The Sea Inside

Mar adentro; drama, Spain / France / Italy, 2004; D: Alejandro Amenábar, S: Javier Bardem, Belén Rueda, Lola Dueñas, Mabel Rivera, Celso Bugallo, Tamar Novas, Clara Segura 

When he was young, Ramon Sampedro made a crucial mistake by jumping from a cliff into a shallow sea, and the seafloor broke his neck, leaving him paralyzed from his neck down. 26 years later, Ramon lives in the house of his older brother Jose, lying in bed, rarely leaving the bedroom. Jose's wife Manuela is Ramon's caregiver. Lawyer Julia, suffering from Cadasil syndrome, arrives to meet Ramon, to help him in his request towards the court to get permission for assisted suicide. Hearing about his case from the media, a single mother, Rosa, visits Ramon and becomes his friend. The Spanish Supreme Court refuses Ramon's request, so he tells his friends to prepare potassium-cyanide in a glass of water, which he drinks with a straw, and dies. Ramon's friend Gene gives a farewell note to Julia, but her brain deteriorated so much that she doesn't even remember who Ramon was.

Alejandro Amenabar's magnum opus, "The Sea Inside" is a movie about disability and suicide done the right way: subtle, sophisticated, measured, with wonderful characters, it has an uncomfortable topic that many viewers would run away from, but once you start watching it, it is so fluent, absorbing and genuine, that you have to see it to the end. As uncomfortable the topic is, so much is it of an comfortable watch. It owes this success to the formula of presenting a difficult theme in a light, normal, genuine manner with humor, so much, in fact, that by the end you will see the protagonist Ramon as a character, not as a bedridden man paralyzed from the neck down. He is played by the brilliant Javier Bardem, who gives a fantastic performance, outside of all those disability-movie clichés. Amenabar has a sense for a rich movie language, as he is able to make this static story into something very cinematic thanks to a nice use of cinematic techniques. Already the opening scenes are untypical: a white square appears on the black screen, and then expands into a white rectangle, expanding until it spreads across the screen, and shows the beach, as the narrator says: "Relax... Now imagine a movie screen that unfolds and opens in front of you. Project on it your favorite place..."

In a great little scene transition, lawyer Julia asks Ramon to tell her about the day of his accident, she presses the "record" button on her voice recorder—and then there is a match cut of her hand in the same pose, but now in a different room, as she presses the "play" button, to hear the recording she made of him earlier. In a surreal, but perfectly measured dream sequence, Ramon imagines he stands up from the bed and flies through the window over hills and trees, until he reaches the beach. Little details and character interactions say everything: Rosa (excellent Lola Duenas) watches a TV report of Ramon in bed, as he says: "When you can't escape and you constantly rely on everyone else, you learn to cry by smiling, you know?" Cut to Rosa, a stranger, arriving to visit Ramon, and who bashfully gives one of the most stunning sentences to cheer him up: "And I thought, his eyes are so full of life, how could someone with those eyes want to die? Look, we all have problems, and we don't have to run from them, you know? That's why I wanted to come. To make you feel like living." Amenabar never allows the movie to fall into grey or melodramatic territory, as the movie's characters are full of life and ingenuity, including Ramon's brother Jose, who wants to forbid him to commit suicide because he is "still the oldest in this house", while he also makes fun of religion and the Spanish judicial system (the Supreme Court refuses to even allow Ramon to talk in front of them). You watch the film and are entertained. But when it ends, its ideas and way of thinking stay with you. What is life? What are we? What can we do about all these physical problems? It shows how fragile life is, always under external and internal threats, asking us to think what we can do with the time that was given to us on this world, and that kindness and humanity can surpass transience. 

Grade:+++

Sentimental Value

Affeksjonsverdi; drama, Norway / France / Germany / Denmark / Sweden / UK, 2025; D: Joachim Trier, S: Stellan Skarsgård, Renate Reinsve, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Elle Fanning, Anders Danielsen Lie

Oslo. Nora, a stage actress, freezes and has stage freight during the premiere, but is still able to go on stage and perform. She has an affair with Jakob. Her sister Agnes is an historian, single mother of Erik. When their mother dies, Nora and Agnes are reluctant to renew their contact with their absent father Gustav, a film director who left them when they were kids and lived in Sweden. Gustav plans his final film with Nora in the lead, but she refuses. The script is based on Gustav's mother, who committed suicide when he was a kid. American actress Rachel approaches Gustav and wants to star in the film, they rehearse, but both conclude she is wrong for the role. When Agnes forces Nora to read the script, Nora is moved, and once herself tried to commit suicide. Nora accepts the role and Gustav directs the film with her.

