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The Ascent (Larisa Shepitko - USSR - 1977)
If you're looking for a world war two film from Russia there's quite a few great ones to choose from and this would be my pick as the best of the bunch. The Ascent is the story of a band of Russian partisans battling German patrols in the depths of a snowy Russian winter during world war two. Although it starts off with a large contingent of resistance fighters, we soon focus on two of their number who head off to a nearby Belarusian village in search of food. It's not long until one of them is wounded and both end up in the hands of the Germans. Although the first half of the film is extremely tense and exciting it soon becomes clear that this isn't a simple action film, but is concerned with much larger issues - of patriotism, dignity, cowardice and betrayal; basically how people behave in impossibly difficult situations, the decisions those situations force from people and the trauma they bring to bear on the human psyche. The two characters are illustrations of two divergent personality types and it's fascinating watching them face the same situations in very different ways - one is focussed on ensuring his own survival to fight another day, and the other is willing to become a martyr for their cause. The film is sure to give all but the most blindly patriotic zealots pause for thought regarding what it means to fight for an ideology. On a technical level this is outstanding filmmaking - from the gorgeous black and white photography to the instinctive feel for whatever kind of technique is required in any given scene to an interesting use of the black and white format. The attentive viewer may notice the first half of the film is predominantly white - which matches the protagonists simple, uncluttered objective of survival, but things gradually move towards black to match the more murky and complicated psychology at work. It's a seamlessly realistic portrayal of the effects of the brutality of war on the human spirit that builds to a devastating climax, every bit the equal of Shepitka's husband Elem Klimov's Come And See. |
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Cyclo (Tran Ahn-Hung - Vietnam - 1995)
This gritty, violent and authentic film from Ahn-Hung Tran centres around a young cyclo (an excellent performance by Le Van Loc), his older sister and her lover (the ever reliable Tony Leung). Having lost both his parents, Cyclo (none of the main characters has proper names) lives a hand to mouth existence, living a hard life on the edge of extreme poverty. The only money he can earn is by hard graft - ferrying people here and there in his rented cyclo cab. There's a turf war going on though, and his cyclo is soon stolen and his life threatened by rival gangs claiming the area as theirs. Now further in debt the lure of a life of crime becomes irresistible. Parallel to this story is the poet's (Leung). He's already heavily involved in organised crime and takes to pimping out the cyclo's sister, also in dire need of cash. Everyone here is trying to eke out a living any way they can. The atmosphere of tension, desperation and frustration is almost palpable, and the sticky hot and grimy streets of Saigon give an oppressive taint to the characters' travails. This is an utterly assured, gripping and visually impressive cinematic experience whose imagery will stay with you long after the end credits roll. One of the most impressive Asian films I've seen in recent years. |
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Diamonds of The Night (Jan Nemec - Czechoslovakia - 1964)
This film will leave you short of breath. It's intense in a way that very few films these days are. Shot in beautiful black and white photography and with an absolute minimum of dialogue (the first time I watched it there were no English subtitles, and I enjoyed the film immensely), this is a film told with a pressing urgency and fierce passion. Set in Nazi Germany during the second world war we follow two Jewish youths who have escaped from a train transporting them to a concentration camp. They're hunted mercilessly through the woods by a group of elderly men with shotguns, who you'd think were out hunting quail on a Saturday afternoon. The camerawork and editing are just magnificent, and the two leads convey an authentic fear of capture that allows the viewer to immerse themselves in the terrible situation these two boys find themselves facing. You can almost smell the sap from the trees and pine scent in the air as the camera rushes up slopes and through gulleys at breakneck pace. At only sixty three minutes there's absolutely no fat or gristle on this film, and no let up from start to finish. This is a rare feature that's well worth seeking out. |
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Drifting Clouds (Aki Kaurismäki - Finland - 1996)
