The Illusionist (2010) Review
Based on a screenplay by Jacques Tati and bought to life by Sylvain Chomet, The Illusionist brings together two names who seem perfect for one-another. It takes the mind of someone who has animated fantastic silent (ish) comedies to bring a Monsieur Hulot-esque character back to life. A hapless Magician is witnessing the death of his art, rock stars and sultry singers are taking the place of what has become a tired and old fashion form of entertainment. Out of work and desperate for money he manages to find a job in a bar in a Scottish village where he meets a nieve girl who thinks he’s a bona fide wizard, that magic really exists. As she follows him in awe, he gets pleasure amusing the only person left who still believes in magic.
The Illusionist is melancholy at its funniest and most whimsical. While it manages to capture a time where magic was dying, it manages to revive the silent comedy. While the film has sound, it is so unimportant. The entire film is told with its visuals alone, with its delightfully charming animation that’s unafraid of the obtuse and garish, revelling in a unpolished scratchy style that remains breathtakingly beautiful. The visual comedy and sentimental story of a poor man and an innocent girl is more akin to a Chaplin film than Tati or previous Chomet films, it’s easy to draw a lot of similarities to Chaplin’s The Circus (1928). It’s pleasing to know that audiences can still be entrapped with silent comedies and that so much can be said in action alone. A simple story, adorably told, brimming with laughs and heartfelt moments, the poetry of The Illusionist can be felt long after the screening; the magic of cinema still exists.
Tokyo Sonata (2008) Review
Tokyo Sonata (2008) appears to have achieved a great deal of critical acclaim, it won the jury prize at Cannes and is being released under the Masters of Cinema series by Eureka. Tokyo Sonata tells the story of the collapse of a family in Tokyo. The father loses his high-profile job and is forced to hide his unemployment from his family, the mother is displeased with being ‘just a housewife’, the eldest son wants to join the US army and the youngest wants to learn to play the piano against his parents’ disapproval. The first half has many strengths and sets up hope as to what Tokyo Sonata can offer: a touching family portrait struggling through the current economic crisis, it reveals its cards slowly, with a touch of tragic humanity. Regrettably this falls apart, much like the family in the film, and disintegrates into a ridiculous farce. Tokyo Sonata is mostly let down by the script which, when the writer obviously couldn’t think of any way to express a characters feelings filmically, stoops to forcing characters to exclaim aloud what it is they’re thinking which is not only unbelievable, but very poorly executed.
The script thankfully denies tying up those lose ends for you, much of it being left open to interpretation, but the ending does lead to the kind of unbelievable sentimentality that even the worst kind of Hollywood films wouldn’t dare stoop to. Pardon the slight spoiler, but to attempt to convince the audience that a child, who has been learning to play the piano for six months without a piano to practice on at home, can become such an accomplished pianist, it is so patronizing it’s cringe-worthy.
It’s easy to compare Tokyo Sonata with Edward Yang’s superb Yi Yi (2000) as the themes and set up are similar and I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that Yi Yi was inspiration for the script. Regrettably, Tokyo Sonata is a very pale comparison, its script, cinematography, and stilted acting is void of poetry and has no semblance of real emotion. As the film aims to imbue the audience with an empty dissatisfaction with modern life, it needn’t have left the entire family devoid of any charisma or personality. If Yi Yi is a song to the struggles and beauty in the many facets of family life; Tokyo Sonata barely manages to hobble together an incomprehensible verse.
Congratulations Joe!
As the world already knows, Apichatpong Weerasethakul picked up the Palme d’Or this year for his film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. As I cannot comment on the film, not being privileged enough to see it yet, I will share something I wrote personally about his film Syndromes and a Century. I am only gutted as I was supposed to meet him in person this week, but due to the turbulent situation in Thailand at the moment the event has been cancelled.
“Syndromes and a Century is a project that will explore how we remember, how our sense of happiness can be triggered by seemingly insignificant things. It is an experiment in recreation of my parents’ lives before I was born, which also includes the lives of those who have touched me in the present day. It will be an interpretation of distant lives and of architecture that I remain fond of, along with contemporary ones that I have around me. Time is collapsed to mimic a pattern of remembering and to manifest my belief in the idea of reincarnation. We are constantly reborn, amassing our karma, and we learn from our successive lives in order to one day finally experience a true happiness.”
