The Horse Thief

Dao ma zei; art-film / drama, China, 1986; D: Tian Zhuangzhuang, S: Rigzin Tseshang, Jiji Dan, Daiba, Drashi, Gaoba, Jamco Jayang

Tibet. Buddhist monks pay respects to their dead. Norbu, a nomad, has to resort to stealing horses to feed his family, wife Dolma and son Tashi. When Norbu steals temple gifts from the headman, his clan expels him and his entire family and orders them to live in exile. In a tent, Tashi catches a cold during winter and dies. Years pass by, and Dolma gives birth to another child. Norbu struggles to survive and feed his family. He sells his horse for money. When he is accused of stealing the horse one night, he orders Dolma to ride away with their child in an unknown direction. Norbu rides away. Later, he is killed by the people who accused him of stealing.

At the TV show "At the Movies with Roger Ebert", guest M. Scorsese named Tian Zhuangzhuang's "The Horse Thief" as his no. 1 movie of the decade, which retroactively gave it the status of a secret recommendation. While such superlative acclaim is a little bit exaggerated, "The Horse Thief" is still a valuable and aspirational blend of ethnographic documentary of the never before seen cultural life of Tibet and a narrative of a man resorting to stealing to feed his family. Raw, astringent and minimalistic director's approach give this film a high dose of realism, with sometimes creepy and disturbing rituals recorded on the screen (Buddhist monks leave a deceased man out on the meadow, where it is given to vultures in a sort of 'cycle of life'; men throw a dozen semi-dead sheep into a crater and bury them alive (?), in a tradition that is given no context nor explanation). Equipped with several panorama shots of Tibet's meadows and mountains, the movie ponders on some bitter themes in the world (desolate existence; loneliness; man at the mercy of destiny; the cycle of suffering until death; fatalism), but not every sequence is equally as interesting, making several moments seem boring and overstretched. The ending feels abrupt and with an unnecessary scene of animal cruelty (Norbu slaying a sheep with a knife). "The Horse Thief" isn't for everyone's taste, but, similarly like "Nanook of the North", it is a quality slow movie that gives a rare insight into an isolated culture that seems like it came from another world.

Grade:+++

A Man Escaped

Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut; drama / art-film, France, 1956, D: Robert Bresson, S: Francois Leterrier, Charles La Clainche, Maurice Beerblock, Jacques Ertaud  

France during World War II. The occupational Nazi dictatorship shot 7,000 prisoners at the Montluc prison. French Resistance member Fontaine is held in this prison. He withholds an iron spoon after breakfast and uses it to chisel the wooden door of his cell. He removes three planks and is able to exit to the hallway, but returns them to the door before the guards show up. Upon hearing that he is sentenced to death, Fontaine decides to try to escape during that night, but is given an unknown cellmate, Jost. Even though he suspects Jost is an informer, Fontaine tells him about his escape plan and brings him with him. They use an improvised hook and rope to descend down the prison building, kill a prison guard in the back yard, and climb up the wall to freedom.  

Included in Roger Ebert’s list of Great Movies, “A Man Escaped” is sometimes regarded as one of the highlights in Robert Bresson’s career, whose ‘ascetic’ and raw directing style blends in here remarkably well with traces of suspense, until it reaches a climax in the fascinating 20-minute escape sequence at the end that is both tranquil and full of intensity at the same time—almost as a “sedated Hitchcock”. This is probably one of the most influential art-films in the prison escape subgenre, since its structure and events were impersonated by numerous subsequent films. Bresson avoids any kind of sentimentality and even anxiety or depression, and is instead interested in an almost objective, concise, minimalist depiction of the prison break. He builds his story solely on great little details: the protagonist Fontaine uses the blunt side of an iron spoon to slowly carve out the frame of the wooden door, remove three planks from it, and exit the hallway at night. 

Fontaine spots a chalk inscription on an inmate’s door, “Food forbidden”, and erases it, while his monologue explains how he was happy he could help him, and that he felt pleased while returning back to his cell and going asleep. Fontaine bends the metal for light fittings in his cell, makes a hook out of it, and holds on to it while the hook is attached to the bars on his window, to test if it can support his weight. The meticulous sequence in which he shreds his bedsheets, clothes and pillow case, and then knits a “rope-braid” out of it. The agonizing waiting for hours for the prison guard in the back yard to finally get away from the place where Fontaine intends to descend down the wall. Bresson is today not that well remembered because he was so conventional and simple in his approach—yet very few other conventional movies are able to be effective and sophisticated on such a high level while just focusing on its topic, whereas its themes here are practically universal (yearning for freedom to escape from misery; integrity even during hardship; salvation of the soul from hell). However, Bresson's de-dramatized, bland style is still a little bit overrated: everything here is done just right, and yet, watching a Bresson movie is like having a soup without salt. He simply lacks passion.

Grade:+++

Minari

Minari; drama, USA, 2020, D: Lee Isaac Chung, S: Steven Yeun, Han Ye-ri, Alan Kim, Noel Kate Cho, Youn Yuh-jung, Will Patton  

A Korean immigrant family moves from California to a meadow in Arkansas in the 80s, and has to live in a giant trailer-house for start. The kids, Anne and David, try to adapt and speak English, while their parents Jacob and Monica still speak Korean and work in a factory separating male and female chicks. Jacob and a religious American, Paul, plant Korean vegetables, since Paul read that 30,000 Koreans move to America each year, and that they will want to buy Korean food. Grandma moves in with them, but suffers a stroke. When grandma wants to burn the garbage in a can one night, the fire spreads and encompasses the barn, destroying all the vegetables. But along a creek, minari vegetables has grown, and thus Jacob and David pick it.  