Drifting Clouds is the first of what is now commonly thought of as Aki Kaurismäki’s Finland Trilogy or somewhat more unkindly The Loser Trilogy. In fact to call Kaurismäki’s characters losers is to do them a grave injustice. Although his characters are usually people on the periphery of society – often loners, sometimes almost outcasts whom society lacks the ability or more likely inclination to help, they all possess a quality known in Finland as sisu which roughly translated means perseverance, and are admirable for that. The two main characters here are a married couple who have a quite touching relationship with very strong bonds. They're struggling to makes ends meet in Finland's worsening economic climate. It’s amazing how well these characters are fleshed out using just a few cinematic brushstrokes. We can tell the love they have for each other runs deep and although they may have their ups and downs and disagreements, ultimately no amount of misfortune will separate them. Which is just as well because pretty soon they're both jobless with the threat of eviction hanging over them. Given that this is what the film is about you could be forgiven for assuming you’d be in for a pretty depressing time of it, but nothing could be farther from the truth. It’s actually very funny, as is the way of Kaurismäki, of having his characters deal with the harsh cards they've been dealt. If you've never seen a Kaurismäki film before then this is an excellent introduction to his work, and if you have and are back for more of the same then you're in for a real treat as this is one of his very best. |
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The Exterminating Angel (Luis Bunuel - Mexico - 1962)
Bunuel once again indulges in one of his favourite past-times, namely taking pot-shots at the upper classes. In addition to succeeding brilliantly at satirising the pomposity of upper classes, with this film he's also produced one of the most perfectly realised examples of surrealism ever committed to film. It's not out and out surrealism like Un Chien Andalou though - the most famous of Bunuel's surrealist exercises, where there's very little in the way of plot or meaning. The Exterminating Angel is a lot more subtle than that; not as overtly surreal - although there's still the odd cow wandering around inside the bespoke mansion in which the film is set. You'd be forgiven for not realising it's a surreal piece until about halfway through, because the premise sort of sneaks up on you. A group of upper class bourgeois types arrive at a fancy manor house for a lavish dinner party. Once the party has finished the guests all find they cannot leave, for reasons that are never explained. It's as simple as that, but it's exquisitely executed. Over the course of the next few days these upper class, self-important types gradually shed their airs and graces as the situation becomes more and more desperate and their true animal nature is eventually uncovered. The fact that these people are mostly kind of unlikeable and that the doors and windows are clearly open and unobstructed make this film deliciously satisfying and very funny. |
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The Five Obstructions (Lars von Trier - Denmark - 2003)
Lars von Trier is one of these directors who can stun you with a masterpiece one year then boggle your mind with some severely mis-judged mess the next. He's an innovator who likes to step outside the conventional way of doing things and this can yield great results, but can sometimes be so misconceived that no-one could pull it off. On hearing about this project I wouldn't have been surprised if this turned out to be one of his failed experiments but in actual fact it's much closer to a masterpiece than a mess. Here he teams up with fellow Dane Jorgen Leth, who directed 'The Perfect Human' - a famous short from 1967, much revered by von Trier. The two dissect the film and von Trier sets about tormenting Leth by setting him the task of remaking this film five times, each time differently, and with extreme restrictions imposed on him, such as re-shooting the film in Cuba, and with no shot lasting more than twelve frames. With von Trier a particularly hard task-master Leth is under the gun, but rises to the occasion time and again, with some elegant solutions. This film offers an intriguing portrait of the two men, the power dynamics between them, their very different personalities, and their different approaches to filmmaking, and is an absolutely fascinating and frequently hilarious examination of the creative impulse from two different generations of the most creative forces in the Danish film industry. |
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In The Mood For Love (Wong Kar-wai - China - 2000)
Wong Kar Wai's most accomplished film also features career best performances from Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung. Leung stars as Chow - a writer whose wife is having an affair with Cheung's husband. The two find out about these affairs and arrange to meet each other - to talk about how to deal with the situation, to have an affair themselves? - that's the question. This is a sumptuous feast of a film for the eyes and the heart that will satiate you but also leave you wanting more. Wong Kar Wai directs with a tremendous amount of poise and precision, Leung and Cheung capture the conflicting emotions they feel about each other, their respective partners and themselves perfectly, and without much in the way of dialogue, because words are somehow not enough for the situation they find themselves in. Christopher Doyle's distinctive cinematography completes the perfect package; that rare film that will stand close scrutiny and multiple viewings without wearing out it's welcome, and should still be viewed and talked about decades after all the other transient crowd-pleasers have bitten the dust. |
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Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quais Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman - Belgium - 1975)
