peter-209 Reviews

Russian Ark (2002)

A technical accomplishment all right...

[7/10 · 19 July 2004]

...but do we watch films for their technical accomplishments? The director of "Russian Ark" decided of his free will to put a severe technical limitation on his work - namely, as everyone knows by now, to shoot the whole film in one take. Of course, other artists work within the more-or-less self-imposed confines of their particular art: the filmmakers of the Dogme movement resigned from artificial lighting and sound; poets, at least the classical ones, imposed on themselves the rules of rhyme and rhythm; and let us not forget the people who make sailing ships in glass bottles as well as writers who write whole books without using the letter "e" (actually, I think it was just a short story and the writer was either Raymond Queneau or Georges Perec). Undoubtedly you can see that I am dragging the argument ad absurdum. It is ironic that the director Sokurov claimed that he did not want to be commended for technical accomplishment. Well, I think that the film could have been much better if it was made more traditionally - the inherent rhythm of the story, going through 22 different rooms and scenes, cannot be ignored even in the continuous take and Sokurov used some "dirty" tricks, such as black curtains covering the technical going-ons behind and zooming on a person's hands and gloves for no apparent artistic reason. And the film might even have been cheaper if filmed traditionally: there would be no need for thousands of extras and thousands of costumes - they could have been reused in different scenes. And obviously there would be no need for 22 assistant directors and hundreds of supporting

personnel, such as make-up, prop, or lighting people. After this criticism, I have to say that I still liked what I saw, mostly due to the opulent beauty of the production, an incredible camera work and the fluid surreal atmospere ("Russian Ark" is, after all, a sophisticated ghost story, is it not?). I only think that the 300 hundred years of Russian history deserved better: I would suggest a slightly more conventional technical approach and longer time - perhaps something like the 7 1/2 hour "Satantango" (1994) of Bela Tarr or the 9 1/2 hour "Shoah" (1985) of Claude Lanzmann...

100 Days Before the Command (1991)

Make-yourself-a-plot film kit in the vein of Tarkovsky or Sokurov

[10/10 · 28 August 2001]

This is, and I guess, will remain, an extremely underrated film. There is no chance that those of us who are just a little bit intellectually lazy will like it. The viewer's participation in creating (or re-creating) the plot is absolutely required, to an even higher extent than in Bertolucci's "Besieged". This short film consists of several disconnected vignettes from the life of the Red Army soldiers living, training, working - and let us not forget: washing themselves - on an army base. The country is deserted and the buildings are dilapidated, but everything is beautifully shot. The atmosphere is oneiric, the dreams and imaginations blend with the reality, thus resembling the works of the Master - Andrei Tarkovsky or the Disciple - Aleksander Sokurov. There is not much dialog, which leaves us on our own to interpret sometimes surrealistic happenings on the screen. As in many other soldier movies, the topic is the clash between individual's humanity and the inherent brutality of the system. The clash is treated very delicately, there is not a single scene of the direct physical violence in the movie. Yet, we witness - or infer, for that matter - hazing and several deaths on the camp. Although not an overly gay film, it is remarkably open in its homoerotic subtexts. In contrast, the scenes with direct nudity, like those in the showers or the pool, are devoid of eroticism. They are shot in a documentaristic style, but the beautiful sacral music of Johann Sebastian Bach gives them another meaning and elevates them to unanticipated heights. The film opens with a biblical motto and it is not a chance that the story of St. George battling the dragon appears twice in the movie. Another hint to a deeper meaning of the film is that two persons of the cast are named Death and Angel... As for the acting, there will be some that will not like it, but, incredibly, all the roles are played by real-life soldiers, except for one professional actor (guess which). Watching "Sto dnei do prikaza" (and I recommend to watch it multiple times ) is a strange, difficult, but rewarding experience.

Ecstasy of the Angels (1972)

A B movie in both genre and quality

[3/10 · 24 August 2001]

The film is a dated, incoherent, and pretentious rambling about fictional revolutionary, or rather quasi-revolutionary, terrorist group(s) in Tokyo in the sixties. Although there may be some resemblance to early Godard, Wakamatsu seems to be much less accomplished thinker, revolutionary, or craftsman than the French master of the New Wave. Notwithstanding the typically Asian overacting, all the persons in the "plot" act as detached mechanical puppets (perhaps intentionally?). They are not good in making either revolution or love. The frequent sex scenes were quite irritating not only because the participants recited quasi-political slogans, but also due to sometimes awkward choreography or cuts necessitated by the bizarre Japanese censorship law that does not allow a glimpse of pubic hair on the screen.

I wonder if the sign "WEAPON WEARHOUSE" on a weapon warehouse in the film is a joke for insiders or rather a testimony on the level of production values in this movie.

Ruzové sny (1977)

quirky poetics infiltrating reality or vice versa?

