Rebelling Wives

                                                                    Melancholia - Lars von Trier, 2011

                                                   Marie Antoinette - Sofia Ford Coppola, 2006

                                                    Nunta de piatra - Dan Pita (part.II), 1973


Tristesse globale.
Lust for life or death.
Signs. Apocalypse.
Too much. Too little. Too late.

When Someone Dies, You Up And Join The Circus

There’s this hypothetical bucket list I’ve set for myself, where most of the things are almost impossible to happen, such as seeing the Rio Carnival or riding on top of a train in India. Among those, it’s obvious you’ll mostly find my love for traveling and the ultimate journey is joining the circus. The dead inside, dirty but spectacular, also magical circus world.

• Water for Elephants

Jacob Jankowski is a Polish American veterinarian, barely out of college, whose parents die in a car accident. In a moment of despair and incapacity of seeing a light or a purpose, he hops on a train headed West. This train is not an ordinary train, but a moving circus, where he gets hired as the veterinarian. He has trouble adapting, the working men try to red light him (through him off the moving train) when he first hops on it, later on he gets to share a room with a performer which really upsets the performer at first, making Jacob’s life miserable. He falls in love with Marlena (one of the artists), but she’s married to August a paranoid schizophrenic. The story is set during the Great Depression, but is told through a 90 or 93 year old Jacob, who spends the last days of his life in a retirement home, reminiscing.

Even though in the end the circus falls apart, or rather goes bankrupt and the animals break free, the story has a happy ending in what concerns the love story.

• Carnivàle

This is an HBO television shows that I consider to be my second favorite TV show after Six Feet Under. The story is also set during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl and tells the story of Ben Hawkins, a young man who follows the circus that crosses his town after his mother passes away. He starts having prophetic dreams and an ability to cure illnesses and evil. His path crosses a man of God, preacher Justin Crowe who also has visions telling him to go against the young man. It’s a beautiful metaphor involving good and evil, God and the Antichrist.

The show was cancelled after the second season and this also culminates with the weird ending of the series, where neither good, nor bad wins.

 

• La Strada

This is a movie about a street performer who travels through Italy – Zampano (played by Anthony Queen) and a young woman whose sister used to be his assistant up to her death. Zampano comes to her family to ask for Gelsomina to replace her dead sister in the show. She’s a naïve young woman and gets attracted by this life, but he treats her as a brute and she easily looses her so called joie de vivre. After a series of unfortunate situations and conflicts, she even proposes marriage, but he refuses. He abandons her while she is sleeping, only to find the memory of Gelsomina a few years later with a song she used to sing. He finds out she died and cries in despair.

All of these three circus stories begin and end with death – physical or metaphorical. They speak of a world that looks appealing for the majority, because we barely know anything about it and can hardly touch it.

The circus is the ultimate frontier.

"Hey, Johnny, what are you rebelling against?" "What've you got?" - The Wild One (1953)

From what I’ve gathered, this year’s selection of movies is not that impressive. I’ve had a tradition, since about 2007, to watch as many movies as possible from the Oscar nominees, and I believe this year has been one of the most productive years, in what concerns the topic. I can gladly say I have been able to watch every nominee from the Best Picture category, Best Director and obviously, Best Cinematography.

When I first taught of this article I was going to name it ‘ You Had Me At Hello’, because I wanted to cite a very annoying line to show my love for cinema. Cinema indeed, had me at hello, but I can’t say the same thing about the movies selected this year. It’s funny how, if you try to imagine how many of these movies will stand the test of time, the way I look at it, most of them fail. It feels wrong that some of them already have, since they’ve been released this summer and everyone in show business (at least) seems to have forgotten they exist, even if they are actually great movies, such as ‘The Tree Of Life’ or ‘The Help’.

From my experience, the movie that should win the title for the best picture, is, by all the Academy’s previous criteria, ‘The Help’ – good reviews, wonderful actors, box office hit, moral and social issues. I would whisper ‘Here’s looking at you, kid’ (Casablanca, 1942) to this movie. It was a pleasant surprise, honestly. 

But there are two others on the table: on the one hand, we have ‘Hugo’, which is great, really, but more of a kid’s movie, or more of a two-way ‘Cinema Paradiso’, if you want. I don’t recognize Martin Scorsese, the reckless smuggler, the ‘You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? Well, who the hell else are you talkin' to? You talkin' to me? Well, I'm the only one here. Who the f--k do you think you're talkin' to?’ Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver, 1976), where are you? I’ve already watched the 3D + catchy story + wonderful cinematography recipes work before (Avatar, 2009) and I really don’t want to see it work again, even if it’s for my beloved Scorsese.