In this unusual parent-children drama, the writer and director Joachim Trier uses filmmaking as a therapy for reconciliation, since both of the protagonists, Nora and Gustav, are artists: she is an actress, he a director, and they need to work together in a film, in cordial manner, to undo their dysfunction. Three excellent sequences: in the opening act, the narrator says that Nora, while a kid in school, was assigned to write an essay as if she was an object, and she chose to write about her house, which has some wonderful observations ("She described how its belly shook as she and her sister ran downstairs... She wondered if the floors liked to be trampled on. If the walls were ticklish"). The second one is when Nora has a nervous breakdown behind the scenes, before the premiere of her play, but is still able to perform on stage. The third one is a surreal scene that reminds of Bergman's "Persona", some 98 minutes into the film, where Gustav is standing still and looking into the camera, but as the light and shadows around his head keep moving around, this invisibly "dissolves" into shadows moving over faces of Nora and her sister Agnes, also looking into the camera, implying that their three lifepaths are interconnected. The rest is a bit weaker, never reaching this high level.

"Sentimental Value" once again shows that Trier is not able to write a focused script to the fullest. He brings up several plot points, but is not able to develop them naturally into a climatic moment, and some subplots drift away. Nora, for instance, is angry at her absent father Gustav. Why not develop this into a clear conflict in the finale? In another subplot, Nora has an affair with her colleague Jakob, but where exactly is this going? What role does it play in the story? Not much. The same goes for American actress Rachel who wants to play the lead in Gustav's film, but then they both conclude she is not the right choice. Why is Rachel necessary for the story? Both Jakob and Rachel could have been cut without the storyline losing anything. Trier is not so much preoccupied with plot as much as creating a 'slice-of-life' character interactions. The actors are all amazing, especially Renate Reinsve as Nora and Stellan Skarsgard as Gustav—in one of their best interactions, Gustav tells Nora why he didn't follow much of her acting career, because he doesn't like theatre: "I can tell if an actor is any good in two minutes". However, Gustav writing a role for Nora is his way of communication, and it mirrors Nora's personal secret. "Sentimental Value" is very good, and yet, it is peculiar that Trier is never able to be anything more than "sufficiently satisfying". He is never "outstandingly satisfying" as, let's say, Vinterberg was in "Festen" or Brooks was in "Terms of Endearment". He takes several shortcuts and misses some unused potentials. One example: 25 minutes into "Sentimental Value", a clip is shown from Gustav's fictional film, an ending in one take where a boy and a girl run across a panorama, a meadow, while two Nazis are chasing them, and the girl enters the train, sits and looks through the window, at the boy being caught, as he stays behind. The girl is played by Gustav's daughter Agnes. Bergman or Vinterberg would have surely not missed the opportunity for an ending that is similar, with the now grown-up Agnes also entering a train and leaving Gustav, which would rhyme with her life, in a metafilm codification. But Trier did not go there. Which already says something. 

Grade:+++

Nobody Wanted To Die

Niekas nenorėjo mirti; war drama, Lithuania, 1965; D: Vytautas Žalakevičius, S: Regimantas Adomaitis, Juozas Budraitis, Algimantas Masiulis, Donatas Banionis, Vija Artmane

Lithuania in the 1 9 5 0s. The Forest Brothers, a Lithuanian guerilla, is waging a rebellion against the Soviet-Communist occupation. Lokis, the chairman of the Soviet council of a village, is shot and killed through a window in his office by the Forest Brothers. His sons, including Donatas, swear revenge. A former Forest Brother partisan who was given amnesty, Vaitkus, whose father is a mute shoemaker, is forced to take the position of the new chairman. At first, Vaitkus is reluctant, but then takes his job so seriously that he even leads an ambush of the rebels, where many are killed. In the revenge attack, the Forest Brothers shoot Vaitkus and attack the village, but Donatas and his brothers shoot them.