Minimalist film from Belgian director Chantal Akerman in which we follow - in minute detail - a housewife as she undertakes her daily chores. We watch her take a bath, fold sheets, prepare meals, help her grown son with his homework and we even take a trip outside with her as she gets some meat from the butchers and relax with her as she has a cup of tea in the local bar. With a running time of over three hours and twenty minutes you might think that this film would be a chore to sit through, and if you're not in the mood this may very well turn out to be the case. However, if you make a little more effort and go with it you may find - as I did - that you'll be more than amply rewarded with a singularly captivating film which will stay with you long after those three hours and change have elapsed, because this is a unique film. Watching Jeanne Dielman - a widowed single mother - complete each mundane task with stoic determination and an obsessive attention to detail is at first weirdly fascinating - much like it would be if one were to sneak into a stranger's house to observe them unseen. After a while it becomes quite hypnotic until finally we're in a position to recognise her emotional distress in the slightest deviation from the routine with which we've become familiar. These tiny missteps signal massive emotional shifts which evince a powerful response in the attentive viewer, much more so than would your traditional emotional outburst. This is a devastating portrait of an ordinary woman forced through circumstance into a world of quiet desperation and her gradual slippage into depression and finally a calm insanity, and the ending is all the more shocking when it arrives because of the quiet, simple and uncomplicated way it was filmed. If you can get into the right frame of mind this film will blow you away. A difficult masterpiece. |
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The Man Without A Past (Aki Kaurismäki - Finland - 2002)
Markku Peltola stars as the unfortunate man of the title. As the film opens we join him on a train journey - on his way to a new city, we assume to start a new job as a welder. On his arrival he stops for a rest on a park bench and is set upon by a gang of thugs who beat him into a coma and steal all his belongings. He awakes (after being declared dead) in the hospital and quickly makes his escape, completely unaware of who he is and why he is in this strange place. The remainder of the film is his journey to pick up the pieces of his life. You'd think his main objective would be to find out his identity, but Kaurismaki's interests are somewhat tangential to this and that's what makes this film so satisfying. Peltola gives a very down to earth performance; his character - listed in the credits only as 'M' is more concerned with trying to get back on his feet, find a place to live, earn some money and find love than he necessarily is with unearthing his identity. Midway through the film this is found out (not by M, but rather through a sequence of events outwith his control) and an intriguing mystery becomes an intriguing character study and rather than wondering who this man is we now wonder what choices he will make in life. Kaurismaki's sparse style is perfectly suited to this tale of people living on the outskirts of society and the way the story pans out is absorbing, occasionally funny, oftentimes quite moving and in the end, supremely satisfying. A fine film that really should be seen by more people. |
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Marketa Lazarová (František Vlácil - Czechoslovakia - 1967)
If what you're looking for in a period film is authenticity then look no further than this. Watching Marketa Lazarova is like stepping into a time machine and being whisked back to a simpler and more savage time before civilisation was very civilised. Obviously none of us was around in the middle ages but watching this film will surely make you think you're right there in those snowy landscapes and ruined castles with their harried knights and down-trodden peasants struggling to stay alive during a harsh winter. You can almost smell the pine needles in the forest and feel the bitter cold of the wind on your face as you watch the knights hunting for food or battling rival factions. The thrust of the narrative, such as it is concerns the kidnapping of the daughter (the eponymous Marketa) of a feudal lord by neighbouring knights and the struggle to retrieve her after she becomes the mistress of one of the kidnappers. It's refreshing to see a film where all the modern day political correctness and psychology is stripped away to reveal characters at their most basic and often bestial. The women are not much more than possessions and the overriding motivation for most is survival. The triumph of Marketa Lazarova is the combination of a documentary feel combined with stunning black and white cinematography, great attention to detail with regards to the costumes and setting and very naturalistic performances throughout. Voted the best Czech flm of all time by Czech critics in 1998 this film is criminally unseen by most. A must see if ever there was one. |
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Of Freaks And Men (Aleksey Balabanov - Russia - 1998)