‘I wouldn't worry too much about your heart. You can always put that award where your heart ought to be.’ (All About Eve, 1950) – if this is what makes you happy, then I guess you should have it, place that award next to the one you received for ‘The Departed’, but please know I thought ‘Taxi Driver’ or ‘Goodfellas’ or ‘Raging Bull’ or even ‘Gangs of New York’ would’ve deserved it more that ‘Hugo’. 

‘All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my closeup’ (Sunset Boulevard, 1950). ‘The Artist’ is the first silent movie to be shot, with great success, after the talkies appeared. It’s also a form of reminiscence - a redemption for what the movies nowadays have become. I loved the cinematography, it follows the subject, it gives it meaning, substance and makes it a great silent movie. It should probably win, why the hell not? The public will love the controversy, the special, the never-seen-in-a-long-time or never-seen-before of this movie. This is no more that a filmmaker’s movie that ‘The Tree Of Life’ is. Sorry. 

‘The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.’ (Moulin Rouge, 2001) and so, ‘The Descendants’ is a soft drama, with hints of comedy - language, situations – and a great performance from George Clooney. This movie doesn’t really belong in this category. It’s too small, too tender, it lacks the magnitude of the story and the setting to be treated like one of the three above. I would rather it just got Clooney a well deserved Oscar for Best Actor. It doesn’t need the publicity, it couldn’t handle it. I am afraid it’s going to be crushed – the way I see it is more of an indie movie that an Academy Award winner and I appreciate when thing are in order and everyone knows where they actually belong.

"Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." (A Streetcar Named Desire, 1951). The magnitude of this play doesn’t even compare to this little, again intimate movie, ‘Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close’. I’ve read the book and loved it and I cannot see past that. The movie doesn’t even compare, but it managed to render the same feeling, the characters follow the same patterns as the ones in the book, and even if it doesn’t underline every detail I once adored in the book, it still managed to depict it in a colorful and subtle way. I love the fact that the Hollywood version of the book isn’t dramatic or pathetic, it’s just simple and soft spoken, just like the book itself. The 1^st person  perspective is kept and underlined by sounds and images. I feel like it deserves a place in the Best Cinematography section, the use of lenses and camera movement is really important and brings extra flavor to the story. 

‘Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.’ (Casablanca, 1942) This is exactly what I feel about the moment in time Woody Allen decided to go back to, it’s the era of the bohemian, almost decadent Paris, where abstract and surreal meet, post dadaism and pre existentialism – but with influences from both. I’ve pondered on the topic of pseudo-intellectualism in connection to this movie, but it’s just an awakening. The character is still a younger version of Woody Allen, with the same angst, he’s still neurotic and wonders about the emptiness of living in the exterior world and wished to keep the interior world alive. Magic realism- hell yes, come right in!

'Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'. (That's goddamn right.)" (The Shawshank Redemption, 1994) – the motto of the movie, of the team, of the players, the main character? The revival of a baseball team. I must admit, I didn’t care about the subject, so I am really going to be subjective on this one. The only thing I actually enjoyed was watching the two male performances – both Brad Pitt and fat kid from ‘Superbad’ Jonah Hill were great. I believe it would be fair if the Oscar for the Best Supporting Actor went to this one.

'Enough of symbolism and these escapist themes of purity and innocence.' – (8½, 1963) What the heck, Steven Spielberg? But on a more awkward note, please don’t win Best Cinematography, just for that weird shot of a sunset at the end of the movie, in which even the skin tones or the grey on their clothes is orange. 

‘Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.’ (The Wizard of Oz, 1939). Oh no no no, believe me, we’re not. This is the type of movie a lot of people categorize as pretentious, artsy, European maybe. I must say I loved every shot, every piece of musical composition, every detail, every whisper, every look. I loved the omniscient angle, as if an angel was following the characters, the good old-fashioned family life, the evil in their lives, the lingering of lost people, the strict education, the bad deeds, the ignorance, the perverseness, the malice, the redemption, the bliss. It’s an honest picture of life – from birth until death and afterwards. If it isn’t going to win any other prize, I would love it if it would at least win Best Cinematography, because it really deserves it. Although, a little recognition wouldn’t hurt Terrence Malick, for Best Director. 

