Monthly Archives: February 2020

The Balloon (Yuzo Kawashima,

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baloon-kawashima-poster-2-e1582412968918 (1)There´s a lovely review of The Balloon by Hayley Scanlon that well conveys the plot and main themes of the film and can be accessed here so I won´t linger much over those aspects. I do want to underline how moving and beautiful I find The Balloon to be. It´s a film that grows on you. There´s nothing formally inventive that sweeps one off one´s feet. Yet this is closely observed work on social mores in postwar Japan, beautifully structured and tightly plotted. The film is built around a series of oppositions: The national vs the foreign, the modern vs the traditional, Tokyo-Kyoto, art vs commerce, rich-poor,-men-women, home vs nightclubs, respectable women and women living on the margins, two sets of siblings (brother and sister), two mistresses (one a kind widow, the other a worldly and cynical showbiz adventuress), two patriarchs — our hero who knows who he is, and his double but opposite, who´s like a balloon, going where the wind takes him, and changing his views depending on what´s convenient.

Yuzo Kawashima is generous and open hearted. Everyone has their reasons. But this does not mean he does not judge. Rich young men who think all women are whores, who seem to have no empathy, and think everything is a  transaction are shown in a bad light. as are cynical young women who want to be stars and think nothing of destroying others for sport. But the film understands even as it condemns. What´s especially lovely in The Balloon is the way the film sides with those women who are most fragile and most vulnerable. Money´s important but it´s not everything and at the end father and daughter find happiness in a smaller city, with parks, poorer but gentler people, and traditional culture. It does not feel as conservative as it sounds.

It´s telling that the film made my fingers itch to capture so many images but it was really to covey dialogue rather than visuals (though those are very nice and work very well too.

With Hiroshi Nihonyanagi, Masayuki Mori, Tatsuya Mihashi, Izumi Ashikawa, Michiyo Aratama, Mie Kitahara, Sachiko Hidari).

Till We Meet Again (Yuzo Kawashima, Japan, 1955)

 

I´m quickly becoming enthralled by Yuzo Kawshima´s portraits of social mores in post-war Japan. In Till We Meet Again, the problem is  the confrontation of divorce with patriarchy: ‘men only want to treat women as pets’ says Yachijo (Yumeji Tsukioka) to her father Kaji (So Yamamura). Kaji has been ignoring his wife Shigeno (Fukuko Sayo) since they got married. She´s taken refuge in her cat. Kaji himself has rescued a girl, Kyoko (Michiyo Aratama) from the red light district and set her up in a boutique: she´s in love with him but it´s not reciprocatedl His daughter Yachigo is unhappily married to Kappei (Tatsuya Mihashi) and she´s soon falling in love with a bumbling scientist she met on the train, Sone (Rentaro Mikuni).  Meanwhile Kappei himself will meet and fall in love with Kyoko. It´s a sexual roundelay shot  as a chamber-piece with modernity as a backdrop.

So far, so typical of 1950s melodramas. As you can see in the sub-titles of the images below, the phrases are stock ones we´ve seen and heard and been witness to dramatisations of all of our lives:

 

But it´s the treatment of these, the way they speak of modernity, westernisation, individual fulfilment against social conscription, the very idea that happiness matters, that is so beautifully realised here. The shots are all small scale, intimate, the camera holding characters against a background like in a trance as couples form, re-form, as individuals struggle between personal desires and social constraints, all done low-key, restrained, not contained, articulated but in a gentle fashion. All these characters want is to have someone to talk to and pierce through the isolation coupledom has enchained them in, to share, to be themselves, to be valued. The patriarch, who has always done what he wants, finds these concerns bewildering and unfathomable. But the younger generation will act on their desires, in a gentle way. I love the attention to detail in Kawashima´s films, the slow revelations, how they´re  feminist but tactful in their critiques. This is a lovely film and very moving.

Modernity vs Tradition:

José Arroyo

In Conversation with Finn Jackson Ballard

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I´m a teacher. Few things make me happier than to see students doing well after graduation. And it positively gladdened my heart to see the life that Finn Jackson Ballard has made for himself in Berlin: a PhD in Film Studies, a historian of Berlin queer cultures of the last century with a focus on the Weimar period, a tour guide non-pareil, now himself a teacher and Lecturer. I first met Finn when he was Eimear: brilliant, soft-spoken, brave; mindful of the ways she spoke and conscious of the various effects speech might have on others.  I remember meeting Eimear for coffee when she first told me she was transitioning and feeling somewhat like my mother when I first came out to her: I foresaw trouble, danger, possibly a gory death in some ditch. Unlike my mother, I did not say this, and tried to find a way to be supportive but careful. Had she thought everything through? She had.

