Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Kaze no Tani no Naushika)

After more than two decades working with animation in TV series, studio projects and his own feature debut, the Miyazaki we know from the likes of My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away began in 1984 with Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, his gorgeous sophomore effort that only recently came to prominence – heavily cut at the time of its initial releases in the West, it was re-released in its original form in 2005. His monsters (both biological and mechanical) do not yet come to life as they do in his incoming masterpieces, and his highly detailed movie universes have more space of their own in most of his subsequent works, but Nausicaä feels incomplete in the same way a button would feel incomplete next to its final form as a flower.

Released five years after Miyazaki’s feature debut, the ridiculously fun The Castle of Cagliostro (which is more or less a Miyazaki Bond movie with a thief as the leading man and desexualized Bond girls as sidekicks), the film is a transitional work between his TV years and his latter authorial aspirations towards feminist, environmentalist and pacifist themes, all organized into his second film in a much familiar prototype. The creative genius of catbuses, dragons, tree spirits and scarecrows here lies in the form of building-sized bugs, bird-like airplanes and jet gliders, extemporal clothes and armors that come as something out of a Mad Max movie (it even includes a metallic arm-wearing badass empress) and more – results of a post-apocalyptic Earth that makes room for an wildly organic universe of toxic forests and acidic oceans. They retain the beauty of Miyazaki’s more famous images, but they also delve into unconventionally darker realities.

Nausicaä is Miazaki’s first full-fledged leading heroine, a young, independent princess who doubles as adventurer, warrior and researcher whose most particular interest consists of the strange bugs that hide in the toxic forest that threatens her home, the Valley of the Wind. These bugs hide an untold story of survival and adaptation against the ruthlessness of society’s technological impositions, and if this sounds like a black-in-white fable about humankind’s incontrollable impulse to destroy and pollute, you won’t be surprised to know that the film is sponsored by none other than the WWF itself.

But the world of Nausicaä and the problem in question are shown with an ambiguity lacking in most films of its kind in their environmentalist pleas for understanding. The film shows that fighting this impulse is a difficult mission because more often than not finding evidence of the problem and subsequent solutions is the hardest possible approach amid bellicose bureaucracy and dirty politics. In the way the fauna and flora presents itself to its people, one could assume that this is an alternate take to the apocalyptic vision presented in other Japanese films such as Godzilla and Akira. Instead of nuclear explosions, atomic breath and grotesque super powers, Nausicaä is a crystal clear example of the sort of filmmaking Miyazaki would be famous for: the forests are filled with exotic plants full of floating spores and glowing fruit, and the animals we discover through his imagination could very well be from pre-historic eras or undiscovered ecosystems within the ones we know.

While the director builds a fairly elaborate universe and merges a multitude of his favorite themes into one story with admirable ease, the film is still a transitional work and must be taken as such. The Castle of Cagliostro is a great example of action filmmaking for not binding with exposition and letting its intricacies and plot twists surprise the audience and reveal crucial information, Nausicaä is something of a disappointment for doing exactly and consistently the opposite. In a breathtakingly detailed world of bizarre surprises drawn under very compelling rules and lead by a great protagonist, the thrill of such discoveries is ruined by a script that is all exposition and no character development, sacrificing layers and layers of detail for the sake of clichés.

The problem with Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, an oil drop in a glass of water, is that a story as familiar as that has to crave for more maturity and play with out expectations instead of following them. Instead of ambiguous, complex heroes and villains, we get features of common period pieces and children’s stories taken by the numbers: a small village oppressed by a ruthless king; a young hero who defies the conservative rules of the elderly; the misunderstood creatures whom the hero befriends; the inevitable confrontation between man and creature as good and evil. Seen after watching superior work from the great master of animation, it feels like an warm-up by comparison.

Yet this sophomore effort is still a marvel to behold, a work of animation like no other that transcend conventions and creates an entirely new concept of movie experience. Much like the work of other great directors, a lesser Miyazaki is better than most, and Nausicaä is as compelling a hero as you could get from such a film. One could just watch it without any subtitles and still understand everything, and one should if only for how beautiful it is. And that’s essentially the reason why we can come back to his films over and over again.