Jack: [voice over] Brother. Keep us. Guide us. To the end of time. (The Tree Of Life, 2011)

Best Picture	Best Director
The Artist – Thomas Langmann	Woody Allen – Midnight in Paris
The Descendants – Jim Burke, Jim Taylor and Alexander Payne	Michel Hazanavicius – The Artist
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Scott Rudin	Terrence Malick – The Tree of Life
The Help – Brunson Green, Chris Columbus and Michael Barnathan	Alexander Payne – The Descendants
Hugo – Graham King and Martin Scorsese	Martin Scorsese – Hugo
Midnight in Paris – Letty Aronson and Stephen Tenenbaum
Moneyball – Michael De Luca, Rachel Horowitz, and Brad Pitt
The Tree of Life – Dede Gardner, Sarah Green, Grant Hill and Bill Pohlad
War Horse – Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy
Best Actor	Best Actress
Demián Bichir – A Better Life as Carlos Galindo	Glenn Close – Albert Nobbs as Albert Nobbs
George Clooney – The Descendants as Matt King	Viola Davis – The Help as Aibileen Clark
Jean Dujardin – The Artist as George Valentin	Rooney Mara – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as Lisbeth Salander
Gary Oldman – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy as George Smiley	Meryl Streep – The Iron Lady as Margaret Thatcher
Brad Pitt – Moneyball as Billy Beane	Michelle Williams – My Week with Marilyn as Marilyn Monroe
Best Supporting Actor	Best Supporting Actress
Kenneth Branagh – My Week with Marilyn as Laurence Olivier	Bérénice Bejo – The Artist as Peppy Miller
Jonah Hill – Moneyball as Peter Brand	Jessica Chastain – The Help as Celia Foote
Nick Nolte – Warrior as Paddy Conlon	Melissa McCarthy – Bridesmaids as Megan Price
Christopher Plummer – Beginners as Hal Fields	Janet McTeer – Albert Nobbs as Hubert Page
Max von Sydow – Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close as The Renter	Octavia Spencer – The Help as Minny Jackson
Best Writing – Original Screenplay	Best Writing – Adapted Screenplay
The Artist – Michel Hazanavicius	The Descendants – Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash from The Descendants (novel) by Kaui Hart Hemmings
Bridesmaids – Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo	Hugo – John Logan from The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
Margin Call – J.C. Chandor	The Ides of March – George Clooney, Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon from Farragut North by Beau Willimon
Midnight in Paris – Woody Allen	Moneyball – Screenplay by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin; Story by Stan Chervin from Moneyball by Michael Lewis
A Separation – Asghar Farhadi	Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré
Best Animated Feature	Best Foreign Language Film
A Cat in Paris – Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli	Bullhead (Belgium) in Dutch and French – Michaël R. Roskam
Chico and Rita – Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal	Footnote (Israel) in Hebrew – Joseph Cedar
Kung Fu Panda 2 – Jennifer Yuh Nelson	In Darkness (Poland) in Polish – Agnieszka Holland
Puss in Boots – Chris Miller	Monsieur Lazhar (Canada) in French – Philippe Falardeau
Rango – Gore Verbinski	A Separation (Iran) in Persian – Asghar Farhadi
Best Documentary	Best Film Editing
Hell and Back Again – Danfung Dennis and Mike Lerner	The Artist – Anne-Sophie Bion and Michel Hazanavicius
If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front – Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman	The Descendants – Kevin Tent
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory – Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky	The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter
Pina – Wim Wenders and Gian-Piero Ringel	Hugo – Thelma Schoonmaker
•     Undefeated – TJ Martin, Dan Lindsay and Richard Middlemas	Moneyball – Christopher Tellefsen
Best Art Direction	Best Cinematography
The Artist – Laurence Bennett and Robert Gould	The Artist – Guillaume Schiffman
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 – Stuart Craig and Stephanie McMillan	The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – Jeff Cronenweth
Hugo – Dante Ferretti and Francesca Lo Schiavo	Hugo – Robert Richardson
War Horse – Rick Carter and Lee Sandales	The Tree of Life – Emmanuel Lubezki
Midnight in Paris – Anne Seibeland Hélène Dubreuil	War Horse – Janusz Kamiński

                                                                           

                    (*Yellow = Seen)

There’s a land called ‘Passiva Aggressiva’ and Cristi Puiu is its king

First, I should unravel something about the way I watch movies – I basically enjoy every movie I watch, trying not to be too harsh, judgmental or cynical, considering the fact that I’m still somehow in the learning process of making movies. This is why my friends would often hear me say this exact sentence, over and over: ‘I’ve recently watched this … (fill in the blanks with movie title) and it was really good. Well, actually…’ and then I develop the idea.

