Winter Light

Nattvardsgästerna; drama, Sweden, 1963, D: Ingmar Bergman, S: Gunnar Björnstrand, Ingrid Thulin, Max von Sydow, Gunnel Lindblom  

Winter. Tomas is a Protestant pastor of a small parish. He is visited by a couple, Karen and Jonas, who ask for guidance. Jonas returns and confesses in private his depression caused by a news article that the Chinese will soon obtain nuclear weapons, which might lead to a doomsday war. Tomas admits he himself is succumbing to doubt in the truth of religion. Jonas later commits suicide. Tomas is visited by Marta, a woman who confesses her love to him, but he insists that he can only love his wife who died four years ago. A church assistant tells Tomas about how Jesus suffered much more from the abandonment of his followers and God.   

“Winter Light” aligns with director Ingmar Bergman’s obsession with death since its whole story is basically just a giant allegory on dying and the passage of time, and highly unflinchingly and direct in this edition: in the opening shots, pastor Tomas is holding a mass in a church, but only a handful of people are attending, and in the aftermath, only scarce pennies are found from the church donations, all to symbolize how the time of this is slowly coming to an end. Tomas himself is in an existential crisis, doubting in the truth of religion, contemplating if he wasted his entire life. Even the setting is during winter, the end of a cycle, whereas Tomas is sick from a flu, almost as to show how even his physical state is dissolving. Bergman crafts the minimalist story in his typical conventional, grey style, but his writing rises to the occasion, stinging with staggering sharpness in some bleak dialogues. The 6-minute sequence of Marta reciting her letter and looking directly into the camera, describing her pain from a rash, offers one of the best lines Bergman ever wrote: “God, why have you created me so eternally dissatisfied? Why must I realize how wretched I am? Why must I suffer so hellishly for my insignificance?” Rarely was he able to get to the point of some universal human truths in such a concise, fast manner.  

In another sequence, the depressive Jonas asks for guidance, but Tomas just proves to be even more negative than him while describing his own thoughts: “I put my faith in an improbable and private image of a fatherly God. One who loved mankind, of course... but me most of all! Do you see Jonas what a monstrous mistake I made?” He concludes: “If there is no God, would it make any difference? Life would become understandable. What a relief.” Bergman creates a codification of events on a certain level: Tomas suffers from anxiety because he receives no feedback from God, but that is paralleled by Marta’s situation, who loves Tomas and awaits his feedback, but she receives nothing from Tomas, either, who chastises her for “mimicking” the behavior of his late wife. Negligence, insignificance of frail, limited lives, and pain of desolate isolation in the cold world are the main themes of the film. Tomas realizes he has been following a deception, but in the end just continues the empty tradition, unable even to change. While some of Bergman’s obsessions with religion and always the same autistic lamentation about the suffering in the fatalistic world tend to get stuck running around in circles, “Winter Light” is one of his best achievements, an unassuming film with some timeless themes presented in an understanding way.  

Grade:+++

The Suicide Squad

The Suicide Squad; fantasy action thriller, USA, 2021, D: James Gunn, S: Idris Elba, Margot Robbie, John Cena, Joel Kinnaman, David Dastmalchian, Daniela Melchior, Michael Rooker, Viola Davis, Joaquin Cosio, Sylvester Stallone (voice)

Six convicts and/or metahumans—archer Bloodsport, Harley Quinn, Peacemaker, fish-human mutant King Shark, Polka-Dot Man with superpowers, Ratcatcher 2, who can control rats—augmented by Colonel Flag—are assembled as a black-ops Suicide Squad and get the government asignment to go to the South American island-nation Corto Maltese, whose pro-American government was replaced in a coup d’etat by the anti-American dictator Luna and his General Suarez, and destroy the fortress Jotunheim, where secret experiments are conducted on an giant alien starfish creature, Starro, which could be used as a giant weapon against the US. After a lot of obstacles, the Suicide Squad finds out it was the US government that oversaw the experiments 30 years ago, during the Cold War. The 40ft tall Starro escapes from Jotunheim, spreading thousands of starfishes to control the people, but the Suicide Squad is able to kill it.  

