mcfloodhorse Reviews

Where Is the Friend's House? (1987)

intuitive morality

[9/10 · 1 March 2011]

From the very first sequence in the film until the last, we're shown how the great chasm of misunderstanding existing between children and adults is a universally identifiable allegory.

Our miniature hero runs unheard and unseen through the labyrinthine streets of an old nearby village trying to return his classmate's homework notepad, which he accidentally took himself. The problem is, without it, his friend can't complete his homework and thus risks being expelled from school.

In his quest to find his friend, he encounters several unconcerned adults and a general lack of understanding of the profundity of his mission. The list is a long and winding psychological path mirroring the maze-like passages of the ancient villages...

-His mom seems unable to hear or understand his explanation of the problem -The residents in the nearby village he seeks are oblivious to the seriousness of his mission and of little help - His grandfather is callously concerned with instilling discipline by giving absurd orders instead of offering assistance in his time of need -The iron-door salesman rudely rips a page from the all-important notepad and nearly takes off with it himself -The amiable old blacksmith, though well-meaning, fails to understand the urgency of the boy's mission and out of politeness is placated at the expense of finding the friend's house.

When our little hero runs up the zig-zag hill for a second time to try and find his classmate, we're left in awe at the great lengths to which he's willing to right a wrong, no matter how trivial it is to the ignorant adult world. His sense of responsibility toward his fellow classmate is a small epiphany in a strict moral world of big "truths".

As night falls on the neighboring village, our hero returns home having failed in his quest to deliver the notepad, but not in his obligation to his friend. As the wind blows hard outside his home, he makes a choice to stay up and do the homework again.

Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (2010)

Eye on the Taiga

[8/10 · 15 November 2010]

Solid and straightforward illumination of the ways in which a few fur-trappers live and work year-round in the Siberian Taiga.

Starting in Spring, we follow the stoic men on their seasonal routines in the village of Bakhtia on the Yenisei river. The utterly unique sight and sound of that big old river thawing and moving and creaking under the warm sun is totally sublime. With the onset of summer, the villagers participate in a fishing frenzy while fending off massive swarms of mosquitoes by rubbing tar all over themselves, their kids and their dogs. As autumn brings torrential rains, the water level rises and the trappers anxiously begin boating their heavy supplies into the vast forest. They begin repairing their traditional traps scattered throughout the expanse while re-constructing their personal wooden huts, which they will use as shelters along their treks through the deep snow.

Other than one hilarious moment showing an alternatively modern fishing method, most all preparations for the long and lonely winter of work in the wilderness are performed according to very old cultural traditions. The simple and skilled construction of skis, traps, canoes, and huts from natural materials is shown with a patient fascination that draws us into a culture uniquely connected to the earth.

Herzog's narration adds insight and a quirky humor to this otherwise forthright film. His patent deadpan humor -- largely deriving in his over-enunciated German accent -- and his honest admiration of these self-reliant men living off the land in total freedom from materialism and bureaucracy is refreshing, even if a bit romanticized.

Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

breaking the wave

[10/10 · 27 February 2009]

Rocking the cinema several years after the French New Wave and its deconstructivist approach to established film syntax, "Bonnie and Clyde" isn't so much an experiment in iconoclasm as it is a post-modern (re-)construction of the gangster film as a true American folktale fantasy. The existential vacuousness pervading the Nouvelle Vague finds renewed expression in the eerily empty landscapes and towns, in Clyde's charismatic ambivalence toward crime, and in Bonnie's charmingly fatalist poetry.

Yet Arthur Penn wisely replaces French frivolousness with the profound tension and despair of Depression-era dilapidation. Although it's a damn funny film, all the laughs are constrained by a sense of impending doom. Seeing Clyde hand his gun over to a pair of oldtimers so they can shoot at their now repossessed home they themselves built, acts as a snapshot of the titular characters' exploits: briefly gratifying, enduringly defiant, but essentially futile.