There´s a wonderful moment in Almodóvar´s All About My Mother where Agrado, a trans person played by Antonia San Juan, gets on stage and tells the audience how much her various body parts had cost. Most of what makes her ‘her’ is artificial. But she ends by saying that one is most authentic, most true to oneself, the closer one gets to the person they imagined themselves to be. It´s telling that a gentle man, a man who is gentle, is Finn´s choice.

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The podcast below took place in Finn´s apartment in Berlin, late-night, with his dogs sprawled around us, occasionally biting on some squeaky toy. I´ve wanted to keep the atmosphere, the flow, the ways conversation reveals as it meanders so I´ve not cut anything.

Like many people my age, I feel a bit at sea on trans issues. I want to be helpful but know I also need to change entrenched ways of thinking: to be better informed. We all need to be really, and few people are as knowledgeable and articulate on the issue as Finn.

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In the podcast (below, at the bottom) we talk about adolescence and being disassociated from one´s body; hormones, chest surgery, the processes involved in getting closer to the idea of who one wants to be; screenings, psychological evaluations; how it´s a bit like going through puberty again, looking in the mirror constantly to spot gradual changes; how life became easier once people saw him as a man rather than as a trans person; how privileged he feels at having an experience and insight into how it is to live as a woman; how more comfortable he feels with the effeminate rather than feminine. We talk of Northern Ireland and Berlin; we reflect on gender, how theory enable ways of being; how history helps to develop those ideas; the importance of ‘ancestors’; and much more.

Listening back, I´m even more appreciative of his kindness, his knowledge, his openness, his sense of adventure, the lilting accent, the way his answers to my questions are both free-flowing and thought through, precise. We can all learn a lot from Finn. I certainly did.

José Arroyo

 

 

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 215 – Queen & Slim

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Listen on the players above, on Apple Podcasts, or on Spotify.

An assured debut feature from director Melina Matsoukas, Queen & Slim is a romantic, fugitive road movie with a state-of-the-nation feel. After an awkward first date, a traffic stop escalates out of hand, resulting in one dead police officer, shot in self defence, and two black civilians on the run. Their escape sees them take a tour through Ohio, Kentucky, Louisiana and Florida, their public profile growing, their actions inspiring both admiration and dismay amongst those they encounter.

It’s a confidently made film, evocative of a bygone era though set in the modern day, slow and tonally adept, with two wonderful performances from Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith. We discuss whether it’s a noir and Turner-Smith’s unwitting femme fatale, the characters’ changes of costume, the way in which a variety of music expresses different elements of black culture with the effect of unifying them, the details and suggestions that build a holistic, believable world, what effect the reveal of the characters’ names has, and what significance faith might play.

Queen & Slim is a beautiful film that effortlessly expresses the struggles and oppressions of black Americans within a set of smoothly combined genres. It’s a true original, and a great experience.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

A Brief Note on High Life (Claire Denis, 2018)

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A film I´ve only seen once and yet to fully figure out.  But I am already entranced by it and convinced of its greatness. It´s not ‘entertaining’ in a traditional sense. It´s dour, and harsh, sexy and tender, with moments of harrowing violence and many instances of sexual violation, some by women towards men. It´s a complex movie. And beautiful: amber lights reflected on space-ship helmets designed to show as much of Robert Pattinson´s face as possible, the luminous greens of a garden inside a spaceship that seems an Eden, keeps everyone alive but hides dead bodies.

Denis makes a space movie like no other I´ve seen. The spaceship here is not a phallic cock triumphantly piercing through the atmosphere and into space but a box, rusty, like a jail, which is kind of what it is. The ship houses convicts who were given the choice of life sentence on earth or a mission into space, one which would take several generations to succeed, so reproduction is necessary. The spaceship has a fuck box were inmates go to relief their sexual frustrations but which also gathers sperm that women are then forcibly inseminated with.

 

Monte (Robert Pattinson) is the only one who chooses to remain celibate but Dibs, the doctor played by Juliette Binoche, has sex with him whilst he´s sleeping and forcibly implants the sperm he´s left in her on a younger woman. Finally, after many failed attempts, a baby is born in the ship, and Dibs tells Monte it´s his.

Conceptually the film is fascinating. The ship is a jail. News from earth keeps arriving in soundbites, faded images of Native Americans dying in early Westerns, news that is no longer relevant. Life on board is always on  24 hour notice. If the daily log isn´t filed nightly, the ship shuts down and with it the food and energy necessary for survival. Moreover, the ship is heading towards a black hole and previous attempts to change direction have failed. Will Monte and his daughter succeed when they try again at the end? We don´t know.