“The Suicide Squad” is the bloodiest superhero movie up until that time, which is a dubious honor: it has style and sheer creativity, yet just like “RoboCop 2”, its violence became so extreme that it diminished its enjoyment value and numbed the audience. Unlike Gunn’s contagiously fun “Guardians of the Galaxy”, which worked so well because of the bonding, chemistry and charm of its sympathetic characters, “The Suicide Squad” feels hampered down since there are so many unlikeable characters, and thus the viewers cannot root for them. The only somewhat good characters are Ratcatcher 2, Colonel Flag and Bloodsport, yet King Shark, Polka-Dot Man and Peacemaker are just downright creepy criminals, and one cannot extract sympathy from them—even ignoring ethical issues aside, there are unnecessary, sensless deaths and vile cruelty (in one, King Shark simply grabs a man and eats him in one bite). Even the similarly R-rated “Deadpool” had more measure and balance when juggling with hard-core violent elements. 

It is clever that “invisible” titles are shown to mark chapters in the plot, and several of them are stylish: for instance, when Bloodsport, Flag and the Polka-Dot Man escape from a van, giant flames behind them form letters saying: “Operation Jotunheim”. But then one of them rejects it and wants to save Harley Quinn first, so the last word of flames is extinguished, and a new one forms, saying: “Operation Harley”. Similarly, when the giant, 40 ft tall alien creature finally emerges, the titles pop up saying: “Suicide Squad vs. Starro the Conqueror”. The story is very bitter and unflinching in its portrayal of real world politics: from weapons of mass destruction getting out of control; through anti-American dictators who are even worse than previous pro-American governments; the necessity to perpetrate a crime to prevent an even bigger crime; up to the nature of black operatives who are illegal precisely because a government is ashamed of revealing its dubious programs. Margot Robbie definitely profited the most out of this, since she got the best of all versions of Harley Quinn she ever played in a movie. Despite some brilliant moments and highly stylistic sequences (during the prison escape, Harley imagines colorful flowers instead of blood coming out of slain soldiers), "The Suicide Squad" never really feels as if it connects as a whole due to its ill-conceived or mismanaged gory ideas. The movie needed less of Tarantino and more of James Gunn.   

Grade:++

The Square

The Square; art-film / drama / satire, Sweden / Germany / France / Denmark, 2017, D: Ruben Östlund, S: Claes Bang, Christopher Læssø, Elisabeth Moss, Marina Schiptjenko, Terry Notary, Dominic West 

Christian is a curator at an art museum. In order to attract an audience and try out something new, he approves the idea of a 4*4 meter square drawn on the city square, where people can enter and demand help from society. In the midst of all this, he struggles with numerous personal problems: his wallet and mobile phone are stolen in a confidence trick, but he gets them back when he inserts letters threatening to call the police to all tenants of a building where he geolocated his phone. However, now an immigrant boy accosts Christian since his parents accused him of theft. Christian also has a one night stand with an American reporter, Anne, but doesn’t want a relationship. After a controversial video promoting the museum is released, which shows a blond girl entering the square and exploding from a land mine, Christian resigns.  

Overrated “The Square” is assembled almost like a Bunuel-style surreal satire on the modern world, demolishing and deliberately refusing to yield to the classic three-act structure of storytelling, yet it is a set of episodic vignettes which get so random at times that the movie itself loses its compass and becomes aimless. 70 minutes into the film, and you still do not know what this story is about. You get from one bizarre moment to another, and wonder when the whole thing is finally goint to end already, and then it ends and that’s it. It has several good moments, one neat comical situation (after great sex, Christian suddenly does not trust Anne that she will throw away the condom with his sperm in it, so the two pull it on both sides and won’t let go), and at least two scenes with a great example of a visual style (the subliminal, aesthetic image of a person’s shadow only seen on the street, while the person is outside the frame; the camera going up in a spiral as it tracks Christian and his two daughters climbing up spiral stairs, creating an illusion as if the stairs are just shrinking beneath them), yet it also embodies some of the worst traits of European 21st century art-films: tedious-pretentious vague symbolism; a disparate set of scenes without any ability for a narrative; shock as a compensation for lack of inspiration. 

