Monday, December 6, 2010

Children Of Heaven



(Summery)
Ali fetches his little sister Zahra's pink shoes after the shoemaker has repaired them. Ali puts down the shoes to get some potatoes at the grocer's. While he is preoccupied, a blind garbage man accidentally picks up the shoes, hidden in a bag, and takes them away. Frantic to find them, the young boy knocks over crates of vegetables and is chased away by the grocer.
Ali's father, anxious to earn more money, borrows some gardening equipment and heads off with Ali to the rich suburbs of Tehran to find some gardening work. They try many places without success, though Ali proves to be a great help to his tongue-tied father. Finally they come upon a mansion in which a six-year-old boy named Alireza lives under the care of his grandfather. While Ali plays with Alireza, his father works. When he is finished, Ali's father is surprised and elated by how generous the grandfather is. On the way home, their bicycle's brakes fail and the father is slightly injured in the resulting crash.
Finally, Ali learns of a high-profile children's footrace involving many schools; the third prize is one week at a vacation camp and a pair of sneakers. To his bitter disappointment, in a hard-fought dash to the finish, he accidentally places first instead. However, there is a quick shot of the children's father's bicycle, showing two new pairs of shoes among his purchases. In the final shot, Ali is shown dipping his blistered feet in a pool. Some versions include an epilogue revealing that Ali eventually achieves success in a racing career.

(Reaction)
Children of Heaven does provide a kindly, enveloping sense of Iranian life and customs, from the way the family prepares sugar cubes to be served at a mosque to the way Zahra helps care for elderly neighbors. These moments come more easily to Mr. Majidi than his studiously bittersweet ending for what is, despite its surface bleakness, an essentially sunny story.
What struck me in this movie was the devotion of brother and sister, their willingness to work together through a problem, and how they face the realities of their poor life in the south of Tehran. The family is poor by American standards, with a father who's barely getting by and who needs his third-grade son to help him find extra work in the richer sections of the city. But he Â’s a proud man, who Â’s willing to work hard and who has helped to imbue, along with a sick mother, in his children a dedication to working hard and making sacrifices for each other. This is a man who's a success not on the basis of what he makes in salary or owns, but in what he Â’ s helped to create in his children .In this movie you get to see Iran, the rich, the poor, and the regimentation that comes with the regime in power for children in school, where they line up and pay tribute to the great leader. Mostly you get to see a wonderful story that touches on fundamental values in our lives, and shows that there Â’s always hope if we make the effort and we give to our children the right things.

Walk On The Water

Walk on Water Poster

(Summery)
Eyal is an agent in Mossad, the Israeli security service. He is a hitman who targets enemies of Israel. His wife has recently committed suicide, and the agency decides that he needs to take on a less challenging assignment: to find an aging Nazi war criminal and get him "before God does".In order to track down the old man, Eyal poses as a tour guide and befriends the Nazi's adult grandchildren, Axel and Pia. Pia lives on a kibbutz, an Israeli commune. Her brother Axel visits her in order to convince Pia to return to Germany for their father's seventieth birthday. It is later revealed that Pia's estrangement with her parents began when she discovered that they were hiding her grandfather. She shares this information with Axel.
Although he has a job to perform, Eyal truly befriends Axel and Pia. Axel and Pia are decent people who demonstrate that most Germans have gotten beyond the hatred that led to the Holocaust. They spend time together and Eyal enjoys himself, even if he would not openly admit so. His friendship with Axel allows him to display some humanity, letting down his tough-guy machismo. Eyal is initially disgusted and disappointed to discover that Axel is gay. He asks to be removed from the assignment, not attempting to hide his homophobia as the reason. His boss, Menachem, insists that Eyal finish the mission. Eyal visits Germany and comes to realize that Axel's orientation is unimportant. During the visit, Eyal defends a group of Axel's transsexual friends from attackers and, in doing so, reveals that he is fluent in German.
Axel invites Eyal to his father's birthday party. The guests are uncomfortable about Eyal's nationality and religion, but, still polite. After the cake is brought out, Axel's parents surprise the guests by bringing out Axel's aged grandfather. Axel angrily confronts his mother and goes to Eyal's room, only to find a folder full of information on Axel's family. Meanwhile, Eyal meets with Menachem and tells him that they can easily take the grandfather and bring him to Israel to be tried for his war crimes. Menachem reveals that they are the only two on this mission, and the aim is to kill the grandfather. Eyal is clearly conflicted, but takes the case of poisons that Menachem gives him.Eyal arrives at Axel's house and enters the grandfather's room, unbeknownst to all but Axel. Axel sneaks up behind Eyal and watches as he fills a syringe with poison, doing nothing to intervene. Ultimately, though, Eyal is unable to fulfill the task. He leaves, and Axel tenderly caresses his grandfather's face before turning off his oxygen tank, killing him. He goes to Eyal's room, where Eyal tells him that the suicide note his wife wrote told him that he kills everything that comes near him. Eyal says that doesn't want to kill anymore and breaks down in Axel's arms.