It´s a film to think about a whole lot more but what remains vivid at present is Pattinson´s performance, so reticent, recessive even, but conveying a hurt, a shying away from society, yet power too — he´s muscly and built– and capable of great tenderness with the child. He reminded me of that famous ´L’enfant’ poster but one imbued with a more complex character and motivation, less syrupy.  The look of the film is astonishing also, with haunting poetic imagery, imaginatively composed, and expressively coloured. It´s not an easy watch. But it´s a great film, mysterious and complex, one to see again and think about some more.

 

José Arroyo

Anna (Luc Besson, 2019)

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Anna is the perfect ´too-tired-to-think´film. It´s about a victim of domestic abuse (Sasha Luss) recruited by Alex (Luke Evans) and trained to be a spy. She´s put in the service of the ornery Olga (Helen Mirren) who runs the elite section and is trained to kill. But is she working for the KGB or for the CIA? Anna has affairs with KGB Alex and CIA Leonard (Cillian Murphy) whilst simultaneously pretending to be in love with a glamorous super-model, Nika (Anna Krippa) as a front to keep the rest of the men away. All want to tie her down in some way, none will let her be free. The story the film begins to tell is constantly reframed by flashbacks showing what really happened. But really who cares? It´s beautiful people having sex in glamorous settings with lots of shoot-outs in between. One can knit, glance occasionally at the tv for the kiss-kiss bang-bang and be certain one hasn´t missed anything. Even Helen Mirren´s performance, a fun showstopper, doesnt´t add up to more than a collection of clichés collated for effects (though, rather like Anna herself, they rarely miss their mark.

The film has obvious connections with Besson´s earlier La femme Nikita (1990) .There could be a chapter on Angel A (2005) and The Fifth Element (1997), tying in a sci-fi strand, another on historical figures like The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999) and The Lady (2011) , and yet another on the bande desinée adaptations like The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc Sec (2010) and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)

Besson is arguably the key-figure of the  French ‘cinema de look’ films from the 80s. And the pleasures of those films – not to be underestimated — remain the pleasures of these.

Anna is showing on Amazon Prime, Lucy (2014)and The Family (2013), with Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert De Niro are on Netflix. They´re different kinds of trashy, and each fun in its own way if one doesn´t demand or require too much of movies.

 

José Arroyo

Bob Le Flambeur (Jean-Pierre Melville, France, 1956)

 

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An achingly romantic and effortlessly cool gangster film. A voice-over narration at the beginning leads us into a world of night just before the dawn, that moment where the night is over, the nightclubs close, the prostitutes go get a bite to eat on their way home, and cleaning ladies, already late, race to work. Some people have jobs, some people don’t have a bed to sleep in and must improvise, perhaps with a willing American sailor. On one side is the heaven represented by the Sacre Coeur church, on the other, the hell which is for some also a little bit of heaven, represented by the neon lights and easy sex of Pigalle, where Bob lives, with a wonderful view of the Sacre Coeur from his living room window, a metaphor for the film as a whole.

We see nightclubs, with drinking, dancing and gambling. We hear jazz. Sex is sold to get by, but in an easy way, without the film getting all judgmental about it; which is not to say that the film offers no judgment. The lower depths has its own ethics. About the worst thing you can be is a squealer or a pimp. But the film complicates even this: you can squeal without knowing it. Being a pimp doesn’t mean a girl won’t have sex with you for fun or even marry you later, after you quit the profession, and sure to ruin your life just as you ruined so many before.

Diagonals:

Bob le flambeur seems to take place in a liminal world of complex relations that call on the past, on many lives already lived and unknowable except to those who lived them: on bonds of obligations — and affections — where betrayal in some is as certain as loyalty in others. It’s a film of romantic attitudes, of stances not very cool boys would like to aspire to, of sex and death and jazz. The links between this film, Le Samourai and Un Flic are direct: the underworld, the jazz, the nightclubs, the solitude, the elective affinities, the love that kills and the more solid affections that last…at least before the final shootout.

The film has a wonderful sense of place, of mood, of compulsion, and feelings that are understated but strongly felt. If the story is about the acceptance of existential ache, the way it’s told is formally dazzling and playful: the irises in and out, cutting through vertical or horizontal wipes, a jump cut, beautiful purposeful camera movement, and lighting that shimmers. It’s like the past and present of film technique effortlessly deployed in the service of the story. One notices how many of the camera set ups are on precise diagonals. It’s telling that the most extreme and beautiful close-ups in the film are at the very moment of unwitting betrayal that sparks the denouement (see above). It’s a film I never tire of, currently on MUBI.