"Nobody Wanted to Die" is a surprisingly daring movie for Lithuanian cinema during the censorship of the Soviet occupation, depicting the rarely talked about "taboo" topic of Forest Brothers, the anti-Communist insurgents who fought against the Soviets for a decade after the end of World War II. As expected, some restrictions and "controlled" choices inhibit the storyline, reducing its value, but it is still an interesting watch. The director Vytautas Zalakevicius uses aesthetic black-and-white cinematography and fine camera drives to frame this story, which can also be interpreted as a meditation on compliance and obedience—one of the protagonists, villager Vaitkus, previously served among the ranks of the Forest Brothers, and is now forced to take the position of the chairman of the Soviet council of the village. At first he is reluctant, but slowly, gradually, he accepts what is expected from him by the authorities, and betrays the Forest Brothers fully. Why do some people obey immoral orders? If they were to be shoved from one camp to another, the opposite one, would they immediately change their worldview? This is illustrated in the sequence in the mill, where several Forest Brother insurgents are ambushed and shot while trying to transport flour, while Vaitkus walks up to the body of one of them lying on the floor, seemingly dead, covered in flour, but then the man winks at Vaitkus from beneath—who instead of cooperation, snitches him in front of the villager, and orders him to stand up. Several details are neat (the authorities try to recruit a farmer on the field for the position of the chairman, but he refuses: "They killed five chairmen in a year. Anyone would rather stare up a horse's ass than angel's faces!"), but the dialogue is not always inspired, whereas the story does feel a bit slow and conventional, which reduces the enjoyment value. Nonetheless, it is valuable in depicting the theme of how a foreign ideology is dividing and forcing people of the same nation to fight and kill each other.

Grade:++

Northern Crusades

Herkus Mantas; historical drama, Lithuania, 1972; D: Marijonas Giedrys, S: Antanas Šurna, Eugenija Pleškytė, Algimantas Masiulis, Stasys Petronaitis, Pranas Piaulokas, Algimantas Voščikas

The Baltics, 13th century. The German-led Teutonic Order leads the Northern Crusade through which it is able to colonize the lands under the pretext of spreading Christianity among the pagans. One of the nobles from the Baltic tribes, Herkus Monte, was abducted as a child and forced to convert to Christianity in Magdeburg. Upon being released, the grown up Herkus and his German wife Catherine return to the Baltic. Even though their son Alexander is still in Magdeburg, Herkus leads a rebellion against Teutonic Knights, uniting rival Baltic tribes led by leaders Samilis and Koltis. Herkus' army is stalled during the 1262 Siege of Königsberg, which lasts for years and causes famine. When the Teutonic Knights bring reinforcements, they are able to chase away the Baltic army, while Herkus is wounded. A jealous Samilis beytrays Herkus and contacts the Teutonic commander. Catherine is killed and sacrificed to pagan gods. Herkus is attacked and killed in an ambush by the Teutonic Knights. 

One of the most critically recognized Lithuanian films, "Northern Crusades" (also somewhere translated as "Herkus Mantas") is an educational and easy to understand historical lesson from the rarely depicted events of the Northern Crusades, since some of its themes are universal—ideological imperialism (in this case, a religious one), colonialism, assimilation, a struggle between conformity and integrity, resistance against occupiers. The movie was very popular in Lithuania, since even though it depicts the occupation by the German-led Teutonic Order, Lithuanians interpreted it as a symbolic depiction of Soviet occupation during that time. "Northern Crusades" could play in a double bill with Staikov's even better film "Time of Violence" since it shares its motives—a protagonist kidnapped by a foreign occupying power, indoctrinated and sent back to his home country to spread the interests of the occupiers, but here the hero Herkus actually joins his native people against the Teutonic Knights. The opening act is the best, swiftly engaging: an arrogant Teutonic Knight, von Brumbach, takes a knife, rips his own cape in his room, and then goes to the tavern of the Baltic tribes, where seven Balts are dinning, and poses a question: "What does a man deserve who stabbed a dagger in the back of his master?" - "Fire, according to the customs of the Teutonic Knights". Von Brumbach then turns around and reveals his cape with holes in it, and then leaves, locks the door, while his knights burn the entire fortress with said seven Balts inside, including Herkus' father. In the next sequence, Herkus, forcefully Christianized in Magdeburg, hears the news of his father's death, and just by his look, the viewers instantly understand why he will do what he does for the rest of the film.