[9/10 · 16 May 2001]

The film is a worthy follow-up (or residue?) of the golden age of Czechoslovak cinema - the sixties. Quirky poetics infiltrates the reality of an adolescent love story between a postman and a Roma (Gypsy) girl in a small Slovak town. We also can consider it the opposite way - quirky reality infiltrates the poetics, since the scenes of the lovers' life together, after they escaped to the city, are a complete antithesis to their idealized relationship back home. The following is a possible SPOILER!!!, but it hardly matters in a lyrical film like this. It is the boldness of the director and the screenwriter that makes this film so great: the two romantically longing teens are actually given the opportunity to live together and share the mundane problems of finding work and a place to live, before they find out that their relationship cannot bear the burden of every-day life. The warm and charming film thus gets some tragic overtones towards the end, but our heroes cope quite well, unlike the young Werther... The portrayal of different lifestyles of Gypsies and gadjos (non-gypsies) is noteworthy in its realism - there does not seem to be an easy solution to that problem. In summary, Ruzove sny (1976) is a hidden gem of a film that deserves better - to my knowledge, it is not available on video even in its country of origin.

Last Night (I) (1998)

The question has been asked. What is YOUR answer?

[8/10 · 18 October 2000]

The movie is pretty refreshing. Although lighting made everything almost hyperrealistically flat and acting was quite detached, the film was strangely engaging. Obviously, every viewer had to ask: "What would I do when the world was to end?" I like McKellar both as an actor, a director and - foremost - as a writer. Without repeating descriptions of the film, which other reviewers have already done, I would like to report on three movie connections that occurred to me after watching "Last Night": Tarkovsky's "Sacrifice", Paskaljevic's "Cabaret Balkan" and Koreeda's "Afterlife". Do you feel the same - that all these films involve us, as individuals, in the end of the world, either in literal, metaphorical or subjective sense? All these films ask tough personal questions from their viewers. What is YOUR answer?

The Sacrifice (1986)

not a masterpiece at all

[4/10 · 11 October 2000]

I was very disappointed when I saw Offret the first time years ago. I wanted to check what time did to the film and to me, and so I rented the new DVD. Alas, the experience repeated itself. I was irritated by the slowness of both the camera and actors to the point that I watched almost the whole film on double speed (which I recommend to everyone; subtitles make sure you will follow the plot in the absence of sound). Tarkovskij is still my favorite director, I just wish he did not make this silly movie with pretentions all over. First, the plot. I learned from the documentary "Directed by Andrei Tarkovskij", included on the DVD, that the plot was concocted by putting two separate original screenplays together: one about the witch and another about the final war. With this knowledge it is easier to understand the resulting absurdity of the plot. Second, the characters' psychology. Well, there is none, but perhaps it was meant to be that way. Tarkovskij is not about psychology, he is after something else and much grander. His characters only are wooden puppets, moving on the set in somnambulic stupor to illustrate or convey the author's message, whatever it may have been. The director's dictatorial style is well shown in the mentioned documentary: he apparently seldom gave the actors freedom to enliven their performances with even small gestures. Third, visuals. Not impressive at all. The empty, bleak landscape was not exciting, although again - it was probably meant to be that way. Camera moved a lot, but slowly. There were no revealing angles or shots, with the exception of the dream sequences. In the documentary we most often saw the master cameraman Sven Nyquist standing along, while the director was sitting behind the camera... So what is all this about? Since I have been "trained" by the previous Tarkovskij's films, I guess, this film is, again, about an individual's responsibility for the state of the world. But in contrast with the early masterpieces Ivan's Childhood and Andrei Rublev, the message of active involvement is muddled here by imposition of too literal a threat of the world annihilation and the unforgivable introduction of the witch theme, which is - apart from other things - incongruent with Tarkovskij's religiosity. I am sorry that the director was carried away too far in his crusade against any kind of rationalism in the world of human affairs.

Pi (1998)

terrible disappointment

[3/10 · 6 October 2000]

I consider this film infinitely worse than "Eraserhead" or "Brazil" and slightly better than "The Blair Witch Project". Pretentious, shallow, pointless, its pseudoscience was laughable and the shock scenes mostly too. I do love conspiracy theories and the mystique of numbers, but instead of watching this film, I would rather read the book "The Bible Code" or selected stories of Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino and Arthur C. Clarke ("The Nine Billion Names of God"). I would also like to point out (is it just a coincidence?) the case of a blind boy in a recent Iranian film "Color of Paradise". Trained in Braille's writing system for the blind, in which letters are represented by a pattern of bumps, the boy "read" wheat in the field and grains of sand on the beach. Of course, "Color of Paradise" belongs to a completely different genre category, but one cannot escape the conclusion that it conveys the mystique underlying the real world in a beautiful, poetic and empathic manner, ultimately much more effectively than the "Pi".

