Ellipsis

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March 23, 2010

Ellipsis #3

Posted by Just Another Film Buff under All Posts, Cinema of France, Ellipsis | Tags: , , , , , , |
[5] Comments 

Léon Morin, Prêtre (1961) (aka The Forgiven Sinner)
Jean-Pierre Melville
French

 

The Forgiven SinnerOne of the two most unusual features by Jean-Pierre Melville (the other one being the incredible The Silence of the Sea (1949), also set during the German occupation of France), The Forgiven Sinner (1961), is also one of the director’s many fine films. Ingeniously mixing the flamboyance of the then nascent Nouvelle Vague, through its casting, (partial) location shoot and non-classical cutting, and the revered tradition of the European art cinema and the studio cinema of the United States, in its classical staging, expressionist lighting and production design, understated performances and non-modernist literalism, Melville, perhaps inadvertently, plays with the audience’s perception of his film. The Forgiven Sinner is set in a little town in France, towards the end of the Second World War, and tells the tale of pastor Léon Morin (Jean-Paul Belmondo, whose New Wave image is cleverly subverted here), who indirectly participates in the French resistance by sheltering Jews, and a Communist woman Barny (Emmanuelle Riva) who seems to be attracted to him. What begins as a series of witty conversations between a reasonable theist and a staunch atheist gets complexly interwoven with the politics of France at large as the characters equate, in both metaphorical and concrete senses, conscious resistance to physical temptation with resistance to imperial occupation and the guilt of desire with the guilt of collaboration. Melville’s direction, however, remains non-judgmental and brilliantly keeps remarking, through a spectacular interplay of avant-garde editing and meticulous mise en scène, the ironies underlying the characters and their situations and how, in fact, Léon and Barny are both on the wrong sides.

 

March 18, 2010

Ellipsis #2

Posted by Just Another Film Buff under All Posts, Cinema of the USA, Ellipsis | Tags: , , , , , , , |
[8] Comments 

Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)
Michael Moore
English

 

Capitalism is an evil. So declares Michael Moore at the end of his latest film, Capitalism: A Love Story (2009), effectively negating its title. Even after having come to terms with the fact that Moore, as a filmmaker, is incorrigible, that he will use his images to multiply the effect of his voiceover and that he will carry on with his self-pitying, self-congratulatory brand of showmanship and provocation, Capitalism: A Love Story turned out to be a large disappoint for me (For the record, I do think that he had a strike with Bowling for Columbine (2002) and the temperature did soar with Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)). Two facets of this work prove to be the prime nails in its coffin. First of them is Moore’s largely reductive analysis of capitalism. His treatment of religion as a force that is corrupted by capitalism, instead of one that perpetrates it, betrays naïveté, at best, and hypocrisy, at worst. Perhaps, conceiving the project as a mini-series would have helped Moore build a more detailed analysis of the various elements at work. The second: Moore’s temptation for moral simplification. Moore treats all the corporations as a single, monolithic entity driven by profit motive. Instead of illustrating the flaws in the logic of the system, he comfortably resolves its participants into good and evil. Although there may be some truth to that, it is only expected of a film that works on a human level, as Moore’s film most definitely does, to explore the human dimension of both sides and discover where exactly we are going wrong. However, Moore’s film has a lot going for it, especially in the later passages which exude much welcome optimism. Unlike his antiestablishmentarian ancestor Stanley Kubrick (whose Spartacus (1960) is echoed in the opening sequence), Moore is not a cynic by any measure. Fittingly, he tells us: “I refuse to live in a country like this. And I’m not leaving.”

 

March 7, 2010

Ellipsis #1

Posted by Just Another Film Buff under All Posts, Cinema of Taiwan, Ellipsis | Tags: , , , , , |
[20] Comments 

Feng Gui Lai De Ren (1983) (aka All The Youthful Days)
Hou Hsiao-Hsien
Mandarin/Taiwanese

 

Hou Hsiao-hsien’s fourth feature stands in remarkable contrast to the banality of his previous film, The Green, Green Grass of Home (1983), and should probably be considered as the first signs of a master who is to come. Tinged with nostalgia throughout, as the title would imply, All the Youthful Days presents us the lives of a bunch of rowdy youths from the town of Fengkuei, who move to the city looking for work (in a manner very reminiscent of Goodbye South, Goodbye (1996)). Although much more restrained than the director’s previous, a few of the clichés of the genre still remain. But what really sets apart the film from its predecessor is the confidence of its approach and its formal consistency that would become characteristic of the director later on. All the Youthful Days already shows the filmmaker’s need for direct sound, which he would employ a few films later, while the visual component succeeds in capturing the rhythm of life in the city and in the town with its long and drawn-out shots, restrictive framing, use of off-screen space and employment of multiple planes of action.  Hou’s camera takes a detached but ever curious gaze towards its subjects as they engage in gang wars, witness the lives of their neighbours, get cheated in the city and lead a life that is as detached from the past as it is from the future. There is much understated pathos to be found in the final passages of the film, a la I Vitelloni (1953), where the friends are forced to come to terms with the fact that they have to break up and move on with their individual lives.


[P.S: As you might have guessed, this is a new column intended to keep this blog a bit more active between reviews (and to appease my guilt of being lazy to put up longer posts). Also, although it won’t exactly take me closer to my dream of writing something about every film I’ve seen, I think it would nevertheless help me jot down my instantaneous response to films I’ve just seen]

 

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