BuysAnother week, another book of essays by Julian Barnes procured! I found Something to Declare, his writings on France.
"Accomplishments"
At home: Visually more restrained than other movies in Jane Campion's filmography, The Power of the Dog deserves the treatment because it really is about repression. It looks like a macho western, but there's a lot bubbling under the surface, and sometimes ON the surface (Campion has never met a phallic symbol she didn't want to cast in this movie). Benedict Cumberbatch plays a misogynistic bully terrorizing his brother's wife (is there an Oedipus Complex equivalent for brothers?) and her wimpy son from another marriage, at least until he takes a shine to the boy. Or does he? And I swear, the third act had me wondering who was playing who. The sexual innuendo was really quite funny, but you couldn't really laugh because the scenes exuded menace. It's certainly a movie that's going out of its way to find the wrong audience, a non-action drama despite the cowboy dress, actually set a lot later than most, but then the leads aren't really what they seem, so it all fits. I think Campion is very psychological director and I respect her work immensely. It's rarely what you think it will be, and the better for it.
Olivia Coleman has the worst vacation ever in The Lost Daughter and I'm there for it. You know when you're trying to have a quiet time on a Greek island and a noisy family from Queens shows up to ruin it? Not that we can lay it singly at their feet. Coleman's character Leda is riddled with guilt over being a bad mom, guilt exposed by events surrounding the family's difficult little girl. What Maggie Gyllenhall has woven here is a deeply textured psychological study about motherhood, failure, jealousy (often manifested as hatred of youth), selfishness, and love, Coleman navigating those heady waters with her usual sensitivity and disarming charm. The MVP, however, is Jessie Buckley (who you might remember from I'm Thinking of Ending Things) as the younger Leda who actually has to incarnate the moments that haunt her older self. Lyrical editing and a leisurely pace put us in mind of vacation days, but the metaphors slowly but surely tease the underlying darkness. Sometimes, you should probably stay home, but what won't you learn if you do?
/2008: Equally based on Che Guevara's diaries, Soderbergh's Che Part I makes a potent companion to The Motorcycle Diaries and doesn't attempt to retell that part of the great revolutionary's life. Dealing exclusively with the Cuban question - with flash forwards to Che the politician and media icon - it really does have the feel of a diary, with vignettes creating impressions and exemplifying his philosophy, but not always giving us closure on any given moment. The film culminates in the Battle of Santa Clara that was decisive in ousting Batista, an extended and multi-pronged set piece, exciting enough to reward those who felt the diarist's approach tested their patience. Eschewing propaganda, Benecio del Toro presents him as a just a man, one willing to put his money where his mouth is, but asthmatically coughing through speeches and at times as ruthless as he is sympathetic. I particularly love the ending showing that Revolution is more than political, it has to take place in the mind, and old corrupt ideas are hard to shake off. Oh and the opener with the map? Seems slow, but it really helped!
If Part I was about triumph, Che Part II acts as a cold shower. Not all Revolutions succeed, in fact I imagine most fail (*citation needed, as they say). Che's Bolivian campaign was a disaster, in part because his reputation preceded him, and the Americans ha had a giant boner about stopping Communism and put their oar in. The result is a more depressing and disjointed film than Part One, filled with comrades getting killed before we got to know them. You get the point pretty early and then suffer through more failure and death for the rest of the film. Though I think it's valuable as part of a diptych, audiences are unlikely to revisit this one as often as the Cuban story. I will say this, though: Bolivia provides some beautiful and interesting locations for military action. This is not a geography that's been overused in such pictures, like we might say of Puerto Rico-as-Cuba. Not without interest, but deeply depressing.
Paired Short: With Spanky: To the Pier and Back, Guy Madden shows that there is no topic he can't deliver on. Essentially a lyrical visual poem to say goodbye...
2009: Expanding on her short "Dog" (but with a horse, and to the point where I thought it was the same lead at first), Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank speaks with the language of anger. Anger at the world for forcing you to desperation, or indeed, to give you hope and pull the rug from under you. Anger at everyone else who's angry around you. An estate in Essex. People screaming at each other. And then throw some pubescent teenage anger on top of that. We follow Mia, a 15-year-old who looks older, who has dreams and is sure to be disappointed. We don't judge her for fancying her mom's (and future self's) new boyfriend, played by Michael Fassbender. Well who would, right? This is before he became a household name, but in retrospect, it heightens the sense that he is an outsider to this world, the one recognizable face, but in the context of the film, a calm center in a chaotic world. He's slumming (literally). Arnold's visual symbolism is sometimes a little over-the-top, but she has a knack for getting the radio or television to play seemingly accidental clips that comment on the action, which I found incredibly impressive.
Paired Short: I think hearing would-be Senegalese refugees speak in Atlantiques is worth the price of admission, but directorially, the short uses too many devices.
2010: When I was a kid, I was stopped by some Texan or other who asked me and my siblings if we were Romanian. We explained we were French-Canadian and he told us he had Romanian friends and we sounded a lot like them. Not gonna lie, watching Radu Muntean's Tuesday, After Christmas... The languages are quite comparable. But not the sonority, sorry Mister. As for the film, Christmas is something you want to spend with your loved ones, but what if you love your mistress more than your wife? Enter a great piece of realism where the awkwardness of the situation is put front and center (there's another layer for the actors, I would imagine, seeing as the married couple here is apparently married in real life as well). The long takes help with the feeling, but I'll admit I didn't even notice the technique until thinking about it later. Muntean knows how to shoot the mundane so as to extract truth from it.
Paired Short: After discovering Niki Lindroth von Bahr's work in The House, I checked out Tord and Tord, an existentialist and someone opaque little fable about self and schizophrenia. Or if you don't want to go there, about the transitory nature of some relationships. Either way, it's sweet, sad, and thought-provoking. And I don't know what it is, but my cat is fascinated with her figures. Does he recognize himself in their fuzzy faces?
Role-playing: Our GURPS Space game continues... Ok, so one of the things I like to do, and am well know for, is mini-games. I love to set up a confrontation of some kind and then pull out a chess board, or a war game, or whatever and then the characters play the game, probably modified to fit the story, within the role-playing context. Though I realize their are (limited) options for online play, it's still something I've struggled with having forcibly gone to the Internet for games (which I would have had to do in this case regardless because the group is split across several cities). I can't just pull a cool mini-game or prop and drop it on the table. So here the idea was to play an actual game of Sabbac (Lando's card game) because 1) one of the PCs is a professional gambler and 2) it was an interesting way to conduct clue exposition. We of course used normal cards to achieve our ends, but it worked well and was a worthy idea. Then a mad robot attacks the casino and we were back into the action, though the players focused so much on a character I had as simply an "easy mark" in my notes that became a bigger part of the story than expected. I indulged in making him a comedy loser and I'm pretty sure his humiliation is far from total. He will return. By the end of the session, the real villain is revealed, there's a nanite plague to be rid of, the space station has gone dark, and to make the stakes more personal, the gambler's about-to-be-fiancee has been infected with the virus. Meanwhile, the group's techie starting taking pleasure in intimidating NPCs - not out of character for this anti-social PC, but certainly not something that's happened much before - so we encouraged him to spend the points and put it on his sheet. Has the adventure pushed him to his limits and turned him into a monster?
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