Speaking of latter, there is an ill-conceived, cringe worthy 10-minute sequence of a shirtless artist acting like an ape during a high-society dinner, until he assaults a woman, so the guests intervene and beat him up. The message is clear—how easily civilized people can fall back into primitivism—but a message alone cannot carry an entire film. A movie needs a cinematic assembly more than just a message. While aspirational, ambitious and stylish thanks to director Ruben Ostlund, it is indicative that this film forgets its square from the title, a sanctuary of sorts, and just moves on. The symbolism is that the protagonist wanted to create an artistic stand, using a small square as some sort of place for an utopia and philanthropy, while in reality the entire society around him acts indifferent and suspicious towards everyone else (even when Christian trusts and tries to help a girl in trouble, this turns out to be a confidence trick in which she robbed his wallet), drawing a conclusion that art lost touch with modern people, able now only to deliver disingenuous artistic placebo. However, in its own indifference and contempt towards its story and characters, “The Square” ultimately became the very thing it criticized: a disingenuous artistic placebo.  

Grade:++

Sex/Life

Sex/Life, erotic drama series, USA, 2021, D: Patrizia Rozema, Jessika Borsiczky, Samira Radsi, S: Sarah Shahi, Mike Vogel, Adam Demos, Margaret Odette, Li Jun Li  

New York. Billie is a woman in her 30s who seemingly has it all: she is married to a caring husband, manager Cooper; has two lovely kids; and lives in a suburban house. However, secretly she longs for the sexual excitement of her life when she was a student and single. When she crosses paths with her ex-lover, the wild Brad, a record producer, she starts hanging out with him and writes down her fantasies about him. Cooper reads her journal on the laptop and is very upset, and even confronts Brad to stay away from Billie. Feeling remorse, Billie tries to spice up her sex life with Cooper, like having sex in a pool of a random house at night. Cooper even gets hit on by his boss, Francesca, but declines. Things get back to normal between Billie and Cooper—but just as she settles down, she changes her mind and rushes off to see Brad again.  

“Sex/Life” unravels like a more direct, female version of Wilder’s film “The Seven Year Itch”, depicting marital problems after the couple’s lives entered a certain routine with time. It owes the most of its intrigue to a great performance by the leading actress Sarah Shahi as the heroine Billie, but also to screenwriter Stacy Rukeyser who has a certain sense for conjuring up a few clever, humorous dialogues, since her specific touch can be sensed in the three best written episodes; 1, 2 and 8. For example, in the first episode, Billie wants to have sex with Cooper in bed, but as they start, he cannot focus, as he is more interested in watching a sports game on TV behind her. After that, Billie gets her vibrator, but its batteries fail her too, and the crying of the baby is heard downstairs. Her frustration is almost palpable. Billie’s narration then comments: “It’s been 18 months since the last time Cooper went down on me. I expelled an entire human being in half that time.” In episode 8, a prude, conservative mother confronts her about going to a sex party, and Billie has a perfect response: “I never judged you for not liking sex. So I expect you to not judge me for liking it, either”. In another episode, while sitting at a station, an old lady gently cautions Billie that her lactating breasts have caused two wet spots on her shirt. You rarely get a TV series so brutally honest these days, which is something that should be complimented. 

Unfortunately, the rest of the episodes, not written by Rukeyser, are less inspired, and often feel more like a soap opera, following always the same pattern: Billie going back and forth between her husband Cooper and her ex-lover Brad. It would have been good if she could make up her mind after a dozen of such repetitions. Because this way the story is just going around in circles. The dialogues from episode 3 onwards become too stale, schematic and ordinary. A triple psychological analysis of the situation Billie finds herself in is interesting, though: one interpretation could be that some people are simply never satisfied with whatever they get in life, and always strive towards the illusion of something better. Another could be the old saying that there are two types of guys—the ones that are good lovers; and the other that are good husbands—and that she wants both, even though no man can be both. This is hinted at in the now legendary sequence in episode 3, where Cooper follows Brad to see what he has what he doesn’t—and then Brad turns around in a shower, revealing he has a bigger dick (the only scene in the entire series that this is shown). Billie herself says at one point that she has 85% of all she wants with Cooper, but also needs “that other 15%”. A third one is the bitter realization that Billie’s days of youth are behind her, as she has now settled down and can only be a mother to her kids (the next generation), but refuses to grow old and still runs back to Brad, the symbol of her youth and days of carefree sex. Her escape to Brad is a vain attempt to escape the passage of time and turn back the clock. In that sense, she is a tragic character, torn by her refusal of accept fatalism. “Sex/Life” refuses to enter into moralizing, and has just enough spark and passion to outweigh its more repetitive storyline in the middle episodes.  