Havoc in Heaven (1961)

Healthy dose of Chinese Anarchism

[8/10 · 11 December 2008]

A goofy and great animated film about an anarchic Monkey King -- Sun Wukong -- who spends his days playfully directing millions of monkey children in martial arts training and bouncing around the beautiful waterfall forest they inhabit. After twice being deceptively lured into heaven by the Jade Emperor, so that he may be controlled and watched over, the Monkey King begins dismantling the Confucian hierarchies around (and above) him. Using spontaneous, creative, and subversive magic the Monkey King consistently undermines the Jade Emperor and his many minions and henchmen.

It's full of colorfully wild sequences replete with animal transformations, hilarious caricatures of military/political leaders, and jubilant, drunken rambunctiousness. The version I saw -- with English storytelling-narration leaving the Chinese dialog in its original Mandarin -- goes on forever. And the Chinese-opera styled music is a bit overwhelming at times. But the offbeat comic timing, ponderous caesuras, wavy movements, and truncated ending all make it a bizarrely entertaining experience.

Based on the early sections of the classic Chinese novel "Journey to the West", most commentators see the Monkey King in the film as representative of Mao wreaking havoc in China. Yet, with Mao's Cultural Revolution effectively eliminating the creative film industry the very next year, one may alternatively equate Mao with the oppressive Jade Emperor and his advisors desperately trying to destroy the liberated spirit of the Monkey King. Those of us born in the year of Monkey might be able to relate on a more universal level.

Ugetsu (1953)

altered states of cinema

[9/10 · 5 December 2008]

"The value of people and things truly depends on their setting." At about 45 min. into Ugetsu the subtle complexities of this important line have only just begun to emerge. The film -- which feels like an imaginative Japanese re-interpretation of both western and Shingeki theatrical traditions -- is grounded in socio-political commentary and also ethereally hallucinogenic.

Starting as a story of the inevitable corruptibility of two success-driven men and the different paths they take to achieve their dreams in an opportunistic, profit-driven, Hobbesian world of self-interest, the film expands into an allegory on servitude and oppressiveness / art and fantasy/ love and life as conceived with a childlike wonder and awe.

"The value of people and things" -- both in moral and non-moral terms -- is in constant fluctuation while the film glides from the fantastical and haunting, to the practical and daunting. Formally, it's a very restrained film, yet the soundtrack is full of sonic abnormalities, gorgeous music, and ambient echoes and silences; like the sonic landscape of a lucid dream.

Touki Bouki (1973)

a wonderfully wild ride

[9/10 · 21 March 2008]

Disorienting and at times even a bit schizophrenic, this is an extraordinarily vibrant, pulsating, and eccentric film. Comparisons to the anarchic, jumpy, free-associative style of the French New Wavers are not far off, but there's something much more erotic and carnal in the film's playfulness.

The story of self-assured college beauty Anta and her fella - Mory the motorcycle-riding herdsman - starts in Dakar and wistfully wanders toward Paris, the seemingly unattainable city of their dreams. Their get-rich-quick schemes and the breezy, colorful manner in which they unfold are funny and inspired.

Along the way, there are sequences of both utter hilarity and genuine depth, although the film does sometimes seem unsure of its many potentially-symbolic representations. But the stylistic narrative and experimental technical aspects are so full of ideas that talk of the film's minor weaknesses seems trivial.

The soundtrack is outstanding, full of syncopation and polyrhythms pacing the film and giving a rich texture to the images. And there's constant movement, until the film's denouement where character, story, camera and concept fuse together in common paralysis, where all seems frozen in reflection.

La prisonnière (1985)

Let it Flow

[7/10 · 11 March 2008]

This short animated film from Rene Laloux opens with a distant, almost alien narrator informing us that "we've discovered a bizarre story...of two orphans who flee a world stricken by war and death...across an ash desert...to reach a city whose inhabitants have become guardians of silence" "Noise is chaos" says one of the so-called priests of this city, and "silence is order and harmony".

The meditative, atmospheric, percussive qualities of the soundtrack complement the mystical disappearing/reappearing figures of this city, which presages similar elements and moods found in 'Spirited Away'.