With Roger Duchesne as Bob, Isabelle Corey as the young woman on her cups, Guy Decomble, the impatient schoolteacher in 400 Blows, plays a police inspector friends with and possibly indebted to Bob. The music is by Eddie Barclay and Jo Boyer and the great cinematography is by one of the greats, Henri Decae.

 

José Arroyo

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 214 – American Factory

Listen on the players above, on Apple Podcasts, or on Spotify.

The latest winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar’s American Factory is a complex and brilliant examination of a clash of cultures and management styles and the diminishment of a class of workers having to grovel for jobs they cannot do without.

In 2014, the recently closed GM factory in Moraine, Ohio, was acquired and reopened by Fuyao Glass, a Chinese company; many of the former GM employees, often out of regular work since the closure in 2008, would occupy new jobs there. While the film depicts clashes between the Moraine locals and the Chinese employees flown in to supervise them, it also ensures that it doesn’t accept any indulgence in xenophobia, instead showing employees of both nationalities spending leisure time together and getting along. The film is less interested in moderating the clash between the Chinese and American supervisors – a trip to a Chinese plant, intended to show the Americans how things should be done, with robotic employees, militaristic roll calls and company songs, long hours, hardly any days off, non-existent safety standards and a focus on quantity of production over quality, is met with raised eyebrows by all but one conspicuously enthusiastic visitor. That those unconvinced bosses are eventually replaced by more Chinese overseers is no surprise – nor is it a surprise that a bubbling movement to unionise the Moraine workers is suppressed by an appeasing extra couple of dollars of pay – that still keeps salaries at half of what they’d been at GM – and an expensive propaganda campaign that successfully scares most of the employees into voting against unionisation.

There’s a vast amount going on in this concise and potent film, and Reichert and Bognar work magic to marshal a sprawling web of people, plots and themes, and to allow the workers to narrate their own story smoothly and with little outside help (just a few lines of superimposed text here and there). It’s available on Netflix, and you should not miss out on it.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

A Note on The Host (Bong Joon-Ho,South Korea, 2006)

Two thoughts on watching The Host, currently on MUBI: the first is that the film is unimaginable before digital both in terms of its aesthetic and in terms of its country of origin, or more precisely put, no small national cinema could have afforded such sheen, such beautifully realised f/x on a monster movie previous to digital. Of course the Godzilla phenomenon is proof that these films were made, and often more successfully made, outside Hollywood. However, part of the charm of watching those old films is the creakyness, the way that imagination often had to compensate for lack of means. I´m sure compromises were made on what could be shown in The Host . One could see them: the way the monster is often seen only partially, how much of the eating of people and so on happens offscreen, or behind things, or inside trailers shot from outside, etc. Economies were clearly made. But economies are made in every film. And this one seems to me fully realised.

In The Host one is dazzled by skill. The look of the opening sequences in the lab, the way the light hits on chrome as we´re told that chemicals are being dumped into the river by Americans with the Korean scientist having no option but to comply. Then the scenes on the river as a person goes to commit suicide, the people chasing him, his look downwards as he detects a shape. It´s not just that we get all the information and feel the tension. Look at how expressive the shot of the two fishermen below is, the city in the background, in a fog, the vast expanse of river, the two vulerable and unware fishermen discovering something. The compositions are so clever and expressive, the colour grading just right. It looks beautiful.

But the look is only one aspect. Listen to the sound design, note how the sound disappears or is altered in relation to moments of tension. Note also the structure of of the film, how it begins in a lab with Americans, how it´s resolved on TV but with our remaining protagonists too concerned with their meal to care about the larger issues.

The story is told with great intelligence, Bong Joon-Ho focuses all of the narrative on a working-class family who live off a convenience shop by the beach. And as in Parasite, we are shown how their are families even worse off than they. Am I wrong in thinking that so much of American horror focusses on the middle class, sometimes even on scientists who instigate or try to resolve the problem? It´s nice to see working-class people at the centre, embodying and speaking a nation and a dilemma. Themes of class, gender, the environment, an inept South Korean government and oppressive US imperialism are woven in throughout the film.

Aside from being smart, the film is also witty, and on various levels, not just dialogue or situation but visually also. See the still below where the monster rampages through the park and leaps onto the river and we get the contrast between the twee ducks and dolphins and the rampaging mutant squid that´s about to devour everything.