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

Year: 1984

Director: Miyazaki Hayao

Voice Cast: Shimamoto Sumi, Matsuda Yoji, Sakakibara Yoshiko, Naya Goro

This Week at The Hand Grenade’s Headquarters #19

Joe (David Gordon Green, 2013)

Joe, a film as humble as its title, is many things in one: a return for Nicolas Cage, who once again disappears into his role as he always does in his best films; a great story about recidivism, and how good people can often take the wrong path when they’re drunk of anger; and a showcase of great characters that resonate in your mind. The film, about the son of a drunk man who finds a father figure in his new employer, piles one good performance over another while piling one great moment after another: Joe (Nicolas Cage), the father figure, is played with incredible sincerity and muscular passion (Cage’s excesses are not to be found anywhere); Gary (Tye Sheridan), the fifteen year-old son, is moving and heart-warming in the world where the decency of a hopeful boy is often under the influence of bad elements; and Wade (Gary Poulter), played by an actual homeless man who lost his way and died before the film’s release, is a terrifying, utterly convincing portrait of family abuse whose ambiguity pinpoints the film’s power, which centers exactly who tough it is to stick to your family when it’s your biggest poison.

Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985)

Part George Orwell fantasy, part Terry Gilliam dark extravaganza, Brazil couldn’t feel less like its title song, and its grayness is a marvel to behold: its retro-futuristic world, borrowing heavily from Metropolis, Battleship Potemkin and film noir, is a tsunami or bureaucracy, paperwork, plumbing, elevator buttons and indistinguishable buildings. Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), the protagonist of a story of a misfile that drives an entire counter-terrorist investigation, is a great alternate to 1984’s Winston Smith, and his quest for liberty and happiness, although personal, is very heart-warming. The romantic side of Brazil is a bit absurd and uninteresting, especially due to Kim Greist’s performance, but the humorous side, just as ludicrous, is a marvel to behold. Kudos for one of Robert De Niro’s least conventional performances as a heroic man who can’t stand the sight of a 27B/6.

Ivan’s Childhood / Ivanovo Destvo (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1962)

Time after time, a clear and resonating idea gradually has filled up my mind: the best war films I’ve seen – Lawrence of Arabia, Come and See, Paths of Glory, Grave of the Fireflies, and now Ivan’s Childhood – never show their wars as thoroughly victorious and worthwhile, and their approaches are always aware of the deceitful appeal of sentimentality. Ivan’s Childhood, shot not long after The Steamrolller and the Violin, is not only a great war film (or anti-war film, if you’d like), but also one of the most beautiful entries in the genre and one of the strongest feature film debuts in history. Tarkovsky would be more spiritual and show us even more breathtaking images, but his first film still comes as a dazzling experience.

It’s lead by Ivan (Nikolay Burlyaev), a young man orphaned by World War II who seeks revenge against the Germans at all costs. He’s the strongest men in an army of people who have seen the horror of war very closely, but not as closely as Ivan has. Surrounded but not lost in the hands of the Nazis, Ivan and his protectors go back and forth throughout gorgeous yet ominous Russian landscapes (swamps, rivers, beaches, white forests) as desolate as they must feel themselves, and victory, or escape, is not to be seen – if not because they’ve already lost so much, arguably because their losses might continue.

Nosferatu: A  Symphony of Horror / eine Symphonie des Grauens (F.W. Murnau, 1922)

At first one may laugh at the cheesiness that permeates the film in the scenes leading up to the first sight of Count Orlok, but later on the film becomes a true, pure symphony of horror. Not that it remains scary or unsettling (for a scarier silent film experience, see The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari), but its haunting images and its dark villain (a true vampire, without any flairs of theatricality) are a thing of legend. The greatest thing about it is that as imperfect as it is, it remains haunting before and especially after you begin to know what comes next.

Mr. Turner (Mike Leigh, 2014)

Usually when I write a review (or a short paragraph), or simply when I’m watching a film of visual beauty, I pick two of three screenshots out of my own selection to decorate my paragraphs and give the review some context. I also do that so save these screenshots to myself due to their greatness. This is usually easy work, but often a film boasts cinematography so indescribably beautiful I feel like I should screenshot it whole so as to avoid the process. Mr. Turner, the film about the British painter of seascapes, sunrises and naval battles, is so good looking and so fascinating in its visual spectacle it could scrape its story off and get away merely with its images. It’s as if Turner made the film himself.