In an even better codification of events, the said villain von Brumbach is actually killed 80 minutes later during Herkus' siege of his castle, when von Brumbach is, ironically, stabbed in the back by his own servant—with a dagger. Herkus (played by Antanas Surna) is thus always torn between two sides, on the one hand staying true to his native people, but also still accepting his German wife Catherine and Christian customs. The director Marijonas Giedrys is somewhat underwhelming on the field of directing skills (the battle sequences between the Baltic tribes and the Teutonic Knights are rarely more than just good), but the dialogues compensate with a lot of strong lines. In one memorable sequence, Catherine's brother Hirhalsas is among the Knights traveling on a ship to fight against Herkus' uprising, and when one passanger asks him if he has seen Herkus, Hirhalsas replies: "I not only seen him, but also raised and trained him, and even let my sister marry him! Now I'm getting ready to put a noose around his neck!" A commander and Herkus have this exchange: "We have never tried to negotiate with the Order" - "One does not negotiate for freedom. Freedom is won." One line is legendary—after a tragedy, Herkus looks into the camera and says: "What a great scoundrel you are, my Lord, if you allow a man to suffer more than he deserves." This sums up his own perspective on religion, while the movie never shows the Baltic tribes as idealized, since some of their pagan traditions of human sacrifice truly are detrimental and deserving to be culturally erased. "Northern Crusades" are overstretched and overlong, lacking a true spark of an epic, yet they still cause the viewers to think and establish a quiet style that goes "under your skin".

Grade:+++

The Battle for Kyiv

The Battle for Kyiv; documentary, UK / Ukraine, 2024; D: Oz Katerji, S: Oz Katerji, Sviatoslav Yurash, Kateryna Doroshyna, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, John Sweeney

On 24 February 2022, Vladmir Putin's menopause causes him to start the Goreshist Russian invasion of Ukraine. British journalist Oz Katerji is already in Kyiv covering the event, and refuses to evacuate, staying to cover the war. He follows a Ukrainian parliamentarian, Sviatoslav, and assistant Kateryna, who volunteer to help in the defense of Kyiv. Russian bombs fall on residential buildings. In the nearby city Irpin, refugees flee across a devastated bridge. Borodyanka is devastated and left in ruins after the Russian assault. The attempted siege of Kyiv fails since the city is too large, and thus the Russian soldiers scatter and retreat. Afterwards, the journalists discover the corpses in the Bucha massacre. 

British journalist Oz Katerji edited his video footage of the 2022 Battle of Kyiv in this excellent documentary which depicts the events of the start of the bloodiest European war of the 21st century in a lot of detail. Since the situation back then was chaotic, frenetic, unplanned, random and improvised, so is Katerji's own footage, accordingly, assembled in the same manner, yet that gives it a dose of authenticity and genuine charge. Katerji shows situations he managed to witness, and some really are perplexing and personal—for instance, in one episode, his driver accidentally drove up to a Russian check-point, and they had to explain they are British reporters at gunpoint, until they were allowed to continue driving, as Katerji looks into the camera and admits he is relieved. Other episodes also illustrate the mood and electrified suspense of people (a Ukrainian soldier shows a piece of Russian equipment: "This was a Russian paratrooper who ended up in wrong place. They thought they would come to have fun. The Russian government sends them here to fertilize our land."; government advisor Anton Gerashchenko standing in front of a destroyed building in Borodyanka: "Who are they fighting with here? The people who were living in that building."; president Volodymyr Zelenskyy commenting during a speech: "What will be next if even Byban Yar is hit? The Sophia Cathedral? The Lavra? St. Andrew's Church? Whatever they dream about, damn them"; a random interview with a lesbian Ukrainian soldier). There are some omissions (the Bucha massacre section should have been elaborated in a lot more detail, for instance), yet overall it is a gripping, educational, intelligent and dynamic documentary that galvanizes the viewers.   

Grade:+++

Headhunters

Hodejegerne; crime thriller, Norway, 2011; D: Morten Tyldum, S: Aksel Hennie, Synnøve Macody Lund, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Eivind Sander, Julie Ølgaard

Oslo. Roger Brown works as a headhunter and is married to Diana, who runs an art gallery. In order to compensate for his 5'5 height, Roger steals valuable paintings at private homes by inserting forged copies, with the help of Ove, a security guard who temporarily disables alarms in said homes. Roger meets Clas, a former employee of the Dutch GPS company HOTE, who wants to become the CEO of another GPS company, Pathfinder. Upon stealing a Rubens' painting from Clas' home, Roger finds out he is having an affair with Diana. When Roger finds Ove poisoned, he is hunted by Clas who wants to kill him, and is tracking him via a microscopic GPS tracker inside a hair gel on Roger's hair. Clas wants to steal Pathfinder's technology secrets. Roger shaves his head bald, returns to Ove's house, Clas is there and shoots at him, but since Diana secretly switched his bullets with blanks, there is no effect, and thus Roger shoots back and kills Clas. The police concludes Ove and Clas killed each other, while Roger makes Diana pregnant.