But seriously, ‘Aurora’ has been the first movie I watched this year, a story set in gloomy, contemporary Bucharest – a slice of life, if you may call it that way – where a divorced man follows his ex-wife through town with the not-so-obvious intention of killing her. The movie is long – three hours – and as some interesting critics who haven’t even had the decency to watch an entire movie before reviewing it say – pretty boring. But instead of boring I would like to call it slow paced, aerated, leaving just enough room for the characters to develop and for the viewer to get accustomed to their lifestyle. I think it was actually polite – yes, I’ll use this word – that the director took the time he thought he needed in describing the characters (mostly the main character, played by the director himself) and the situations created by the relationships the characters are in. And even though the movie opens with a post-sex scene between Viorel (main character) and his new mistress (Gina – played by Clara Voda), I really think this way of opening a movie was necessary in order to establish the ‘slice of life’ perspective – it doesn’t really matter where you start the story, it’s their everyday life anyway, but where the story takes you. The story runs you through the relationship Viorel has with Gina, which is pretty simple and uninvolved from what concerns Viorel – she keeps telling him about her daughter learning about Little Red Riding Hood but he starts replying after she has already changed the subject. You can almost feel her care for him, when she hands him a wrapped sandwich for work. Instead of going to work, a really wide shot discovers him stop the car in front of some railways, getting out, crossing it at night just to spy on his wife going to work and taking his daughters to school at the break of dawn.

He then goes to work, where it is implied (this is what I understood, at least) that he’s clearing out his desk and office because he had been fired. I’ve always loved Cristi Puiu’s subtlety, but this time I only got this from a singular line of an employee of the plant. This employee then slips him a few self made bullets.

I know I’ve said this before, but it feels like religion, sympathy, decency and relationships are all dying and the scene is the Romanian New Wave Cinema. They’re not dead yet – the way they are presented in Sergei Loznitsa’s ‘My Joy’ (2010 – ‘Schastye moe’), but they are really dying in front of the viewer and the only breaths of fresh air are, in this case, the innocent kid we see in the movie (Viorel’s daughter, not Gina’s spoiled brat) or the collateral victim (Viorel’s ex-wife’s layer’s date). It just feels like the situations in the movie, as well as the characters’ behavior are decaying in front of us.

Almost the entire movie is shot with wide or normal lenses, the camera doesn’t really get involved, keeping a distance between the viewer and the character. The viewer is a simple observer and he can make his own opinions about the situations depicted in the movie. I personally enjoy watching a movie that puts this sort of distance between me and the characters, I believe there’s no better way of shooting a story like this one. There’s a specific connection the actor/director sets at some point in the movie with the spectator and this consists of a medium shot taken from the backseat of the car Viorel is driving, when he stares through the rear view mirror straight at the camera, piercing through the barrier or the lens. It is right there when we discover the eyes considering killing a person. The movie is almost a study, a documented murder.

An hour into the movie, I can finally say I figured out the complete set of relationships and main behavior features of the characters. Viorel is distant, intellectual, listens to good music in the apartment that once belonged to him and his wife – apartment that is now being renewed (a vision?) – is highly specific about his stuff (he tells his wife’s father to only take certain things back to her) and wear his hood inside out for the entire three hours which makes an OCD viewer want to reach for the screen and put it back in (this is where I had my issues and felt mind raped).

I like the way Puiu chose the show the murder of his mother – in – law, through a handheld long shot that follows the woman going up the stairs in her home, and then following Viorel and letting the viewer literally staring at the ceiling and just letting the sound give us the idea of what’s going on upstairs – talk about Puiu’s subtlety again! And even though he only manages to shoot his wife’s lawyer (which launches the question: ‘did this guy fuck his wife too while dealing with their divorce papers?’) and his in – laws, he goes to the police station to confess in the coldest way. The director chooses to depict the Romanian authorities the same way a lot of other Romanian movies do – these policemen are talking about the murders when he walks in, and even though he sais he’s the one responsible for them they don’t even mind his existence in the room, they just make him write his statement. This would seem absurd for a non-Romanian citizen, but if you’ve lived here all your life, you’ll know this is just the way they handle ‘cases’ (see also ‘Police, Adjective’ – Corneliu Porumboiu, 2009).

Just one more thing: Puiu migrates at least a character from an older movie ‘The Death of Mr. Lazarescu’ (2005 – Un Certain Regard Award at the Cannes Film Festival), Mrs. Mioara Avram (interpreted by Luminita Gheorghiu) to underline the humanity of these characters and the idea that they could exist in every other movie or in everyday life.

In other words, I liked not everything being explained because it involves the viewer more, I liked the slow paced sequences and the fact that it launches questions not everyone of us would answer the same way. 

JLG - “Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.”