Fando and Lis (1968)

cheap and disappointing film

[3/10 · 29 September 2000]

The accompanying documentary (on DVD) was much better than the film itself. I found that watching Fando and Lis with Jodorowsky's commentary in the background added tremendously to my viewing experience since it successfully detracted from incoherent and amateurish images and story line of the film. In the commentary, the author describes his idiosyncratic philosophy of life, art and everything, including making of this movie. Unfortunately, I disagree with Jodorowsky, and perhaps with Freud himself, about the deprived nature of our inner self. The film itself is boring and cannot be compared to surrealist masterpieces of Bunuel, Lynch or early Chytilova.

Few of Us (1996)

I still do not know what I saw in the cinema that evening

[9/10 · 28 February 2000]

I had had no idea what I was going to see when I was entering the cinema and I still do not know what I saw there that evening. I cannot say it was a shock because shock is brutal and fast, whereas this film is brutal all right, but very slow. The story, if there is any at all, takes place somewhere in the Siberian woods, apparently in our times (there is a helicopter in the beginning and the end). I am not sure only because of the abysmal living conditions in the village which is visited by a young female from the civilization. It is not clear what the purpose of her visit was: was she a social worker, an exiled person, an ethnographer, a natural scientist? The lack of dialogue is not very helpful for analysis of the film on the rational level. Despite of - or perhaps because of - the detached documentary-like style, the emotional impact of the film is great. It appears that many characters, perhaps all the villagers, were played by non-actors. I would really like to know how much of the film was a documentary and how much was scripted and rehearsed. The main message that I took home from the viewing is that not all the savages are noble, that poverty, suffering and "the closeness to nature" does not help one's soul or improve one's character. The drunk and disfigured characters in this film are in a contrast with the people depicted in, e.g., Kurosawa's "Dersu Uzala" or Mikhalkov's "Urga" (aka "Close to Eden"). Rather, they remind me of the highlanders in Boorman's "Deliverance".

After Life (1998)

Great idea, perfectly executed

[9/10 · 10 February 2000]

Great idea, perfectly executed with both actors and non-actors. The style and atmosphere of the film is superb, occasionally bringing up recollections of Andrei Tarkovsky. Similar idea was literally exploited in 1994 by Giuseppe Tornatore in "A Pure Formality", but the latter's sylization into the form of a crime thriller and its overall pretentiousness makes it much less satisfactory than "Wandafuru raifu". I only regret that the Japanese film received a very inappropriate English title. Its story, after all, is not about the AFTERLIFE, but about the WONDERFUL LIFE itself.

eXistenZ (1999)

extremely disappointing

[3/10 · 17 December 1999]

Undoubtedly the worst Cronenberg so far. No comparison to such masterpieces as The Naked Lunch, Dead Zone or Videodrome. The film provides absolutely nothing new about the duality of reality/nonreality, perhaps except the ridiculous notion that the best way to plug your brain is through a hole close to your anus. The battle scene at the end looks terribly cartoonish, but maybe it was supposed to...? The talents of the fine actors Leigh, Dafoe and Holm were utterly wasted. The only performance that caught my attention was that of Don McKellar who acquired a perfect Russian accent.

This film has been compared to The Matrix. Although the latter has its flaws, it at least gives you thrills and perfect visual effects. Do not waste your time with eXistenZ, rather watch The Matrix again!

Bethune: The Making of a Hero (1990)

lost chance

[9 October 1999]

The life and times of Norman Bethune represent the stuff great epic movies are made of. Unfortunately, the creators of this film missed the opportunity and spoiled everything they could. The time line is unnecessarily disordered, psychology and camera unengaging, props are fake (e.g. brand new uniforms of the Chinese soldiers). I do not comment about the politics or ideology of the film, but as art, it is overwhelmingly disappointing.

Romance pro kridlovku (1967)

a film poetry based on the written poetry

[10/10 · 22 August 1999]

There probably are not many movies whose screenplay is written by a poet based on his own poem. Well, this is the case. Frankly, I would never expect Mr. Vavra, who is best known for his historical epic on the Husite uprising in Bohemia and for some socialist realism before and after that, to make a film like this. The movie is extremely poetic, but at the same time, the visuals are firmly grounded in reality and the buzzing of insects in the outdoors is omnipresent. The plot is simple: a student is spending a summer back in his home village, taking care of his grandfather on his deathbed while dealing with his own "growing up". The movie allegedly contains the most erotic scene in Czechoslovak cinema - when the youngster watches a woman bathing in the river.

The title translates into English as "A Romance for Fluegelhorn". Ever since I saw the film for the first time, I have liked that instrument.