Set in St. Petersburg at the end of the 19th century this is a truly bizarre film dealing with the world of underground pornographic photograph and film production and distribution. Upper class families are being targetted by a group of pornographers who are taking over the basements of the families and using them as makeshift studios to produce their porn which they then peddle to the maids of the very same families. Nifty, eh? Viktor is the heavy and ringleader of three 'porntrepreneurs' but he eventually falls away from the porn and developes an unhealthy interest in a couple of twins he comes across. He starts to tour with them as a singing freak show, and plans a future around them, however one of the twins is an alcoholic and the other is becoming obsessed with twisted sexual practices Viktor's partner introduced her to, and everything begins to unravel for Viktor and his group. There's more going on than that but I don't want to give too much away. What an odd film this is and very enjoyable for someone looking for something a bit different. Technically speaking the cinematography is very interesting; it's a kind of bile yellow sepia toned monochrome which really suits the piece - very much reminiscint of early daguerrotype photographs. You'd be hard pushed to find a weirder setup than what's presented in this film. Strange indeed, and satisfying. |
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The Red And The White (Miklós Jancsó - Hungary - 1968)
The Red and The White is unlikely to resemble any other war film you've seen. Most war films either thrust us into a small band's struggles to take a position or destroy an installation or some such activity, or focusses on an individual and how he deals with the new situations he's forced to face. Not so this film. Set during the Russian civil war that followed the October revolution, the red Bolshevik's are pitted against the white Czarists in a struggle to seize a section of land around the Volga river. What marks Jancsó's film as unusual is his eschewing of traditional modes of telling this tale. The techniques he uses are counter to almost every other war film made. Normally tension and excitement is generated by using handheld cameras, and drawing well-rounded and sympathetic characters so that we have a vested interest in their well-being. This is not the case here. Jancsó makes the whole business of war a much more cold and confusing affair. We see characters we've become familiar with die in long-shot, or in the background. Sometimes we're not sure who is being killed or even which side is which. He doesn't take a position on who he believes is right or wrong - both sides are shown doing terrible things and none is portrayed as particularly heroic or justified in their actions. I would imagine this is much more akin to what a lot of military conflict is all about than something featuring noble soldiers being heroic against an evil foe. There is some magnificent camerawork on display here, and the wide cinemascope frame is fully utilised to great effect. The stroke of genius though is the cinematography - Jancsó obviously wanted to do all he could to muddy the waters further and the black and white photography certainly contributes to the overall sense of confusion. Once again realism and objectivity trump emotion and exaggeration in getting Jancso's point about the folly of ideological conflict across. |
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Songs From The Second Floor (Roy Andersson - Sweden - 2000)
Roy Andersson is great at portraying Sweden as this down at heel, bleak place that seems to be disconnected from the rest of the world. He then fills this strange grey world with oddball characters just trying to get on with their lives. This is leisurely paced but rich in detail so you're never frustrated by the lack of incident, and although everything seems to be very slow and doom-laden all is not what it appears. Andersson's films are frequently hilarious, and if at first they seem to be influenced by fellow Swede Ingmar Bergman, they're actually more heavily influenced by Monty Python. It's the juxtaposing of the serious Swedes and their stereotypically stoic manner with the absurdity of the situations Andersson pushes them into that is the key to his success. 'Songs From The Second Floor' is the best example of Andersson's style, and it features some remarkable vignettes such as the commuters on the train all spontaneously breaking into a dour singalong, or the sombre group of officials gathered for a very serious ceremony which turns out to be pushing a young girl off a cliff to her death, for reasons left completely unexplained. But all this is not to suggest that this film is just an absurdist comedy, because the whole production is permeated with real pathos too. Andersson strikes an exquisite balance throughout, and that's quite a trick to pull off. Roy Andersson is one of a kind. |
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Yi Yi (Edward Yang - Taiwan - 2000)
If you have three hours to spare and are in the mood to get to know a wide variety of folk at important points in their lives then this is one of the best films to watch, and is also one of the best films about families you're ever likely to see. A rich cast of authentic characters going about the business of living their lives, this is epic intimate drama on a grand scale. The characters weave in and out of each others' lives and because the acting is beautifully naturalistic and the story being told is so universally identifiable it's easy to get completely absorbed in the goings on, especially when every shot is beautiful and perfectly framed. A wonderful triumph of humanism that should strike a chord with anyone interested in what makes people tick; the network of relationships a life consists of, the simple joy and wonder of growing up and finding out more about the world and the people in it, and the bittersweet reality of growing old. |
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