Written before Apichatpong Weerasethakul had begun production on Syndromes and a Century I use that piece of text to reiterate my admiration and love for his films. His films are elating experiences that shower you with abundant light and happiness. Even though we differ in our beliefs on reincarnation, his films manage to become a religious experience, even if in my eyes my religion is merely ‘film’. I would need too many words to begin to try and explain the impact of his films, both on the concept of what a film can be and and my personal emotions, and I don’t have the time to do it. I only hope more people can enjoy them and see the light within them. I feel I can safely hold him in league with Antonioni, Fellini, Tarkovsky, Godard, and Bergman. I only wish I could see Syndromes and a Century in the cinema again like I did at the Cambridge Film Festival (2007), to be overwhelmed by its beauty, perplexed by it, but overwhelmed by its imagery nonetheless. And then to, just a few weeks later, get lost in a hospital and be taken back to the film and feel a great sense of joy (something that shouldn’t be associated with hospitals or being lost). We need more cinema like this. We need more people to CARE about cinema like this.
————–
Edit: Things turned around and he was able to make it to the BFI to talk about his project Primitive. I got to see him, and I would like to remind people to check out his installation, Phantoms of Nabua, at the BFI Southbank while it’s still there.
A Lost Art: Silent Film
When I think of my favourite periods in cinema, two decades come to mind: the 1960s and the 1920s. With the amount of study and development in film techniques and theory it feels wrong that many of my favourite films come from a period when cinema was new and barely resembles what we know as cinema today. Silent films are in no way inferior to sound films and are instead a unique art of their own. While silent cinema does seem primitive compared to the kind of films we’re used to seeing today, it is due to its restrictions that it becomes a unique way of communicating. With sound and colour film starts to imitate reality too closely. The art of the silent film is in its detachment from reality, in the way silent film expresses ideas, overcoming its inability to communicate through spoken word. The moving image is the most important element of cinema, and silent cinema has to use the moving image to its full capabilities, something a lot of modern films could benefit from doing (beyond special effects).
Looking back at the history of cinema it feels like the 1910s film industry was only starting to get to grips with the techniques and art of narrative film. But in the 1920s it was really starting to come into its own, Murnau’s Sunrise (1927) and Lang’s Metropolis (1927) are seminal cinematic achievements. Just years after (with the first sound film in 1927) the art of the silent film was officially dead, over. While sound offers so much to cinema (beyond mere dialogue) I would love to have seen so many more exceptional silent films, to see the art of the silent film be able to grow and blossom beyond the short decade it had to shine. I wonder what films could have been made if silent cinema had another ten or so years to develop, what kind of things could have been achieved. Many people probably think sound cinema achieved everything it could have, that there was nothing more to be offered aside from the addition of sound and colour (and 3D?). But it doesn’t seem like silent cinema was really over, just that history dictates that silent cinema ended and so had nothing more to offer. But think about a film like The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), a film which was worlds away from what silent cinema was at the time, proof that silent films could go beyond the dramatic acting and stage-make-up which silent films are often ridiculed for by modern audiences.
One can only praise Charlie Chaplin for remaining to make fantastic silent films while the sound revolution was in full swing. Chaplin’s sentimentality works so well in silent form, the simplicity of it, the subtlety, it just gives his messages so much more power. When he makes his sentimental speeches in his talkies my eyes just roll and it feels like a slap in the face. Instead I wish those elements were cut out, or better, he instead talks (or sings) complete nonsense like in the finale of Modern Times (1936). Cinema works best when it’s not vocally direct, when the words don’t spell everything out for you, so the restrictions on what can be said in silent cinema makes for some more interesting and complicated storytelling relying on dramatic imagery.
La dolce vita: 50 years on
I had to scan this image from this month’s Sight & Sound. Federico Fellini (right) and Marcello Mastroianni (left) in front of a La dolce vita poster.
Sight & Sound informs me that when it was released 1 in 3 Italians saw La dolce vita at the cinema. I could not ever imagine a film of such artistic quality getting views close to that today. After all, no one cares about art any more, they are intoxicated with the glitz and glamour, pre-occupied with instant gratification, they’re too lazy to seek something more meaningful in life and art. Wait, isn’t that what La dolce vita taught us?