That’s not to overlook all the film’s qualities, and they’re many (Gary Yershon’s score, Mike Leigh’s fancy yet humble script, Timothy Spall’s fantastic performance of grunts and small verses), but this film succeeds largely because it offers the story of a subject in its own perspective of the world. This is a rare trait of biographical films (you can do that in Selma, but you can’t do it in The Imitation Game or The Theory of Everything), and Mr. Turner honors the unmatched British painter with effortless grace. Spall’s Turner is a genius and an ordinary man, a poet and a witness of the world’s poetry, an honorable man of charisma and humor and a troubled and contradictory man. In the end, he’s as awe-inspiring and uncontrollable as the world he printed in his canvases. And this film too.

Safety Last! (Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor, 1923)

Safety Last! is the most famous of all Harold Lloyd comedies, and as one full of impossible stunts and great pantomime, it still shows how superior is the cinema of Chaplin and Keaton. Like most Keaton films, the story is half a comedy of clichés made best and half a marathon of physical achievements, but while his famous building-climbing stunt is fascinating and nerve-wracking, the film relies too much on its clichés. Lloyd’s great physical comedy is made less impressive by a bad script that relies on intertitles and overused jokes (they would’ve worked very well if it were a talkie), and while these jokes are present in many of the all time great comedies, these films are great because they subvert them instead of using them clean and straight.

Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)

Andrei Rublev is a strange epic of immeasurable proportions. It’s certainly one of the most poetic and one of the most politically biting and it succeeds at something that few biopics (and Andrei Rublev is no conventional biopic) achieve: telling a story of an artist and its times. And it’s about our times too: the lack of artistic freedom, the religious intolerance, the suppression of thought, the role of spirituality in the Church. It’s like no other Tarkovsky film, let alone any other film in particular.

Stranger Than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch, 1984)

Willie’s cousin arrives from Hungary, stays with him for ten days and leaves to Cleveland. Willie and his friend, Eddie, decide to visit her and eventually go on a vacation. End of the film. Alfred Hitchcock famously said that “drama is life with the dull parts left out”, Stranger Than Paradise couldn’t be more of an anti-drama. But by selecting the dull parts out of the whole adventure (which must have included many more dull parts that never made the film), Jim Jarmusch has created something of a spot-on portrait of bohemian sedentary lifestyle and inertia that wins your heart episode by episode; at first it’s an empty mess of low-budget filmmaking, then a good low-budget time-waster, and finally a low-budget tour de force.

 

For the Shot of the Week, I decided to go past the visual brilliance of Mr. Turner and select something different instead: the kiss in Ivan’s Childhood, which requires no explanation.

This Week at The Hand Grenade’s Headquarters #12

After writing about very few movies in the last two weeks, I wondered whether I should really stop watching films as often as I did, and thus I decided that if I feel I’ve done all the work I needed to do that day, I’d reward myself with a film; if not, then no extra film. I believe that keeps me busy when I’m not out or anything similar and it helps me get to know more about cinema as long as I’m studying it from literary methods.

I also replaced my shot-by-shot analysis of this week by a film marathon of directors I decided would take me an extra time that I didn’t have (considering that I return to Penn in August). I decided as well that I would explore some various films before proceeding to directors I haven’t fully explored: the first director for the month of February is Tarkovsky, cinema’s most poetic filmmaker. Thus here is a much longer list, because movie lists should always be big and rich of material and joy.

The Queen (Stephen Frears, 2006)

Stephen Frears’ The Queen is quite an interesting period piece: while it plays safe in its approach to the incidents following the death of Diana with solid arguments, devoidance of tension and not so subtle points of view on the matter, it also offers a fresh, conscious perspective of the popularity and the modernization of the monarchy in the United Kingdom. Lead by many pieces of footage from the Princess, Helen Mirren’s delicate performance, Michael Sheen’s fine but unimpressive performance as Tony Blair and James Cromwell as an annoying Prince Philip, The Queen, more than anything, feels like a docudrama, a retelling of a much known story in dramatic, theatrical terms. It’s a cold film, but one worth watching.

Kadosh (Amos Gitai, 1999)

Rivka (Yaël Abecassis) is married to Meir (Yoram Hattab), a Yeshiva student, and they haven’t had a children in an otherwise dedicated and loving marriage of 10 years. Malka (Meital Barda), Rivka’s younger sister, is in love with Yaakov (Sami Huri), but is bound to marry another man whom her family accepts and sympathizes with. Both sisters are stuck in an unbalanced situation in the rough conditions for women in a Haredi society, a stream of Orthodox Judaism that sets them as child bearers and housewives. As shown by director Amos Gitai, they don’t exactly think critically of the traditions that surround them, yet such traditions put them into complex situations: one is trapped because she’s in love with her husband and sees this love crumbling down, the other because she wants to embrace her fate but can’t.