(Reaction)
It’s hard not to be impressed with the subjects it examines, which range from homophobia to the Middle Eastern social climate. Watching the movie is another story. What keeps Walk on Water from sinking are the performances of Berger and Ashkenazi, who don't act to the film's shifts in tone, but consistently act like two men at an impasse. They want to be friends, but can all of their ideological baggage and prejudices be set aside? When Fox focuses on this uncomfortable human conflict, the movie achieves the relevance he's aches to attain.

Central Station

Central Station Poster

Walter Salles' Central Station is a touching, well-made motion picture whose only real flaw lies in the over familiar storyline. This kind of film explores the bond between a motherless child and a lonely older woman, has been attempted so frequently that good acting and direction are no longer enough. The script must offer a new and compelling quality, something to draw us into the narrative and make us really care about what happens to the characters. Another interesting aspect of this picture is that it presents a rare look at non-tourist locales in Brazil.
The film opens inside a large train station in Rio de Janeiro, where Dora (Fernanda Montenegro) is going about her daily job. At a dollar's price, she will write a letter for one of the many illiterate passers-by in the station, and then seal it in an addressed envelope. When it comes to mailing the letters, however, Dora is not trustworthy. Based on arbitrary criteria, she posts some letters, tears up others, and stashes a few in a drawer. Dora doesn't care when she betrays a trust; she has made the determination of what's best, and decides whether or not to send a letter based on that judgment. She stands aloof and uninvolved, making her assessments dispassionately. Until she meets Josue (Vinicius de Oliveira), that is.
Josue is the 9 year-old son of a woman who dictates a letter to Dora. In it, she asks the boy's father if they can be reunited. When leaving the station afterwards, the woman is struck by a bus and killed. Josue, with nowhere to go, begins to loiter around the station, acting pugnacious and withdrawn. His plight stirs something in Dora (she has seen the fate of shoplifters, who are shot, and she reasons that, without her intervention, a similar fate awaits Josue), who brings him home, then sells him to an adoption agency. However, when her best friend notes that Josue is too old to be adopted and that the organization may be a front for organ thieves, Dora kidnaps the boy from the agency, then goes on a journey with him, searching for his father.

The two leads both do superlative work. Fernanda Montenegro believably conveys the changes in Dora as her relationship with Josue transforms her inner self. It's a finely-tuned portrayal that doesn't ask the audience to accept any sudden or hard-to-swallow shifts in behavior. Dora's rebirth is gradual. Newcomer Vinicius de Oliveira doesn't have as complex as role to essay, but his performance as a young, lost boy touches the heart. Together, the two actors create a palpable, and very special, bond (not only with each other, but with the audience).
Central Station placed third in the 1998 Toronto International Film Festival's popular balloting (behind Life is Beautiful and Waking Ned Devine), which is a testament to its mass appeal. The reason is understandable. Central Station is both literate and emotionally powerful an increasingly rare combination. It does not rely upon camera tricks or overwrought performances to touch the viewer. There's manipulation going on here, but it's subtle and skillful, and, as a result, we don't feel like our heartstrings are being twisted and pulled by an unseen puppeteer. For that reason, Central Station is well worth seeing, especially if you're in the mood for an affecting drama.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Eat Drink Man Woman