Excellent "Headhunters" is a Scandinavian thriller done the right way: it is not only suspenseful, but also intelligent and sophisticated. It sets up a giant Arukone-style puzzle storyline with a lot of plot points, but all of them are connected into a whole, have a point and purpose, and reach a satisfying conclusion in the end. Most of the kudos goes to the novel by Jo Nesbø, who planned this storyline, and the genius director Morten Tyldum who is able to make the viewers completely forget they are watching a "foreign" Norwegian film and are with time simply engaged and glued to the screen, in a genuine, basic sense for making a story come alive. The brilliant Nikolaj Coster-Waldau stands out in the role of the villain Clas. "Headhunters" start off as a sly heist comedy, but then switches gears and turns into an intense Hitchcockian thriller with bigger stakes involving corporate crime, when the protagonist Roger is being hunted by Clas, with several clever details and plot twists that are totally unexpected. 

In one of the most insane situations, Roger hides in an outdoor wooden toilet in the countryside, and is shocked to see Clas coming towards it with his killer dog through the window. He cannot escape. So what does Roger do? He opens the toilet seat and hides inside the underground dump of the pit latrine, holding only a paper tube above the surface, so when Clas enters the wooden toilet, he seemingly doesn't find nobody there. Later, after Clas is gone, in a black-humored moment, Roger cannot start his car, so he simply escapes the farm driving a tractor! The finale is incredible, with a plot twist so clever it is a treat (among other, Roger instructs Diana to exchange Clas' bullets with blanks during their "affair"). On another level, it is a personal story about a man with an inferiority complex who realizes that his worth is not measured in money or success, but in the love of his wife Diana who saves him in the end, in a runabout way, and the thriller story is in the end only used as a therapy for their relationship crisis. A highlight of Norwegian cinema.

Grade:+++

Recollections of the Yellow House

Recordações da Casa Amarela; black comedy / art-film, Portugal, 1989, D: João César Monteiro, S: João César Monteiro, Manuela de Freitas, Teresa Calado, Ruy Furtado

Lisbon. Joao de Deus, a man in his 50s, complains to his landlord Violeta that he has bedbugs, but cannot find any evidence of it. Joao feels weak and has sore testicles, so a doctor prescribes him a treatment. Joao is fascinated by Violeta's daughter Julietta, who plays oboe in a music band; while he also sees a prostitute with a puddle. When the prostitute dies, Joao goes to her room, rips her puppet with a knife and finds money hidden inside. Feeling rich, Joao attempts to rape Julietta and gives her money, but then runs away from the residential building. Now homeless, he survives thanks to a local kitchen. Joao buys a military uniform to enter a barrack for a celebration to get free beans, but is discovered and sent to a mental asylum. Thanks to a friend, Joao is able to escape.

Why did the director Joao Cesar Monteiro think that his character is interesting? Or funny? Or even entertaining? Because this misconception, on which the whole movie is built, costs him the movie. It is perplexing that his "Recollections of the Yellow House" was ranked in a local poll as the 3rd best Portuguese film by 2 0 2 0—the voters either have poor taste or the cinema of Portugal is in deep trouble. "Yellow House" is a peculiar, vague, confusing, and overall poorly planned out film revolving around the scrubby Joao de Deus (played by director Monteiro himself) who at first feels weak and ailing in the first half of the film, but then finds a new fascination with his landlord's daughter Julietta (among other, after she leaves the bathroom, he drinks the soap water from her bathtub, and observes her pubic hair he found), living in the same residential building. One expects that this will be the theme of the movie—how a man feels his life entered an autumn, but somehow finds a new spring in a woman who awakens his vitality. But no. It's not even that. Joao tries to rape her, she refuses, and he runs away scared from the building, never to return again, some 80 minutes into the film. 