In what concerns my relationship with Jean – Luc Godard, it happened pretty late, long after I’ve watched movies from authors like Fellini, Antonioni, Truffaut, or Bergman. I was already studying film and Godard showed up one rainy afternoon, with his sequences of playing pool from Vivre sa vie, the absurd conversation between Anna Karina and Jean Paul Belmondo from Pierrot le fou, the dance of the two guys and this girl from Bande a part and the pan shots and monologues from his self – portrait JLG – Autoportrait d’hiver. The movie represents a search for truth, whenever a movie can be considered honest, it lacks the linearity, but it certainly doesn’t lack a concept concerning this idea: realism is the essence of cinema, but movies have to start with a start, and have a middle and an end, but not necessarily in this order. 

Even though Patrick, the liar seductive high school kid from Tous les garcons s’appellent Patrick, was conceived by Eric Rohmer, and Michael Poiccard – by Francois Truffaut, these characters obviously appear as characters belonging to Godard. Patrick, tha character interpreted by Jean – Claude Briary is an endless garrulous, who picks up girls in the garden of Luxembourg. He’s a film fan ( he mentions Mizouchi and Kurosawa) and taks about cars. The young blonde girl he picks up is wearing a striped t-shirt (a reference to the feminine character from A bout de souffle) and she listens to popular songs on her portable radio an her walls are covered in posters of James Dean and pictures of Marilyn Monroe. With these typologies for male characters, Godard changes completely the idea of movie character, turning them into people who carry words or speak them out.

In ‘ A bout de souffle’, Godard goes through the entire history of cinema, integrating in his movie the B series heritage, more precisely the one of the thriller movies produced by Monogram Pictures, in a very heterogeneous structure. Godard’s movie is a long monologue through which the hero tries desperately to communicate with Patricia, the young American girl who has a hard time trying to follow the slangy meanders and the literary quotes. It’s the bullet from the last shot that turns him silent : ‘ What a gross world!’ says Poiccard, and the rude inspector Vital tells Patricia: ‘ he said you were gross!’, and then does Michel’s gesture, touching his lips with the tip of his finger.

Even though Godard repudiated it, ‘ A bout de souffle’ had, after more than 50 years, the same impact as in the beginning, which, looking back, turns it into the movie – manifesto of the New Wave. The feature films  Godard directed later were as inventive as this one, but in very different directions.

Godard’s style stays on the same line with the shape generated by the creation concept of the movies that belong to the New Wave: long shots, which show several subscenes, so that the visual information is sent all at once, not having excessive cutting. He didn’t want the rending of the sensation of reality a cut transmitted. This type of shot can be recognized in most of Godard’s movies, but on the other hand, he uses the same amount of jump cuts. 

 

Jean – Luc Godard sau both the art and the society declining: he first theorized the idea, and then made movies that included it. Using the contradiction technique, but also bringing new forms of art, he underlined society’s decline and the impossible labyrinth of art. Godard was probably the first personalities in art to suggest the idea of minimalism in film, always saying that all you need to make a movie is a woman and a gun. Another present aspect in his movies is politics – even in his shorts he situates the situations in the foreground in a political context, which will play the role of a background, connecting with the actors’ interpretations and the dialogue. Very conscious, but also active politically, Godard doesn’t miss any occasions to connect the foreground to the background. In the beginning of ‘Pierrot le fou’, in the car sequence, Marianne (Karina) hears a piece of news on the radio about the war in Vietnam, and later in the movie she says “Damn Americans!’, subtly suggesting the director’s opinion  concerning the contemporary society. 

            Of Godard’s trademarks, I love the most the fact that he uses Anna Karina in a lot of the female roles, also having an actor in the foreground and the portrait or the image of another actor or personality in the background. The references to the American B series cinema (noir movies) or the frequent quotes from French literature give his movies a familiar air, almost touchy.  JLG’s movies are special because of the alert editing style, which looks like jumps, which doesn’t care much about the 180˚ rule or about continuity, space becomes limited, but in a lot of his movies he manages to send out the feeling of not belonging to a place, the same way Antonioni uses it.

He really trusts the atmosphere created by the long shots (sequence – shots) and the sincerity these send out, so much that he claims every cut is a lie, hiding a time unit. 

He’s still fascinated by the shapes and structures the cinema allows him to use, so much that his movies have been a turning point in the worldwide cinematography, because of the way Godard used these structural elements – he helped the cinema’s stylistics evolve. He wants everything to be obvious, to almost hurt the spectators’ eyes, especially concerning the camerawork and the cinematography itself, but also when he edits, and these elements give rhythm and continuity , ‘rounding up’ the movie. The concept behind the editing has a rhythmic sense. 

His characters are superficial, the lack substance, but explode from so much charm.