(Summery)
Eat Drink Man Woman, derived from an original script by James Schamus, Hui-Ling Wang, and the film's director, Ang Lee, is much more satisfying as literature than it is as film. Even at that, though, the picture is simple, light, and affecting, and hard to hold anything against. Most of the plot can be summarized as a glimpse of what might happen if The Joy Luck Club sat down to eat Babette's Feast. The main character, Mr. Chu (Sihung Lung), is a consummate chef whose sense of taste has begun to dull as he enters old age. Also growing less secure are his relationships to his three, very different daughters—as though three sisters in the same movie ever have anything in common. In fact, part of what gives Eat Drink Man Woman its appeal, at least for an American viewer like myself, is that the unfamiliar pleasures of the scrumptious fine food and the Taipei setting are comfortably nestled within a tried-and-true, instantly recognizable plotline.

So, as I was saying, Chu has three daughters who all have different ideas about what they want to do with their lives. Oldest sister Jia-Jen (Kuei-Mei Yang), still nursing wounds from a love that evaporated long ago, now teaches school to a rowdy roomful of horny adolescent boys. Middle sibling Jia-Chien (Chien-lien Wu) has made herself a successful career in an airline corporation, though she might have preferred to prefer the culinary arts her father so magically practices. Finally, Jia-Ning (Yu-Wen Wang), who comes up with tuition money by working at a Wendy's in Taipei, just wants to get by and get along with everyone, at least until she grows attracted to the lonesome boyfriend of her fickle, teasing coworker.

Actually, Jia-Ning is not the only sister whose routine is disrupted by a new man; Jia-Jen is suddenly pursued by a gym teacher and volleyball coach in her school, and Jia-Chien begins a scrumptiously close working partnership with a colleague who, as it turns out, she recognizes from long ago. Meanwhile, Chu himself mostly notices these romantic, professional, and emotional developments by observing how all three daughters make less frequent and more restless appearances at his ceremonial Sunday night dinners. Chu lives a small life, a quiet life of mostly simple pleasures, though such flavorful delights as Joy Luck Dragon Phoenix are themselves as exquisite in taste as they are in name. Indeed, Chu seems to direct all of his great passions and grand statements into his cooking, so that he may operate on the cool, resilient level that works best in dealing with his three daughters, all of whom still live at home when the picture begins.
There are also a few surprising, abrupt leaps forward in the story, especially given the overall deliberateness of the pace. When a daughter who has been at a similar point in a love relationship for almost a full hour suddenly reveals she has been married, we wonder why Lee has taken so much time with the build-up only to leave out a climactic moment.
(The Theme)
A major theme of the movie is that romantic relationships give life meaning and are necessities of life (such as eating and drinking).
The film features numerous scenes displaying the technique and artistry of gourmet Chinese cuisine. Since the family members have difficulty expressing their love for one another, the intricate preparation of banquet quality dishes for their Sunday dinners serves as a surrogate for the spoken expression of their familial feelings. Another theme is the burden of aging. Chef Chu is depicted as having lost his "one true love" (his wife), losing another (his ability to taste) and about to lose all three daughters to marriage, not to mention the usual specter of old age.
(Reaction)
So Eat Drink Man Woman can be imprecise in its perspective and a little quick to play the trump card of enticing cuisine. These tendencies may keep it from being great art, but they certainly allow for a casually pleasing and easy to watch story about a group of people who are almost always likable and identifiable, even when they aren't getting along. Also, the cast and filmmakers pull off one major task that so many films fumble around with—though more and more characters are constantly being introduced in Eat Drink Man Woman, we never have any uncertainties as to who is who, or how they all relate to one another. If the film is not the sort of succulent feast that Chu so often prepares for his family, it more than qualifies as a pleasing snack, endearing if sometimes trapped in its conventions, but just unfamiliar enough that you never tune out.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Tsotsi


