Filmed over a six year period, Laura Poitras' Risk is a complex and endlessly intriguing commentary on power, morality, transparency, ego, and hubris, an ever-evolving documentary which set out to provide an in-depth character study of Julian Assange, the founder of Wiki Leaks. Providing an intimate, observant study of a complex situation, Risk is a film that asks a lot of thought-provoking questions about power structures in society, human nature's primal desire for power and control, and the lack of certainty about nearly everything, a film which uses the mysterious and intriguing man in Julian Assange to raise much larger questions about morality, truth, and privacy in the information age. Following Julian Assange and Wikileaks rise to prominence over the past decade, Risk masterfully deconstructs how much like the CIA or NSA, Wikileaks has become a powerful and secretive institution, one where transparency itself is non-existent. Detailing the allegations of sexual misconduct that have plagued both Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, as well as Jacob Appelbaum, one of the primary forces behind Tor, Poitras' film examines how no community or institution is beyond potential corruption, deconstructing the toxic effect which power can have over all things, whether it's a malicious government agency, or a hacking institution which is dedicated to the "truth". In Poitras' Risk, truth itself is a fleeting idea, as the film examines through its character study of Assange how objective truth almost feels like a thing of the past, with these various power structures, whether it be the US Intelligence Agnecy, the Russian intelligence agency, or Wikileaks itself, all competing to indoctrinate the individual with their version of truth. While the film is observational and unbiased for much of its running time, Risk does abruptly overstep its bounds in its assured, suggestive nature it has towards the 2016 election, a jarring and quite frankly hypocritical assertion by Poitras' who herself seems to now recognize the intelligence communities' truth more than Wikileaks. While no one truly knows the truth, only the version which they choose to believe, the film's desire to take this position, that Russian hackers influenced the 2016 election, is disappointing for a filmmaking such a Poitras, who lets the ego and hubris of Assange and his seemingly power hungry nature distract from making the larger commentary about our political system and societal structures, one which aims to deceive the individual and common-man in the quest for power and control, where motives and contradictions are common place, a concept which applies to nearly every governmental institution as well as Assange's Wikileaks. Following the footsteps of Snowden, Lauren Poitras' Risk is another endlessly fascinating examination of the information age, examining institutional power through its in-depth analysis of Wikileaks and Assange, showcasing how the lines between truth, reality, and fiction in the information age have become more blurred.
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Asaph Polonsky's One Week and A Day is centered around two grieving parents, Eyal and Vicky, a israeli couple who have been dealing with the tragic death of their 15 year-old son. Picking up on the last day of Shiva, a period of seven days' formal mourning for the dead, One Week and A Day examines the tumultuous effect grief has put on this couple, capturing the strain such tragedy has on their shared relationship, as well as the deep-rooted psychological effects it has on each of them, whom use different coping mechanisms to attempt to deal with the pain. A film which manages to examine such a serious subject with a quiet vitality, One Week and A Day brings lots of comedic moments to its deconstruction of grief, detailing how re-commitment to life, and those close to you, is the best way to confront death and tragedy. Eyal's grief is one of utter detachment and angst, a character who becomes completely uninterested in the day-to-day routine. Despite urges from Vicky to return to his daily routine, Eyal instead steals medical marijuana from a hospice, skipping work and hanging out with his estranged neighbor's son, attempting to dull the pain through self-centered means and complete detachment from his typical routine. Vicky attempts to be far more externally assured in her presentation, a character who is quietly haunted yet desperately clings to normalcy and routine. While her husband blows off all his obligations, taking a direct, optics- be-damned approach to his grief, Vicky's strife is presented in a much more indirect way, a character who tries but routinely fails to return to normalcy. Unintentionally forgetting about various appointments and social obligations, Vicky is a character whose grief and deep-seeded pain is much more internalized and hidden from the outside world, yet she remains continuously impacted by it as she struggles return to normalcy. Both Eyal and Vicky are in emotional solitude, with One Week and A Day beautifully capturing how grief and emotional pain constrict one's