Confidently slow and quiet, Kadosh is a slow burner with great performances and a very moving story, never melodramatic in spite of its particular subjects. It’s told with slow zooms, very delicate pans and tilts and masterful, effortless long takes that barely call attention to themselves, and as a result, the film manages to be as spiritual and humble as the characters depicted. I believe it may not be for everyone, but it’s certainly a great film.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (Larry Charles, 2006)

Borat, Sasha Baron Cohen’s most iconic and most acclaimed creation, is the king in the castle of risky comedies, brave and respected (it has a score of 89 on Metacritic, a critic’s score of 91% on Rotten Tomatoes and a top critics score of 98%) for standing astonishingly close to the division between satire/parody and gross-out exploitation and remaining on the former side. It’s movie with a very interesting resulting reaction from audiences and critics: most people who hated the movie did so much less because of some of its uglier jokes (most of the too scatological ones… and that naked fight before the final act) than because it’s “shamelessly prejudiced and politically incorrect”, when in fact it isn’t. Some could say that it goes too far (and it does sometimes), and that it creates too big a contrast between the uneducated interviewees of this mockumentary and the film’s viewers (some of them probably deceiving themselves by feeling superior to the others on the screen), but the thing is, this film is still hilarious and it certainly does not defend the racial and social stereotypes it depicts.

In fact, it’s quite the opposite: Borat (the film) is the mafia film from inside the institution and its fellow insider films: it shows us through the words of those confronted with prejudice the prejudice in themselves – and in ourselves as well. The way Sasha/Borat and the film do it is enough reason to understand that this is a film far above some of the attributions given to them. It’s sort of a trap for those who take political correctness for granted: often you’ll laugh before you can ask yourself whether you should.

Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (Terry Jones, 1983)

The Meaning of Life was one of my first reviews (now updated, as I did with Casablanca), and returning to this film is a pleasure and a reminder that such comedy doesn’t exist in such a strong form as this one. Borat here is an exception, and still it doesn’t feel as universal and artistically brave (one of the reasons is Borat’s deliberate documentary style, but there are others). This is why we’ll always need some Monty Python in our lives, and that’s putting it mildly, since the Meaning of Life doesn’t come near the heights of Holy Grail and Life of Brian.

Beauty and the Beast / La Belle et la Bête (Jean Cocteau, 1946)

Strange that a film would have to argue that we must embrace the imaginative vision of children before we watch it, and yet how wonderful it is that it asks us to do so and bravely answers with a beautiful portrayal of fairy-tale storytelling. Beauty and the Beast, in its ultimate version of utmost superiority, is one of the most gorgeous and magical tales and certainly one of the most visually poetic. It precedes the Disney version of the story by 45 years, but it still feels like an art-house reconstruction of the story through practical effects, bold symbolism and smooth, almost fantasy-like camera movements, like the eyes of a poet passing through the universe created. Pure and simply a masterpiece.

Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone, 1984)

The best film of the week (and the best film out of the 30 I saw in January – you can check the list here), Once Upon a Time in America is an all-time greatest, a masterpiece in every possible level that embodies the emotions of a lifetime of art and storytelling on the outside and a lifetime of characters on the inside, thus creating a powerful drama worth every second of its 251 minutes, probably the largest number the film’s going to get. Sergio Leone’s final film, a gangster city epic opposed to its countless masterful Westerns, started at 269 minutes, then edited by Leone to 229 minutes, then butchered by American distributors to 139 minutes, then restored to its original release length and finally to the 251 minutes currently available. It’s a lesson that lengthy efforts should be respected for what they are and what they can be to others.

The film tells the story of Noodles (Robert De Niro), a Jewish New Yorker who emerged as a mobster from a tough, reckless childhood and, along with his friends and acquaintances, rose to uncertain (and perhaps partially unwanted) power and luxury. As the film flashes back and fort through his memories, there’s a sense of friendship, betrayal, loss, violence, greed, and ultimately that of an emotional scar so painful and so moving words cannot describe it. There’s glorious nostalgia and compassion in this film, supported by a fistful of great performances (De Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern, a young Jennifer Connelly and whoever else you want to pick), a beautiful partnership between Leone and Ennio Morricone (which, I believe, tops Spielberg and Williams, because Morricone wins the race by a nose, and Leone by many more), an indescribable collection of close-ups and some of the most beautiful shots of New York you will ever see. Perfection finds a home here.