The animation style is comparable to that of Laloux's 'Gandahar', although some of the more psychedelic and primitive artistic qualities are more reminiscent of his 'La Planete Sauvage'.

Laloux's trademark disjointedness or "schizophrenic" style of cinema is still in tact, leaving things nicely open for interpretation. A few stunning sequences also appear, as a brilliant snowfall sequence set against the ebb and flow of some fantastic foreign ocean soon transitions into a surreal scene involving a beached whale and the erotic mysteries dwelling therein.

With the full moon shining brightly and the tide rising quickly, the two orphans are accompanied by the city's shadowy prime-mover/prisoner as they sail away at dawn. "Fortunately, order and silence don't always prevail in the end"...

Maicling pelicula nañg ysañg Indio Nacional (2005)

poorly realized film on an interesting subject

[3/10 · 29 March 2007]

It's always hit-or-miss when you choose to see smaller films at festivals shooting for thematic diversity and a multitude of countries of origin. The relative lack of press for "A Short Film About the Indio Nacional" combined with its ostensibly historical perspective on the Philippine Revolution made it a rather attractive alternative at the Copenhagen NatFilm Festival.

The two part movie opens with a completely contrived sequence lasting an eternity. A weepy woman struggles to fall asleep in a small hut as the audience struggles to stay awake through three extraordinarily drawn-out shots eventually showing the woman waking a man at her side. Several heavy sighs later, he resigns to telling her a story -- one which she "can't tell anybody" -- a rather mundane monologue on the suffering Nation punctuated by exaggerated snivels and suppressed tears of the now weepy man. Fade out, end of part I.

One can't really fault the actor for trying to tell the story/dream in a single take with some emotional involvement, it's the director who fails to control his excessive sniffling and provide some kind of believable arc to the emotional build-up and come-down.

Part II is a series of mismatched silent vignettes depicting detailed moments of village life in what's assumed to be the years of the Philippine Revolution (1896-98). A group of boys told to look up at the sky with gaping mouths (one looks like some kind of ghoul with his eyes rolling back into his forehead) in awe of a solar eclipse (explained to us in both an inter-title and an animated smiley-sun covered by an indifferent moon). A traveling acting troupe playing some kind of word association game in-between rehearsals cuts to a young man preparing to join the Katipunan (the nationalist society seeking independence from Spain) and somewhere in there is a shot of two sisters tending to their third sister lying in bed, "dying of slavery".

It's easy to see that the director's intentions are noble, to illuminate a certain way of life via small moments in an otherwise forgotten anti-colonial revolution, but the artistic decisions he makes end up undermining the story of the indios nacional. Each of the silent vignettes is accompanied by the decadent western classical and operatic works of Schumann, Ligeti, Mozart and others. Much like European/American silent film of the teens and 20's, the music often fails to synchronize with the scene's beginning and end (not necessarily a flaw), but here the musical passages seem to have been randomly cut-and-pasted onto various sequences, failing to enrich, amplify or complement the images and instead colonizing them, swallowing them up.

The creative decision to portray this period in Philippino history in silent b/w from the perspective of the indios (not directly involved in the revolution) seems stylistically symbolic for a voiceless population deemed irrelevant and antiquated, forgotten in history. But, how does this film do justice to its subject? Do we actually learn anything about the way the indios lived? Are there any insights (political, moral, social) into the revolution? With such a disjointed storyboard (it can't be called a screenplay; there's no story), it's nearly impossible to see how the nebulous generalities of Part I are cleared up by the equally vague vignettes of Part II.

Skip it.

The Road (1982)

filling the void

[9/10 · 20 March 2007]

In this superb and rather restrained film, the soft, earthy and underexposed visual style juxtaposes the harsh sonic shrieks of a child playing violin, train whistles and screeching breaks, howling wolves in the wind, and a woman screaming for her life in an arctic wasteland. Similarly, the simplicity and passivity of the prisoners is contrasted with the mechanistic social and structural violence surrounding them.

There's a strange innocence to the way in which most of the main characters in this film use their fleeting moments of freedom to further imprison themselves in pain, obligation and debt. Of the five stoic, yet gentle prisoners given a week's parole to travel to their respective homes, all of them are transported into different contexts of confinement -- whether emotional, psychological or physical -- full of restrictions and seemingly foregone conclusions.