Grade:++

My Dad Is a Sausage

Mijn vader is een saucisse; comedy, Belgium, 2021; D: Anouk Fortunier, S: Johan Heldenbergh, Savannah Vandenriessche, Hilde De Baerdemaeker, Jade De Ridder, Serge-Henri Valcke  

Paul’s calculator explodes in the office. He suffers an overwork burnout and suddenly quits his safe job of an accountant in a big company. Paul shocks his family further when he announces his plan to follow his dream to become an actor. His wife is now the only source of income, arranging sales of Belgian chocolate to overseas. However, Paul gets unexpected support from his otherwise misanthropic daughter Zoe (12), who accompanies him to auditions and acting training. When Paul gets his first gig, playing in a costume of a sausage in a commercial, his wife wants to separate from shame. Paul auditions for his dream role, Cyrano de Bergerac, but doesn't get it, and thus reconciles with his wife and starts working as an accountant for her new chocolate company.

Family film "My Dad Is a Sausage" is a gentle comedy tale about people who have the courage to quit their comfortable lifestyle to pursue their dream despite all opposition, and works mostly thanks to its great little cast, including Johan Heldenbergh and Savannah Vandenriessche who have that warm chemistry while playing Paul and his daughter Zoe who were distant while he had a formal job, but suddenly bond when she identifies with his plight to be honest while trying to be an actor. There are some good jokes here. In one of them, the film's first scene starts off with a "seize the attention" of the viewers by presenting Paul, in his giant sausage costume, driving a bicycle with Zoe on the street, but then Zoe's narration is heard saying: "We first need to explain how we got here...". Cut to a humorous paper-cut stop-animation of the Bing Bang, Dinosaurs and prehistoric Earth, until it arrives to their family house. Paul's auditions are amusing, but also have an emotional subtext when he delivers an awful audition for a role of a doctor, but suddenly becomes better when Zoe enters the scene and talks the role with him, showing her support and sympathy for his artistic weakness. Still, the movie is rather flat narratively, and could have used more humor or ingenuity. It does not manage to go to a higher amplitude of events, settling for a safe entertainment. It is an easily accessible fun, and offers a somber message that not everyone can live only from their dreams, no matter how hard they try, which is honesty you don't see that often. 

Grade:++

The Pledge

The Pledge; psychological crime drama, USA, 2001, D: Sean Penn, S: Jack Nicholson, Robin Wright, Pauline Roberts, Aaron Eckhart, Tom Noonan, Patricia Clarkson, Helen Mirren, Vanessa Redgrave, Mickey Rourke, Benicio del Toro, Sam Shepard, Harry Dean Stanton 

After a 7-year old girl has been found dead in the snow, police detective Jerry Black interrupts his own retirement party and goes with the team to the scene of the crime. A mentally disabled Indian man with a previous history of rape is quickly arrested and tricked into confession, but he committs suicide. The case is closed, but Jerry thinks the real killer is still at large, so he buys a local gas station and waits. He accepts a local waitress, Lori, who fled from her abusive husband, yet uses her daughter Chrissy as a bait. Jerry assumes a local priest is the child killer. Jerry and his team form a surveillance unit to track Chrissy who is in the forest, preparing a picnic, yet nobody shows up. The priest died in a car crash. Jerry is left alone at the decrepit station, drowning in alcohol.  