Another investment into quality independent cinema by Plan B productions was appropriately rewarded with critical acclaim and accolades, and is an overall honest, emotional, genuine and unassuming little film about Korean migrants to the United States. “Minari” is good, but somehow too standard and conventional achievement, never quite succeeding in transforming into something more. Everything is done right and good, but no sequence is extraordinary or unique, leaving a rather forgettable impression. The director Lee Isaac Chung gets the maximum out of his cast, who all deliver fine performances, most notably Youn Yuh-jung as the unusal grandma. In one funny sequence, David argues with her: “A real grandma bakes cakes, doesn’t swear, and doesn’t wear men’s underwear”, and later on even spills tea and serves her with his urine in a teacup, but as dad wants to punish him, grandma defends the kid, and even says that drinking urine was “fun”. "Minari" is a cozy and pleasant 'memory book' of a Korean family in the US, a one whose good intentions and sympathies are more significant than its cinematic capabilities.

Grade:++

Jurassic World Dominion

Jurassic World Dominion; science-fiction action, USA, 2022, D: Colin Trevorrow, S: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Isabella Sermon, Laura Dern, Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, Campbell Scott, DeWanda Wise  

After the last events, dinosaurs have spread across the world. Owen and Claire guard Maisie, the teenage clone of Benjamin Lockwood’s daughter, in a snowy cottage. When company Biosyn creates genetically modified giant locusts to eat all the crops except the ones bioengineered by Biosyn, a food crisis threatens the world, so Owen, Ckaire and Maisie join forces with original “Jurassic Park” crew Ellie, Ian Malcolm and Alan Grant to stop Biosyn and their CEO Dodgson.  

The third installment in the botched “Jurassic Park” sequel trilogy, “Jurassic World Dominion” is a tiresome and muddled film which itself doesn’t even know what it wants to say nor where it is going. After a long pause, the three original cast crew from the first film were reunited again (Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum) and crossed over with the new characters from the new trilogy, but instead of using this historic opportunity to give them something special to do, they were just degraded to mere extras, and whatever they do, the new characters could have done instead of them, anyway. Ellie and Dr. Grant either just run or scream, but their charm and broader capacities were left somewhere in the first film. In fact, the story is so negligent towards them that they shouldn’t have even bothered returning. It treats them like they don’t matter. The storyline initially starts off promising, with some amusing depictions of dinosaurs now inhabiting the entire globe (a TV news clip mentions “37 dinosaur related deaths worldwide” with a video of a drivers dodging a Stegosaurus on the road and thus falling from the cliff in his vehicle; a married couple releases two pigeons, but a Pterosaur flies by and catches one), but then the screenwriters suddenly forget about this concept and instead focus on some plot involving giant engineered locusts eating crops, which feels terribly shoehorned, like an intruder which “steals” away the initial dinosaur plot. Instead of an upgrade, it is a downgrade, and one already knows that the main characters won’t be hurt, anyway, regardless how ostensibly dangerous the situation is. Alas, only the special and visual effects of the giant lizards are able to be a marvel, and one wonders if all the one-dimensional human characters are superfluous by this time. Maybe the whole movie should have just been without dialogue, only depicting dinosaurs.  

Grade:+

Exotica

Exotica; drama, Canada, 1994; D: Atom Egoyan, S: Bruce Greenwood, Elias Koteas, Mia Kirshner, Don McKellar, Arsinée Khanjian, Sarah Polley

Toronto. Thomas passes through the customs office and smuggles rare parrot eggs for his pet store. He shares a cab drive with a man who gives him tickets for ballet performance as a compensation. Thomas' store is audited by tax auditor Francis, who notices discrepancies. Francis spends his night going to the strip bar Exotica and always hires Christine to dance for him, so that they can talk. Exotica's DJ Eric is jealous at Francis, because Christine is his ex-girlfriend, and persuades Francis to touch her next time, only to then use this as a pretext to throw him out of the bar and ban his entrance. This surprises Eric's wife, the pregnant Zoe, who is Exotica's owner. Francis persuades Thomas to talk to Christine to see what happened. Francis wants to shoot Eric, but changes his mind when Eric reveals he found Francis' dead daughter years ago. A long time ago, Christine was the babysitter of Francis' daughter, who was abducted by a man. Francis thus kept his contact with Christine to this day.

One of Atom Egoyan's most famous films, which Roger Ebert included—generously—into his list of Great Movies, "Exotica" is a drama about how many people are interwoven and connected with each other, and uses the eponymous strip club only as an allegory for the characters who slowly reveal more and more intimate details about themselves, until their vulnerable psyche is exposed completely at the end. "Exotica" is strangely disorienting, since Egoyan uses a more unusal approach of randomly introducing characters and subplots, but the viewers are not certain what their relations are or how relevant all of this is for the plot. Peculiarly, the movie just keeps going with some situations without giving the context (Francis paying Tracy to babysit at his home, even though his place is empty), so the viewers will have to wait until the finale, when all the relations are explained, revealed and categorized, including Francis' tragic family past. However, the movie is not always inspired, and tends to focus on some bland sequences more than it should be warranted, whereas the dialogue is standard and flat, with only a few exceptions (one being the great dark moment when Francis says this to Tracy: "All I’m saying is that nobody asked to be brought into the world, you just ended up getting here. So the question is, now that you’re here, who’s asking you to stay?"). The rather melodramatic main plot was camouflaged into a more artistic juncture, which somewhat alleviated the thin story and some omissions (for instance, the supporting character of Thomas could have easily been cut from the story), whereas the most was achieved from excellent actors, including Elias Koteas as the jealous strip club DJ and Bruce Greenwood as the tormented Francis who is clinging on to the remains of his past.

Grade:++