An astonishing melodrama that is masterfully constructed and emotionally affecting, Umetsugu Inoue's The Champion is a beautiful work that stands alongside the very best of Douglas Sirk's oeuvre in its ability to masterfully illustrate emotional depth through visual construction. The tone and texture of this film are simply entrancing. Inoue's acute direction brings the film to life by masterfully deploying blocking and framing that brilliantly elucidate the understated desire and general sense of longing that envelopes this story. Gender normative vocations - boxing and ballet - provide a wonderful juxtaposition. The surface level occupations of Shuntaro and Mari end up being trivial when viewed through the ontological pursuit for acceptance. This provides the perfect thematic backdrop for this smoldering romantic melodrama, one that is highly acute when it comes to understanding the philosophical underpinnings of love and companionship. These characters have different perspectives due to being molded from different environments, their incongruency is a matter of personal desire but they couldn't be more similar from a larger ontological perspective. Whether the rugged, wild Shuntaro; the elegant, ascetic Mari; or Eikichi, who rests at the fulcrum of this story as a man who ultimately sees a version of himself in Shuntaro and Mari, every character is in search of a form of acceptance, from others but also from themselves. Their desire for respect, their budding romantic inclinations, their general confusion about their desires, all stem from a desire for acceptance which has become increasingly difficult in a society where social and personal worth is tethered to economic value. This leaves these characters struggling to contend with the fine line between pride and personal dignity that can be easily conflated or misconstrued under such social-economic levers. A beautifully conceived effective melodrama that is as thematically rich as it is emotionally resonate
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Another exquisite film by Hong Sang-soo, Grass aims to capture the symbiosis which exists between a writer's objective reality and that of their fiction, doing so with an acerbic formalism that elegantly exhibits the intertwined nature of these two aspects of our consciousness. Taking place almost entirely at a small cafe and spanning only 66 minutes, the direction employed by Sang-soo is playful yet economic, inviting the viewer into a magical spatiality. Like any of his work, Grass is structurally understated yet its thematic and artistic relevance couldn't be more pronounced. Effective in its exploration of consciousness from the perspective of the creative process, Grass displays how they bleed into one and other, informing each other, with any creative endeavor often drawing from both internal and external forces.
Nomadland is just the latest proof of Zhao's talents as an effective dramatist yet thematically the film is facile, incapable, or unwilling to examine the key political-economic root at the core of its story. The film recognizes the importance of stability to the human psyche yet it largely refuses to acknowledge the systemic factors at play, opting instead to lean heavily into diasporic malaise and the reverberations of grief surrounding the tragedy at the center of its story. These individuals are portrayed as people of action, not reactionary but responsive to things they can't control, and the film's treatment ascribes to them a notion of autonomy, which isn't as transparent in the text as their search for peace. Nomadland outright ignores the political-economic reality, namely the destabilization of the social at the hands of an economic system that subjugates labor under capital interests. It regulates any such assertions to subtext, with the film's text being more a film about overcoming grief, the denouement suggesting that Fran's material circumstances are largely ones under her control, almost as if the film readily admits it doesn't want to explicitly address the social-economic implications of its storyline. Zhao's formal sensibilities exude Heidegger's ontological conception of being - Dasein, with McDormant's central protagonist navigating the paradox of living with others while ultimately being alone in oneself. It's unsurprisingly a strong and affecting performance, and where the film is by far at its best. The elemental world is given weight throughout the film's narrative schematics. The dramatics are juxtaposed with more meditative moments of grandeur, and in these moments Nomadland effectively transcends the material conditions of its principle character reaching a spiritual ethos. A story of grief, despondency, and the search for a sense of being, Chloe Zhao's talents as a dramatist and naturalist filmmaker are undeniable once again with Nomadland. What is pretty alarming though is just how toothless this film is when it comes to excavating the underlying systemic issues, especially when considering how acute the film is emotionally about the impact it has on so many disparate individuals
Explicit in its messaging yet it lacks the bite to be deeply effective, showing an unwillingness to embrace its transgressive potential. Opting instead for quirky, pop formal sensibilities that undermines the film's thematic weight, Promising Young Woman is a well-intentioned but ultimately disappointing critique of patriarchal society. Employs an approach that devalues the importance of its thematic message, at worst feeling almost exploitative about the systemic nature of the issues at large. Promising Young Woman's temperament is too playful for the subject matter, feeling ephemeral in its deconstruction of patriarchy instead of recognizing its persistence that transcends the current moment. Promising Young Woman doesn't deploy discursive strategies around the subjugation of femininity that has been normalized in society. It merely repackages zeitgeist talking points, ultimately feeling like a missed opportunity - stuck between a space largely devoid of any intellectual commentary and one in which its artistic deployment feels off.