The movie Tsotsi takes the audience on a journey into a man’s past and his
Tsotsi Posterliberation from old chains that he is wearing.The main character, known as ‘Tsotsi’, which is the South African term for‘gangster’ or ‘thug’, is played by Presley Chweneyagae. He is the leader of a small gang with three members. They spend their time robbing, stealingand drinking.The story is set in today’s Johannesburg and it takes place at the edge of the city in the heart of Soweto.
There are more than three million people living in the town of Johannesburg; and there are three times more people living in the greater metropolitan area. That means that ‘Jozi’ belongs to the largest metropolitan areas in the world and has one of the highest crime rates in the world.Especially in areas like these the differences between poor and rich are as large as between day and night and the viewer is brought deep into the poor shantytowns of Soweto.
This is the context in which the story takes place. Originally it was written in the 1960s by Athol Fugard and set in the 1950s, where the apartheid regime started to take over.And now, four decades later, Gavin Hood, the director of the movie tells the story again, but under different aspects. Hood has updated Fugard’s book from the apartheid era to a present day in which class has replaced race as the country’s most pressing issue, the township and townhouse are in jarring proximity and HIV-Aids is the country’s biggest killer. In the sense it will be used below says that the protagonist of a film needs to build up an identity in order to be accepted by an audience. As it was already mentioned in the previous part it is not so easy for filmmakers to present a brutal gangster as the hero of their movie who should be accepted by the audience. Exactly here lies the art of filmmaking; namely to develop such a film-language that this is nevertheless possible.Whereas in real life most people would not be pleased to make contact with a person who makes his money with killing and robbing other people, in this film the situation is different. Gavin Hood manages it to present such a gangster and to provide the audience with information that have the effect that the viewer can understand the tsotsi’s behaviour and even tolerate the person (not the behaviour!). Tsotsi is a strong movie with an interesting story. The movie carries a certain authenticity as well as intimacy. This mixture makes it a special film which deserved the Oscar in 2005.The comparison of the pictures of the poor shantytowns and the richsuburbs is very impressive and transports the state disequilibrium very well. Also the idea to use the language, the people and the music of the shantytowns makes this movie so special. It is in fact this mirroring of everyday life that makes this film a lively and up to date piece of work.Especially the end of the movie is very successful because it leaves room for discussion about what happened and what can happen in the future. It leaves a certain hope that things can change to their better side.

The Unknown Woman


 
La Sconosciuta, (The Unknown), (The Other Woman)The Unknown Woman .The Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore is best known for sweet, touching art house friendly movies that send people away feeling gooey and cuddly. It's awfully tough to be a human being and resist his delightful Oscar winning hit Cinema Paradiso.
Kseniya Rappoport plays a woman called Irena, who comes to Italy from the Ukraine looking for work. By paying a concierge part of her salary, she gets a job cleaning an affluent apartment building. She befriends Gina a nanny for an upper-crust couple, Valeria  and Donato Adacher and their daughter Thea .Irena deliberately trips Gina on the long stairwell and takes over Gina's job. She tries to win over Thea while casing the apartment, looking for access to the family safe. Very often, Irena suffers uncomfortable flashbacks to her terrible past, serving a pimp-like thug called "Mold" and attempting to break away from him when she falls in love with one of her johns. Tornatore reveals more and more details as the film goes on. In one flashback Irena digs through the filth in a city dump. What's she looking for? I had a guess, but I was wrong.
Tornatore begins his film with what looks like an outtake from Eyes Wide Shut, with masked, naked women posing for some unseen voyeur. After several candidates are surveyed, Irena is chosen, which is presumably the beginning of all her trouble. Critics who saw only the Miramax-ed Malena accused Tornatore of ogling beautiful women with no other purpose in mind, and this opening shot may bring up the same accusations again. But here, as with Malena, the focus remains on the women, not on the voyeurs. We follow the masked Irena out of the scene and watch her as she removes her mask, her eyes defiant and determined. In the flashbacks, she is a dirty blonde, very often victimized, pleading, submitted to rape and other forms of torture. The new Irena, 32, with a mound of tightly curled black hair, is not so easy to catch off guard. She was once beautiful, but her face has now weathered through pain and hard-earned wisdom.The Unknown Woman
 The Italy we see here is covered with graffiti and no place appears to be safe or comfortable. Irena's apartment is ransacked (someone is looking for money) and left in a complete shambles throughout the film. Tornatore shoots low so that we can see the ceiling boards torn asunder. In another scene, a driving lesson occurs at night, with large numbers of pedestrians walking around the car in the half-light, while poor Irena suffers jarring flashbacks while trying to keep her eyes on the road. Tornatore's camera is constantly pacing and roaming, as if filled with pent-up energy and finding no place to spend it. Miraculously, he avoids the typical hand-held, shaky approach, which, these days, is used to signify chaos. Editor Massimo Quaglia keeps up with this restlessness perfectly, never disrupting it or breaking the flow, and legendary composer Ennio Morricone provides another effective, unobtrusive score.
  •    Even Irena's relationship with little Thea is fraught with disaster. Thea suffers from a condition that prevents her from protecting herself when she falls; the natural reflex to put out her hands is missing. So Thea's every move comes with a dreadful anticipation and more than once she turns up bloodied and crying. Irena tries to train her by binding her hands, pushing her down on pillows and forcing her to get up again. How this was supposed to work I have no idea, and indeed, there is more than one logic-challenged scene in the movie, but like the violent crime ("giallo") films of his countrymen Dario Argento and Mario Bava, Tornatore's The Unknown Woman gets by on sheer guts and style.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Blue

