionally speak prophetic truth to power - in the persons of Fillip, the little girl, an the jester (whose revelations of Ivan's cruelty are for the film-viewers alone). Ivan tells Fillip to speak the truth to him, but becomes progressively more opposed to the holy truth and therefore more and more "terrible."
Stalin found confirmation for the "great man" approach to history in Eisenstein's earlier historical epics, but Eisenstein's "Ivan the Terrible,Part II" was banned when the historical necessity argument gave way to grotesque depiction of the oprichniki and the murder of a young pretender to the throne. Lungin's gritty realism is the director's means of unmasking the tsar's barbarity. The magnificence of the regal costuming and sets do not startle the viewer with pageantry, but rather offer a grotesque contrast between the mask of wealth on display in the presence of masses violently spilled blood.
What may appear as "straightforward storytelling" is in many ways a polemic with historical narratives of the past. Ivan is most terrible in the power that he wields through insanity and belief in his role as God's appointed servant.
Transamerica (2005)
Transcending gender
I approached the film "TransAmerica" through my interest in the topic of transgender issues, but found it to be less about this "hot-button" issue, than about human relationships in general. The title is "Transamerica," and we are literally transported coast to coast across the country with the two main characters. Felicity Huffman's reluctance to reveal her transgendered identity is actually an element of plot that justifies the development of their relationship as two complex human beings. We learn about the forces that have shaped their existences and choices, but the ability to overcome their radical differences is what ultimately gives the film its power.
Boris Godunov (1986)
Honoring the classics
It is indeed difficult to watch this film without hearing the Moussorgsky score in the back of one's head, even when familiar with the language and the original play. Pushkin's Shakespearian interpretation of Russian history was prohibited from the stage for nearly fifty years after the poet's death, and the Moscow stage director, Yuri Liubimov, had similar difficulties getting permission for his production around the same time as the making of this film. Bondarchuk's version has both the strengths of massive USSR state subsidy to ensure the historical accuracy of settings and costume, with the attendant weaknesses of a work that avoids any attempt at parallels with contemporary life. Bondarchuk's earlier film adaptation of Tolstoy's "War and Peace" successfully transferred a realist historical epic in novel form to its cinematic equivalent; adapting a verse drama with insertion of visual flashbacks and dream sequences attenuates the dramatic form without the dramatism of the human voice provided by the operatic version. I am not surprised that a subtitled version is hard to find: the effect of converting Pushkin's poetry to prose would further diminish the actors' mastery.
Despite these caveats, the film is visually intriguing and well-acted -- an interesting footnote in the history of Soviet-Russian film.
Karamazovi (2008)
Marvelous complexity?
This film requires multiple viewings to untangle the complexities of life imitating art imitating life. So far I've only had one. The suffering of children because of their parents links the major contemporary plot line with the novel. Most of the dialogue is from Dostoevsky, whether or not the actors are on stage. Ivan Karamazov's atheist manifesto of returning the ticket to God's offer of paradise is somehow central. There must be significance in fact that the setting is the factory at Nowa Huta, a factory built at Stalin's behest and the later stage of Walesa's "Solidarnosc." The firs t, as well as last, scene of the play-within-a-play present the courtroom scene -- legal justice in counterpoint to divine justice. The moments of comic relief strike one with a similar inappropriateness as Fyodor Karamazov's buffonade. I almost envy the viewer who is neither aware of contemporary Eastern European history nor well acquainted with the novel, for the film is fascinating on the visual and sound levels as well. A feast for the film buff, if hard on the digestion.
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! (1978)
An American Monty Python
The filmmakers obviously were going for quintessential absurdity. My friend remarked that it looked like the product of a bunch of film students let loose with a concept. There is no way to discover any logic in the plot, and it is this absence that gives it its appeal. An early scene is reminiscent of the classic Marx Brothers stateroom scene, other characters and voices are drawn from scenes that were overdone in the seventies. In any case, I was glad to fill in this gap in my education in cult films of my generation,and enjoyed it much more than higher-budget contemporary comedies. It has NO "production values!" That's almost refreshing!