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The intelligence, the know-how, the though in relation to sounds and images, makes one realise how little we settle for in cinema. If we were more sophisticated viewers we´d appreciate that 90% of the time we´re watching the visual equivalent of Harold Robbins or virtue tracks by a provincial preacher who knows very little of the world and even less of how to express it. This film is on  completely different level altogether, and with all of the coronavirus coverage on the news, more timely than ever. .

 

Lovely also to see Bae Doona of Sense8 fame as a champion archer in an early role.

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José Arroyo

 

 

 

 

 

Our Town (Yuzo Kawashima, Japan, 1956)

Japanese cinema seems an inexhaustible treasure-trove. This is from the opening of Yuzo Kawashima´s poignant and funny Our Town (1956), currently on MUBIScreenshot 2020-02-21 at 17.46.13

A quick observation on Mother (2009, Bong Joon-Ho, South Korea)

I loved Parasite and have posted much on the film, from the significance of the rock, the income gap, the noodles, its relation to the issue of postcolonialism, etc. We´ve even done a podcast. It´s a very rich film. But it also feels like it lacks mystery. That everything in the film is not only interpretable but explainable. That everything has been encoded to clearly extract. That´s great. But it also feels a lack. Nothing in the film has the giddy, quirky, entrancing and mysterious joy of Kim Hye-Ja as the mother dancing to that fabulous and foreign (Spanish? Cuban? I´ve heard it´s flamenco but it doesn´t quite sound like the flamenco I know) music which ends and starts Mother. Just a thought (and some images):

José Arroyo

An Image of John Garfield in The Breaking Point

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John Garfield in The Breaking Point, Ted McCord´s pin light hitting a bullseye on Garfield´s tear, for Curtiz

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Eavesdropping at the Movies: 213 – The Lighthouse

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Listen on the players above, on Apple Podcasts, or on Spotify.

Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse, a tale of two lighthouse keepers stranded during a storm, is a visual treat in black and white that stuns and engrosses us. A two-hander between Willem Dafoe’s irascible boss and Robert Pattinson’s secretive youngster, it invokes myth, gods, folk tales, the clash of male egos, compulsive psychosexuality, if not much, much more besides.

If its plot is simple, its story is complex, and we think our way through its characters’ personalities, wants, needs, and psychologies. José asks if the film is gothic, and we discuss the boss’s treatment of his assistant: is it just controlling, or abusive? Extraordinary imagery of mermaids, monsters, and gods suffuses the film with inescapable surreality and the turbulent minds of men overburdened with ego and sexual need. Eggers has an assured, confident sense of tone, layering the film with mood and atmosphere, making its remote island a pressure cooker.

The Lighthouse is a spectacular film, an audiovisual treat that you should not miss at the cinema. Its imagery is poetic, its characters complex – in its entirety, it is confusing but approachable, symbolic but not coded, allowing room for interpretation and emotional response. It’s brilliant.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

 

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 212 – Parasite

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Listen on the players above, on Apple Podcasts, or on Spotify.

It’s one of José’s films of the year; it leaves Mike cold. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite depicts social inequality in South Korea through a lower-class family that cons its way into working for an upper-class family. We pick our way through the film’s structure; its motif of staircases that delineate status and power relations; the way poverty carries with it an inescapable smell, intolerable to the upper class; the two families’ experiences of nature and the desire for sunshine.

It builds on some aspects of horror, but cannot at all be considered one, either in genre or affect – though the fact that its trailers sold it as such might have something to do with Mike’s frosty response. It’s an allegorical thriller, every character standing in place of a class or group of people, and its construction is intelligent, thoughtful and tight. For José, it works on a visceral level, the mood and tone emphasising and combining with the structure and metaphor; for Mike, it’s a flat experience, a clever essay with definite interpretations and little feeling.

But it’s clearly touched a nerve, connecting with worldwide audiences. It speaks not just to conditions in South Korea but a global system of oppression and inequality under capitalism. We may not agree on what it makes us feel, but it’s potent food for thought and offers much to discuss. Don’t miss it.

Also in this episode, we take a look at the upcoming Oscars, which eager cinephiles will be able to watch yesterday.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 211 – Birds of Prey

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Listen on the players above, on Apple Podcasts, or on Spotify.

Trying to build a portrait of patriarchal power and subjugation that shapes the lives of five women, Birds of Prey takes a solid enough foundation and executes it abysmally, lacking visual style, coherent storytelling, and really any imagination. It’s the worst time José’s endured at the cinema in a year; Mike heroically offers a couple of examples of moments he enjoyed – the flying sandwich – but there’s no rescuing these damsels in distress.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.