ability to more forward, with each character's lack of communication and grief-fueled angst only creating strain on their current lives. The film's moment of enlightenment comes towards the end of the film, where Eyal himself is confronted with another man whose experienced death and tragedy. While Eyal listens to this man's grief-stricken words, One Week and A Day deconstructs how death itself is something which all of us as individuals experience, exhibiting how our shared sense of empathy and general kindness to one and other are paramount in our ability to move forward in life and continue to cherish the moments we still have. In this moment Eyal recognizes the selfish nature of his grief, understanding that he is not the only individual going through pain and loss, with the only righteous path being one fueled by more general kindness and empathy, not self-centered detachment. In this sense, One Week and A Day is a quietly assured celebration of life itself, detailing in Eyal and Vicky characters who struggle to move on due to their internalized pain and angst, whose only sense of true peace comes towards the end of the film with Eyal showing an ability to open up to his wife and recommit to life, being a man who remembers the goodness he still has in front of him. A harrowing epitaph of post-soviet Kazakhstan, Emir Baigazan's The Wounded Angel is a haunting examination of the social disintegration which took place in the beginning of the 1990s, when the region faced a massive transition, which led to emotional and economical turmoil among its inhabitants, most notably having a devastating effect on the youth of the region. Told in four interconnected stories, all of which focus on the exploits of 13-year-old boys, The Wounded Angel details the grim reality which follows these young men as they transition to adulthood, each confronted with moral and ethical dilemmas which shape their lives and leave them deeply damaged and forever changed as they transition to adulthood. Detailing four unique stories, The Wounded Angel paints a grave picture of a life in which optimism, promise, and hope are fleeting ideals, subjecting the viewer to a harsh reality for these youthful subjects, each of which is caught in an environment where youthful exuberance is non-existent. The four titles, grimly titled 'fate', 'the fall', 'greed', and 'sin, each present a bleak story of youth, all displaying a quiet, brooding sense of inevitability, with their actions and behaviors seemingly having no impact in the outcome of their lives, victims of the circumstances that surround them in the world in which they inhabit. While the subject of the first story finds himself seemingly, inevitably follow down the same path as his father, succumbing to thievery in an attempt to get ahead in a place that offers very little possibilities, the main character of the second story starts out with promise, rejecting the masculine, dog-eat-dog nature of his world, only to succumb to it in the end when illness robs him of his potential future as a singer. While these stories have nothing in common on the surface, they each share a sobering examination of post-soviet Kazakhastan, a place where youth is met by a harsh socio-economical reality, one which is almost guaranteed to inflict emotional damage on the individual as they transition through adolescence into adulthood The third story is the most haunting due to its ability to visually present what looks like a post-apocalyptic environment, detailing the exploits of a young boy who scours the barren landscape for various metals and objects he can sell, cold and calculating when it comes to saving every dime he can, shaped and molded by a hard environment where one must always look out for oneself first and foremost, with greed being a fitting title. The last story is perhaps the most sobering of all, detailing the story of a young, promising boy who is studying to be a doctor. Forced to make a tough decision, which I won't detail here, the young boy soon becomes endlessly haunted by it, driven to the point of madness by the outcome of his decision, corrupted and shattered by the morality of his decision, one that a boy his age should never be forced to even comprehend, let alone make. Emir Baigazan's direction is static, precise, and meditative, with the filmmaking using depth of frame and composition to perfection, often with both the foreground and background of the frame providing substance, visually expressing the cold, inner-psyche of its characters, whose detachment exhibits the inevitability of their lives' in this environment. Featuring no musical score, little dialogue, and a relatively plotless, ensemble structure, Emir Baigazan's The Wounded Angel presents a stark portrait of childhood in post-soviet Kazakhstan, one that feels autobiographical in nature, due to its ability to evoke the feeling in which insurmountable struggle is an intrinsic quality of day-to-day life, where hope and promise are merely a romanticized dream. |
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June 2023
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