The remaining 40 minutes are then wasted on random episodes of Joao living as a homeless man, buying a military uniform, landing in a mental asylum... All this is disconnected, ill-conceived and disorganized. What is the point at the end? There isn't any. The whole film is composed out of moderately interesting episodes which never connect as a whole, and even the best ones are the those with someone else besides him in the frame. Monteiro crafts long scenes of Joao sitting on bed, drinking a pill, taking a sip of medicine from a spoon and looking at specially designed underwear he has to wear for his sore testicles—but this is not interesting. Some actors-directors, like W. Allen or R. Benigni, are able to pull it off because they are interesting and funny to watch, but Joao is neither. He is not idealized nor presented as perfect (in one scene, Joao visits his old mother just to borrow all the money from her and then disappear), but neither is there a reason to watch him. The fact that the film lacks some style or creativity or ingenuity (only one match cut some 56 minutes into the film is commendable) is also detrimental. "Yellow House" is one of those examples where one character is the whole film, but since the main character is so stunted and insipid, the whole movie follows the same pattern as him. 

Grade:+

Sambizanga

Sambizanga; drama, Portugal / Angola / Congo / France, 1972; D: Sarah Maldoror, S: Domingos de Oliveira, Elisa Andrade, Jean M'Vondo, Dino Abelino

In 1 9 6 1, during the Portuguese colonialism, Domingos Xavier, a driver of a bulldozer at an construction site in Dondo, Angola, is kidnapped by the secret police from his home and brought to a police station for interrogation. He is accused of joining the underground Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). His wife Maria takes her baby with her and walks all the way to Luanda to search for Domingos in one of the jails. Domingos is tortured and beaten, but he refuses to name any MPLA members. He dies in prison. Maria is devastated by the news of his death. MPLA members hear about him and decide to attack the jail, thereby starting the Angolan War of Independence.

The first African feature film directed by a woman, Sarah Maldoror's "Sambizanga" is also one of the first films depicting the Angolan War of Independence from the Portuguese colonial rule, or better said, the event that triggered it, the enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention and torture at a prison in Luanda. Since it depicts this rarely thematized historical event, "Sambizanga" has noble, ambitious merits, but its execution is weaker, suffering from too much empty walk and overstretched storyline. The two brief moments which show the protagonist Domingos being mistreated and abused in jail during the interrogation, but he refuses to give away any names of the independence movement (just as he is about to take a sip from a beer mug, one interrogator slaps him from behind), are probably the strongest bits, lifting up the interest of the viewers and engaging, but this is disrupted and diluted by the rather boring, bland storyline of his wife Maria walking on and on, on the road, from one police station to another, which is much weaker. Maldoror needed more cinematic-stylistic inspiration, for a more versatile viewing experience, since the movie is too formal to truly ignite on a higher level. Still, she painted a picture of the country at that time. Some episodes are authentic precisely because they seem as if they came from a documentary (women washing their clothes on a river; workers mining rocks with hammers).

Grade:++

No, or the Vain Glory of Command

Non, ou a Vã Glória de Mandar; art-film, Portugal, 1990; D: Manoel de Oliveira, S: Luís Miguel Cintra, Diogo Dória, Miguel Guilherme, Luís Lucas

A dozen Portuguese soldiers are driving in a military jeep during the Angolan War of Independence, among them Lt. Cabrita, Manuel, Pedro, Salvador and Cpt. Brito. They talk about the futility of keeping colonial rule when most of European powers left Africa. Cabrita, who studied history, recounts historical examples of Portuguese battles and wars, including the Battle of Toro in 1476 and Battle of Alcácer Quibir in 1578. The soldiers arrive at a military base. The next day, the walk by foot in the jungle, but are shot at by rebels in an ambush. Cabrita is wounded and dies in a hospital. The date is 24 April 1 9 7 4, the day of the Carnation Revolution, which would later grant all of Portuguese colonies independence.  

"No, or the Vain Glory of Command" is a meditation on the history of Portuguese (colonial) wars and its futility, seen through the prism of the Angolan War of Independence, advocating for the abolishment of any kind of imperialism, irredentism, annexationism and colonialism altogether, and instead calling for the contribution of science and culture in humanity. The director Manoel de Oliviera uses a peculiar, hermetic set of episodes without a real storyline, indulging too much in this as an art-film instead of an film for the universal viewers, but it has its moments. The best part is the opening 20-minute sequence where the camera observes some dozen Portuguese soldiers driving somewhere in the Angolan jungle on a military jeep, but who suddenly start discussing some philosophical contemplations about conflicts in general. For instance, one soldier mentions how he assumes that African colonies could one day become independent from Portugal, just like Brazil once did, upon which the other soldier, Salvador, responds: "Independent? Colonies that have been ours for five centuries?! This is no Vietnam! To hell with your worthless talk!" Lieutenant Cabrita, who studied history, then brings up the comparison with Viriato, rebel leader of Lusitanian people from the area of present day Portugal, who also fought for independence from the Roman Republic in 2nd century BC.