Restrictions on the freedom of movement, sexual urges, existential choice, gender roles and other forms of social behavior creates a kind of emotional numbness in the main characters' (and their wives')already drained dispositions. In light of their inability to negotiate their surroundings, it seems as though many of them willingly succumb to what they might perceive as a pre-determined fate.

Looking at just one of the five stories: after arriving home, one of the men is encouraged to kill his adulterous wife in order to save the family reputation while she's held in isolation as a prisoner in a remote mountain village. The roles have now been reversed and the situation grows in complexity to the point where the man's indecisiveness contributes to his wife's death in a vast, frozen landscape. In the film's greatest sequence, the man takes his wife and son back across the arctic emptiness where the carcass of his abandoned horse -- one of the many symbols of freedom and strength in the film-- lies picked apart by birds, wolves and the wind in the very place where his wife will die, providing the perfect image of a man, a woman, a child and a country exposed, ravaged and forsaken in an emotional wasteland.

Le train en marche (1971)

a CineTrain to change the world

[6/10 · 8 April 2006]

This half-hour documentary focuses on Medvedkin and his CineTrain of the 1930's, a sort of mobile film workshop complete with post-production facilities, animation stations and a large laboratory. Traveling thousands of miles across the Russian countryside, the train stopped to have its film-makers document Ukranian harvest practices, steel production facilities in southern Russia and other industrial/agricultural matters (although we don't actually see any of this). With each crew-member living in 1 sq. meter living quarters, all individuals on the train were responsible for various odd-jobs and other practical matters in addition to their own film-making concerns.

Medvedkin's main objective was to illustrate the achievements and the errors of agricultural and industrial production by filming such practices, ultimately using the films as educational and critical tools for improvement.

Using archive footage and photographs, "Le Train en Marche" unobtrusively allows Medvedkin to illustrate how the CineTrain functioned as the means by which films could be given to the masses --in the sense that the people themselves are the foregrounded subjects in the films. Medvedkin observes, "the authors of the film were not just the film-maker and the cameraman, but the film could also bear the signature of the people who figured in our films".

Only the first 10 minutes bears any resemblance to a Chris Marker film, with slightly stream-of-consciousness voice-over narration on the origins of cinema as sight. The focus then narrows in on Medvedkin and two of his tales from the train that kept on rollin'. Overall, it's a very small film giving a brief glimpse into a rather large project, the innovators of which thought it would change the world.

Nosferatu (1922)

clammy and creepy

[9/10 · 21 March 2006]

Although at a rather quick 90 minutes, experiencing 'Nosferatu' seems as surreal in its semi-illogical disjointedness as an early Bunuel film and not unlike a dark and dreary drinking binge; one recalls only certain sequences of the narrative, punctuated by large gaps in time and in the association of events/characters. This doesn't necessarily detract from the overall enjoyment of the film, but rather adds to its eternal strangeness.

Hans Erdmann's (?) original score is at once darkly foreboding and highly hypnotic -- like Count Orlok himself -- with its haunting phrases unfolding and folding back on themselves like a spiral. Orlok similarly comes out of the darkness to glide through walls or up stairs and then, receding from light and recoiling his claws, he inexplicably vanishes from sight (and from script) for minutes on end....only to re-emerge from within his coffin in one of the film's most infamous images.

Orlock's insatiable lust for young blood gives the film an erotic charge otherwise repressed in the waking lives of the "human" characters of Jonathon and Nina (surfacing only slightly in Nina's somnambulism).

The two most amusing moments in the film also depend on the "non-human" characters of sickly Renfield and his master, the Count. Renfield escapes from his prison cell pursued by a large mob of locals and, fleeing to a rooftop, starts throwing stones at the angry Volk while wearing the mischievous grin of a child. The Count, meanwhile, adds an element of surrealism as he does a skinny-legged shuffle through town with his own coffin in tow. Still quite creepy and darkly comical after all these years.