Let Them All Talk feels a lot like Soderbergh's Hong-Sangsoo film in that it never feels tethered to any type of finite conclusion, not having the same typical predetermined narrative crescendo, it feels free of any intrinsic constraints to traditional structure. Soderbergh's assured direction is welcoming and warm in the way his film grammar here uses montage and structural repetition. It is precise yet playful, with each characterization being well-written, distinct, and compelling as their own internal struggles are laid bare over the film's duration. The film lulls the viewer in with its sharp dialogue and understated comedy, like a welcoming embrace, only to deliver an understated and incisive commentary on the alienating agents of modernity. Many of the characters themselves are adrift, alone in one sense or another against the larger forces of the world. Much of this struggles of this story stem from a failure of communication and expression, it's a constant negotiation both externally and internally, as each character in one way or another attempts to be truly heard. Consciousness is a negotiation between the past and the present, death itself is truly the only finite conclusion. Until that point, the temporal plane of past moments and present experiences continuously scope our identities, with both our internal and external relationships being in a perpetual state of evolution. A film that is sly and subtle but far from slight.
Having not seen this film in years, I decided to re-visit the much-maligned fourth installment of the Alien Franchise. I remember Alien Resurrection being peculiar for the series and what stood out immediately was just how much Jeunet's sensibilities towards comedic moments of spontaneity don't coalesce with the Alien ethos. These choices make a unique film but they also impede Resurrection's efforts at dread-inducing atmospherics, as the film struggles to find a consistent rhythm when it comes to building a sense of underlying tension. The subtext is of course, interesting - a franchise metaphorically dealing with pregnancy and birth now leaps into the abortion arena. The treatment isn't ideal and borders on silly narratively, but I appreciate Jeunet's brazenness when it comes to pushing the franchise towards its next logical place for subtextual commentary. Overall, a film I've always found interesting, despite its obvious flaws, though this time around I struggled to detach myself as much from the fact that this film's mustard-soaked aesthetic is really ugly.
King Hu continues to astonish me with the way he captures interior spaces. The Fate of Lee Khan is another masterclass in dynamism, which through the use of kinetic editing and varied, distinctive camera set-ups transforms a singular space into an environment that is consistently revealing and then reinventing itself. Like Dragon Inn, this is a story rooted in collective action - there is no singular hero here but a consortium of individuals with a common goal. The Fate of Lee Khan is also structurally similar to Dragon Inn, yet it certainly differentiates itself in other ways, particularly its proclivities towards embracing the milieu intrinsic to espionage, as well as its "progressive ideas around gender. The story about a group of rebel spies, who are almost exclusively female, is a story of action. It never panders or condescends around the idea that these women have power. It is completely devoid and detached of gender normative ideas entirely, yet through the exhibition itself, the film provides an empowering display of egalitarian action.
Efficient and effective, Alone is an impeccably well-crafted, minimalist descent into horror that wisely never tries to be something it is not. Traversing familiar motifs of the horror genre such as 'woman in peril' and 'survival horror', Alone doesn't take the easy way out by attempting to expound any theme or message, it instead opts to largely regulate thematical elements to subtext, understanding that the mere exhibition of brutality in the name of survival itself provides ample opportunities for thematic engagement. Taut and immersive, Hyam remains an impressive and underappreciated genre filmmaker whose general cinematic language in Alone beautifully enunciates the understated tension and voyeurism of its premise with simple, yet effective visual constructions. The formal precision, particularly in the film's opening act - a cat-and-mouse game between our female protagonist and our male antagonist - is masterfully constructed, an uneasy display of negotiations and unease between two characters which leads to attempted subjugation, violence, and ultimately the primal nature of survival. While alone struggles to maintain the opening acts immersive atmosphere of unease, the film's back half of survival horror still delivers the goods, providing a lean-and-mean little thriller in which one woman suffering through grief and trauma finds herself forced to fight back, in order to survive
"The U.S. consulate is burning its cash. They're treating their money like garbage. But to us, this green paper money is worth dying for and killing for"
A prequel best understood as one in name only, with Tsui's revisionist framework masterfully grafting his Anarchist perspective onto Woo's Masculine Archetype. A compelling saga that deconstructs and re-contextualizing this character around a traumatic past, one which is personal yet universal - the perpetual state of violence brought by institutional power and the people caught in-between, their lives shifted and shaped by the subjugation brought by statist power. For Tsui, violence, and bloodshed is the perpetual state of man, with injustice plentiful, yet love itself remains the one place of solace from a cruel, unforgiving world. Henry King's The Gunfighter is a tightly paced exploration of mythmaking and social expectations, illuminating the insidious impact fame places on identity through its tale of a notorious gunfighter who is looking for a way out of his perpetual state of solitude and violence. Stately direction effectively lets the viewer soak in the frontier milieu, elucidating how social hierarchies are established through decentralized communication - gossip, hearsay - in which our chief protagonist has built up a reputation for being the most feared gun in the west. Played to perfection by Gregory Peck, who balances the character's coarse exterior with his understated longing, the lead protagonist is a character caught in a state of introspection, growing tired of his elevated status and the constant confrontations it welcomes, longing for the warmth and steady nature of domesticated life. The film's ability to exhibit how identity is sometimes framed by external forces as much as internal is a fascinating aspect, as Peck's Jimmy Ringo character is seemingly awakened to discover the hostility of his reputation, one which leads him to constantly have a bull's eye on his back, which practically guarantees he will never be at peace. Machismo's intrinsic solitude in opposition to the warm embrace of love is the thematic fulcrum of this story, personal success and the hierarchal weight it carries being ultimately an alienating force that leads to a tragic conclusion. Grade-A western by King, who himself is very underrated filmmaking in the great American genre..
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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