Three Colors: Blue Poster


Blue is a 1993 French film written, produced, and directed by the acclaimed Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski. Blue is the first in the Three Colors trilogy, themed on the French Revolutionary ideals; it is followed by White and Red. According to Kieslowski, the subject of the film is liberty, specifically emotional liberty, rather than its social or political meaning. Set in Paris, it depicts Julie, a woman whose husband and child are killed in a car accident. Suddenly set free from her familial bonds, Julie attempts to cut herself off from everything and live in isolation from her former ties, but finds that she cannot free herself from human connections.
Julie, wife of the famous composer Patrice de Courcy, must cope with the death of her husband and daughter in an automobile accident she herself survives. While recovering in the hospital, Julie attempts suicide by overdose, but cannot swallow the pills. After being released from the hospital, Julie closes up the house she lived in with her family and takes an apartment in Paris without telling anyone, or keeping any clothing or objects from her old life, except for a chandelier of blue beads that presumably belonged to her daughter. For the remainder of the film, Julie disassociates herself from all past memories and distances herself from former friendships, as can be derived from a conversation she has with her mother who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease and believes Julie is her own sister Marie-France. She also destroys the score for her late husband's last commissioned, though unfinished, work: a piece celebrating European unity, following the end of the cold war. Snatches of the music haunt her throughout the film.
She reluctantly be friends an exotic dancer who is having an affair with one of the neighbors and helps her when she needs moral support. Despite her desire to live anonymously and alone, life in Paris forces Julie to confront elements of her past that she would rather not face, including Olivier, a friend of the couple, also a composer and former assistant of Patrice's at the conservatory, who is in love with her, and the fact that she is suspected to be the true author of her late husband's music. Olivier appears in a TV interview announcing that he shall try to complete Patrice's commission, and Julie also discovers that her late husband was having an affair. While both trying to stop Olivier from completing the score and finding out that her husband's mistress was, she becomes more engaged despite her own efforts not to be. She tracks down Sandrine, Patrice's mistress, and finds out that she is carrying his child; Julie arranges for her to have her husband's house and recognition of his paternity for the child. This provokes her to begin a relationship with Olivier, and to resurrect her late husband's last composition, which has been changing according to her notes on Olivier's work. Olivier decides not to incorporate the changes suggested by Julie, stating that this piece is now his music and has ceased to be Patrice's. He says that she must either accept his composition with all its roughness or she must allow people to know the truth about her composition. She agrees on the grounds that the truth about her husband's music would not be revealed as her own work.