In Sean Penn’s best outing as a director, Jack Nicholson plays one of his last and most unusual, introverted roles, as he becomes almost unrecognizable with that moustache and overweight appearance while playing the retired police inspector Jerry. “The Pledge” starts out as a typical crime investigation story, yet in its second half transitions into something more esoteric and subconscious, a psychological character study of Jerry. The said first half has great little details: upon hearing from a police detective that a murder has occurred, Jerry breaks up his retirement party and decides to go with the police team, exclaiming that his retirement “doesn’t start till six more hours”. He finds an alleged clue, a pen on the scene of the crime, but one police officer just picks it up: “Sorry, that’s mine”. In one sequence, after the suspect shot himself in the head, Jerry takes a look at the bloody wall, takes a knife and extracts a metal piece from it, which falls on the floor. His colleague asks him this: “Is it a bullet?” - “No, a tooth.” However, the movie shifts away from this realism and takes on a more philosophical, even surreal note later on. Jerry insists the real child killer is still out there, even after the case is closed, while Penn slyly inserts hallucinatory voices inside Jerry’s head every once in a while, to create a sense of uncertainty: it is never clear if Jerry is indeed right about the case, or if he is just slowly losing his mind from dementia, making his judgements unrealiable. Just like Hitchcock, Penn sets up several false alarms, and the viewers are not even sure if the other main suspect is truly guilty or not. Similarly like Fincher’s “Zodiac”, “The Pledge” also has an unorthodox open ending, steering away from the crime genre towards a conemplation about the limits of human knowledge and epistemology, as well as the inescapable fatalism. Due to such an abstract theme, and occasionally rather bland, standardly written dialogue or a strange scene, the movie did not initially attract a mass audience, but Penn never intended to make a mainstream blockbuster, but rather a bitter, honest and unassuming little film that has a certain staying power.  

Grade:+++

Floating Weeds

Ukikusa; drama, Japan, 1959, D: Yasujiro Ozu, S: Nakamura Ganjiro II, Machiko Kyo, Hiroshi Kawaguchi, Haruko Sugimura, Ayako Wakao, Hitomi Nozoe  

A group of traveling kabuki actors arrive in a ship to a small coastal town and announce their plays. An older actor, Komajuro, visits the home of his former fling, Oyoshi, and inquires about their son Kiyoshi, a lad now in his 20s. Kiyoshi grew up without a father, and was told by his mother that Komajuro—who didn’t want to settle down—is his uncle. Actress Sumiko, Komajuro’s current lover, finds out about Oyoshi and this pays Kayo a young actress, to seduce Kiyoshi. The couple falls in love. Komajuro is angry at Kiyoshi for being with the girl, until Oyoshi finally reveals to Kiyoshi that he is his father, though the lad is not surprised. Komajuro leaves the town once more, and boards a train, while Sumiko joins him.  

Even though it is included in Roger Ebert’s Great Movies list, “Floating Weeds” doesn’t distinguish itself that much from other similar works by director Yasujiro Ozu: it is serene, calm, subtle, but also flat and somewhat boring. Ozu is able to create a quiet drama with a lot of understanding for the characters and their human shortcomings, encompassing several themes, including relations between a younger and an older generation, nomads who refuse to take roots anywhere, transience (as the movie progresses, the kabuki play attracts less and less audiences with each new performance, symbolic for how out of touch with time these traditionalists have become), and the duality of an actor’s life (in one sequence, while fishing, Kiyoshi tells Komajuro how his performance in the play wasn’t very good, hinting that Kiyoshi is telling that Komajuro’s performance to be his uncle in real life is not fooling him anymore)—but this doesn’t amount to much of an entertainment value for two hours. 

The movie rises above the occasion in only three moments: the opening shot, where the lighthouse in the distance is positioned in almost the same size as a bottle on the shore; Kayo getting the assignment to seduce the young lad Kiyoshi; and the wall of rain falling on the street between Sumiko on one house and Komajuro on the other house, as they argue back and forth, symbolizing their emotional separation. The seduction segment is almost reminiscent of “Dangerous Liaisons”, and offers the best moment of the film, the one where Kayo goes to Kiyoshi, who works in the postal office, and tells him she wants to send a telegram with the words “Come outside to see me”. Kiyoshi asks her to whom she is sending it, and she says: “To you!” Indeed, irresistibly charmimg. Unfortunately, nothing else in the film repeats this high level, as the storyline quickly returns back to the standard melodrama when she admits she was paid to seduce him already 20 minutes later, yet he doesn’t mind anyway, whereas it is puzzling as to why Komajuro is so against this relationship. “Floating Weeds” is a good film that refuses to go into some more intricate plotting or greatness—save for the said three moments—and instead choses patience over competence. As Hitchcock once said, drama is life with dull bits cut out. For Ozu, this seems like the other way around.  

Grade:++