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
As a film student I had to sit in a class on Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a director whose work I like and am interested in. While I was in bliss at the thought of discussing one of my favourite films of the last decade, all my peers hated his film Syndromes and a Century with such abundant anger and loathing that very little discussion could be made on the film beyond how much they disliked it. It was a shame. So I will take some words directly from the director’s mouth to try to ease my disappointment over the situation:
“I, as a filmmaker, treat my works as I do my own sons or daughters. I don’t care if people are fond of them or despise them, as long as I created them with my best intentions and efforts.”
I will continue to stand by my belief that Apichatpong Weerasethakul is someone to keep an eye on, to take an interest in, to consider, because if anyone is doing anything interesting in cinema at the moment, he is someone who is doing it. His work might help to shape the future of cinema, bring about some changes, and bring in some fresh ideas (along with Abbas Kiarostami).
The Troublesome Remake
I would not normally like to write such a reactionary piece, I know that because I have not seen, nor will I see, the film in question: Nine, that my point will be considered void by many people. I might be making assumptions about the film, and I may be proved wrong, however this argument goes beyond the film which caused this debate. While remakes are rife in the industry and have been for a long time, I only want to speak up now because they are doing something I thought would never happen, Hollywood is remaking my favourite film: 8½.
M (1931) Film Focus
Renowned German director Fritz Lang took his first steps into “the talkies” with M; a frightfully honest depiction of psychological and social unrest. Possibly one of Fritz Lang’s greatest achievements in cinema history, M was a significant junction is his career. After Lang’s silent science fiction Woman in the Moon (1929) was a failure due to sound cinema being in full swing, he needed to move forward and introduce sound into his art. Released not long before the rule of Nazi Germany (which would find Lang leaving his homeland), M embodies the dramatic changes to come politically within Germany and within cinema itself.
Mental (2008) Review
Kazuhiro Soda’s documentary on a mental health clinic in Japan observes patients and staff in great depth. Patients gradually unravel their stories and how the clinic has helped them. Never relenting the films shows all, the camera never quits. Dr. Masatomo Yamamoto is seen as a God in the eyes of his patients and a hero to everyone else, he has sacrificed everything to give those with mental illness the care and attention they need. If Mental has one objective, it’s to make it clear that the world (or at least Japan) needs more people like Dr. Masatomo Yamamoto. Even Kazuhiro Soda is given a God like quality for he is one of the few individuals not afraid of them and willing to listen to their tales. Most of the patients stories are unextraordinary apart from a charismatic poet’s insightful and well expressed views on life, they’ll fill you with wonder.
While too much time is spent capturing every moment no matter how mundane, through the madness there is still a desire to live, and to live as easily and peacefully as possible. With money and the quality of mental health care being cut in Japan, Mental is a final cry for help to stop ignoring those who are most vulnerable, to give them a voice and listen to everything they have to offer. It’s not all completely crazy.
Easier with Practice (2009) Review
Davy Mitchell is your stereotypical geeky intellectual. He totes glasses, has an uneven haircut and inept social skills. He’s just released a collection of short stories called ‘Things People Do to Each Other’ and is on a road-trip with his brother to promote the book. Davy’s brother is his polar opposite, he’s cocky and always gets the women who Davy is unable to pull himself. Fate plays Davy a hand and one night he receives a phone call from a sultry woman who, much to his surprise, initiates phone sex. A relationship evolves from these mysterious phone calls and Davy begins to learn about what it is to love and to live.
Being witness to Davy’s skills with the ladies is often cringe-worthy, but that’s half the fascination, watching something you secretly wish to avert your eyes (and ears) from. Easier with Practice is soft and sweet, a tender glance at every aspect of Davy’s tragic life, from his old grey sweater to his tiny apartment where he eats froot loops. It’s easy to laugh at this antihero, however it’s easier to sympathize with his complex emotions and the dilemmas he has to face.
Unflinching long shots bring tension to what Davy admits to being a boring road-trip. Instead of finding freedom, he finds himself suffocated by a love that can never be real. Easier with Practice offers an ambiguous character study with natural casting and dialogue which leads exactly where you expect it, clinging to the cliché that love is blind.