Salvador also laments that the world calls them colonialists: "The "democratic" Russians grabbed half of Europe without further ado. And the Chinese are no better. They conquered the Tibetan people and exploit them as they please." Another soldier also laments: "And by reuniting those tribes we created foundations of a country, or a multicultural nation." - "Exactly. And our language served as an agglutinating element. Creating structures for a future nation." The rest is less interesting and engaging. The regressive episodes which show all the failures of Portuguese wars and battles, such as the Battle of Toro in 1476 and Battle of Alcácer Quibir in 1578, are more schematic than they are genuine, regardless of all the opulent costumes and horses, though the same actors who play soldiers in the modern story also play soldiers of these historical events, underlying the theme of a "curse" of doomed wars which just waste lives, without achieving anything with a lasting, permanent value. Empires come and go, only the people and their development remain. The Angolan War of Independence should have been expanded and depicted in more detail, and not only a brief skirmish near the end. It's all too artificial, arbitrary and truncated. Nonetheless, the movie becomes even surreal in a dream sequence of a paradise island visited by Portuguese sailors in the middle of the film, and some dialogue is interesting ("Sometimes I think that the Universe and mankind aren't but an evasion of God's imagination").

Grade:++

Island of Loves

A Ilha dos Amores; art-film, Portugal / Japan, 1982; D: Paulo Rocha, S: Luís Miguel Cintra, Clara Joana, Zita Duarte, Yoshiko Mita, Atsuko Murakumo, Erl Tenni

A biopic of Portuguese writer and poet Wenceslau de Moraes. He is a Navy official in Macau in 1895, married to Chinese woman Atchan with whom he has two children. He separates from them and moves to Kobe, Japan as a Portuguese consul. Wenceslau marries O-Yone, but she dies from a stomach disease, so he moves to her native city Tokushima, where he visits her grave every day. During World War I, some Japanese are against Wenceslau, mistaking him for a German. He then has a relationship with O-Yone's niece Ko-Haru, who also dies. Atchan visits him and begs him to return to Macau to live with their grown up kids, but Wenceslau refuses. He dies alone in the house, discovered by neighbors when the stench of his corpse was already decaying. His sister Francesca keeps his letters. 

This biopic of Portuguese writer Wenceslau de Moraes who decided to live in Japan is meditative, trying to be poetic by reciting his poems, yet the director Paulo Rocha stubbornly refuses to depict the more interesting details from his life, and instead almost deliberately shows only the most uninteresting bits. Some fundamental questions are left vague: why did Moraes decide to travel to Japan? What fascinated him about said country? How did he learn Japanese? How did he meet O-Yone, his Japanese wife? How was it for him to walk on the streets of Kobe, go shopping and interact with locals? None of this is shown in the film, and that is a fatal flaw. Rocha only shows ellipses from his life: for instance, after his life in Macau, Moraes is suddenly shown riding a carriage in Kobe, with O-Yone already married to him. Why was their meeting skipped? Rocha cuts short some parts, but prolongs others unnecessarily. After the pointless first 30 minutes, indulging is some sort of surreal poetry including images from modern day Japan, the story finally starts, and Roche uses the technique of one scene-one frame, with long takes that last up to 10 minutes, but at almost 3-hours of running time, the movie is definitely overlong. Some scenes are inspired here and there: for instance, some 53 minutes into the film, Isabel takes on the role of a maid, as the camera zooms in on a mirror in the house, depicting the reflection of Moraes and O-Yone while sitting in the bath; or the elegant transition some 105 minutes into the film, where a woman is pushing a man in a wheelchair, they go behind a war memorial, and a nurse exits from the other sides, pushing a bed on wheels, as the title says: "Canto VI: The Little Lord of Lives". In the final scene, the six actors are seen standing in front of the camera on top of a building, holding photos of the characters they played in the film, and burning them on the table. "Island of Loves" will satisfy fans of art cinema, but for the rest it can drag until it becomes bland.

Grade:++