The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1962)

please, make it available

[9/10 · 22 August 1999]

Karel Zeman was a genius if visual artistry. His playful use of 19th century engravings in a live-action movie is so original and it works so well. Everybody who praises the Gilliam's Munchhausen should hold the judgement until he sees this Munchhausen. If anybody from the video industry watches this database, please make this movie available at least on VHS. And once you are at it, I would add two more Zeman's films that are made with the same charm, technical wizardry, nostalgia and artistic vision: Vynalez zkazy (1958) ("The invention of Destruction" in English) and Blaznova kronika (1963) ("The Fools' Chronicles"). In the chronological order, I consider the three films a loose trilogy that uses the esthetics of the 19th, 18th, and 17th century, respectively, to study the timeless human situation.

Close to Eden (1991)

one of the few films that makes me believe in humanity

[10/10 · 6 August 1999]

One of the best films I know: beautiful, pensive, playful, realistic, poetic, humane, up-lifting. In the barrage of trash, one of the few films that makes me believe in humanity. I love this film so much that I arranged home projections for my friends several times. With all the up beat that I am mentioning, it is very open and truthful. Where in an American movie could you see an on-screen slaughter of a real lamb? And it was not ugly or gory at all! On the contrary, it was very decent and sensitive, teaching us respect for Nature.

And another little point. Has anybody noticed the inconspicuous little voice-over at the end which essentially makes "Urga" science fiction?!

Cabeza de Vaca (1991)

Spectacular visuals lend the film the power of myth

[9/10 · 6 August 1999]

One chapter of the conquista - the subjugation of the Native American peoples by Europeans. We follow Alvaro Nunez Cabeza de Vaca's adventures and misadventures in the New World from a crash landing of his ship through his saving and capture by the Indians, his forced immersion into the Indian culture, his almost mystical pilgrimage from Florida through the American Southwest to California (or was it Mexico?), up to the bitter end at the hands of his European compatriots. Spectacular visuals lend the film the power of myth, but this is still more realistic depiction of the tragic clash of the cultures in the 16th century America than all the Hollywood productions, including Roland Joffe's "The Mission (1986)" (which, by the way, I do like). The only feature film with this topic that I consider equal, or perhaps even superior, is "Jerico (1988)" made by a Venezuelan ethnography professor Luis Alberto Lamata.

Sweetie (1989)

quirky psychoanalysis of two sisters

[6 August 1999]

Quite a dark film that seems to lack the catharsis (or uplifting tones) of the later Campion's films. The film concentrates on psychological problems of Kay, strange, detached young women which, seemingly calm and shy, is able to shamelessly steal a just-engaged man from his fiancee. Kay's life with the boyfriend, however, turns out to be far from happy. What does she want? We do not know that until her younger sister Dawn, aka Sweetie, appears on the scene almost halfway through the film. Dawn has apparently been a spoiled baby in the family. The father even now speaks about her "talents", although he too must see that, in reality, she is a mentally handicapped person whose intellectual and emotional development has been arrested at the level of a 4-year old. Sometimes she is charming, sometimes threatening, but, most importantly, she is uninhibited and free (among other things, free to act on her whims). With the arrival of Dawn, Kay's great animosity towards her sister is immediately apparent. Instead of help and compassion of a "normal" older sister she only offers criticism and open hatred. Little by little we find what Kay wants: she wants to be Dawn. She wants to lose her repressions, she wants to be loved, admired and always forgiven, no matter what she does. Deep psychological analysis of abnormal relations between sisters reminds me of some Ingmar Bergman's works although "Sweetie" does not have the nordic broodiness.

Blade Runner (1982)

a powerful positive message

[10/10 · 6 August 1999]

I like it when an artist has enough skill, knowledge and power to create a world. A world that is connected with that of ours by occasional worm-hole links, but otherwise is fully independent - with its own history, logic, technology, psychology, ethics, and esthetics, all described in minute details. Borges, Dick and Lem come to the mind as examples... and now, Ridley Scott.

Despite the outlandishness of the Blade Runner's world, there is one very strong link that connects it to our world, and it is its humanity. With all its violence and horror, the end of the film transmits a powerful positive message: we only can attain freedom through compassion and understanding.

Together with 2001:Space Odyssey, I consider this THE best science-fiction film and one of the best films, period.

New Tenant (1995)

Includes time travel, ghosts, cannibalism, and mental patients.

[1/10 · 5 August 1999]

The plot of this bizarre film includes time travel, ghosts, cannibalism, and mental patients. Its low-budget approach to production is reminiscent of early Cronenberg and the title is an obvious reference to the Polanski's Tenant (Le Locataire (1976)). Unfortunately, due to poor screenplay and theatrical overacting, often found in Asian films, the final product is much inferior to the work of the both predecessors mentioned above. At times, the film made me laugh and I am not sure if that was the authors' intent.