Yojimbo (Kurosawa Akira, 1961)

Yojimbo, Sanjuro‘s twin brother, tells the story of a nameless ronin (a samurai without a master) who ends up by fate in a hell hole of a provincial city lead by two rival clans in the end of the Tokugawa period and decides to have them fight against each other for the good of the city. While Sanjuro is lighthearted in its humor and more explicit in its criticism of violence, Yojimbo is far darker and more adventurous on the matter (for starters, I think of the iconic entrance of the samurai in town, and his reaction to the passing dog). It’s cleverly arranged in simple but beautiful horizontal and vertical lines (according to Kurosawa scholar Donald Richie, it’s his most beautifully shot film), and Mifune does a classic performance as the good people’s devil in a city where everything is drenched in greed and self-interests. It doesn’t beat the lesser-known Sanjuro and its haunting finale, though.

The Bourne Identity (Doug Liman, 2002)

A man is found floating adrift in the Mediterranean in the brink of death. He wakes up with no memory of who he is, what he does for a living or what brought him there. After he returns to land, he finds out that he is unconsciously a master of martial arts, a target from local and American police and a highly trained escape artist. He also learns that he has a chip under his skin with a laser that indicates the number of a bank account in Switzerland, full of multiple passports, 4 digits worth of cash and guns. Still, he never even tries to guess who he is, because, after all, there are so many possibilities, including even a spy and an assassin – who knows?

Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) hasn’t watched many action movies, but most people certainly have, and I have too. Still, the movie with the most orange-and-blue poster in movie history (curiously, the movie looks more than fine) is well above average in what comes to aesthetics and authenticity, and although it doesn’t crave for much, it’s thoroughly watchable and exciting in many ways. It feels like an exercise for the sequels (which I haven’t seen yet) in its simple-minded action sequences and thrills, but these thrills are well executed and driven by entertaining characters, mainly Bourne and his CIA counterpart, played by Chris Cooper (who would win the Oscar for another 2002 performance in Adaptation). Plus, you get the cinephiliac thrill of watching Jason Bourne AND Franka Potente from Run Lola Run together on the same mission.

That’s it for the month of January! February should be more much exciting, though: short paragraphs for all films from Andrei Tarkovsky (with the exception of Solaris), a generous load of silent films, full reviews for the five remaining Best Picture nominees (I can tell from my first viewing of Boyhood that it’s probably the best film Brazil has seen in 2014), and the eight usual full reviews (two parallel special themes, four reviews each).

Any suggestions of movies to watch or to review? Please let me know in the comments or visit our page on Facebook.

This Week at The Hand Grenade’s Headquarters #1

While the main feature of these last few days was the sci-fi craze full of pod bay doors, lightsabers and people damning all to hell, there were films that had their own importance and left marks that just can’t be ignored. This happens all too often all throughout the years, no matter the course of action of my moviegoing process. As I watched film after film (this is the list of 2014), I collected that the idea of this blog, besides storing my opinions on films and indirectly posing recommendations and warning, is to share my love for cinema and to help me talk about it as freely as I can.

That said, I’ve decided to start a new feature here called This Week at The Hand Grenade’s Headquarters, with the purpose of briefly addressing every film I watch that doesn’t share the privilege of those I analyze in full reviews. A paragraph or two follows for every movie on the list, a somewhat noteworthy shot and there you go. This week, we start with a showdown of Technicolor and finish with a showdown of digital filmmaking. Hope you enjoy it!

Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977)

I have watched a considerable amount of horror movies this October and pretend to watch a few more to compensate for my lack of experience in the genre. Suspiria is no doubt one of the craziest and flashiest I have seen in the period; it’s such a strong assault on the senses one might wonder why there aren’t more horror films like this. Dario Argento’s weird masterpiece is part of the giallo subgenre, which consists of horror films, mostly Italian, which combine over-the-top cinematography with B-movie flair to generate beautiful gore and suspense, and Suspiria is claimed by many to be the brightest and greatest of all.

The great thing about this film is that the evocation of fear and anger takes the form of bright primary colors and non-diegetic sound (even better, Goblin’s unforgettable soundtrack) rather than the usual jump scares and iconic monsters. I even suspect that most of what one sees and hears serves just as a complement to the story without actually being part of it, as if an Italian director had directed a 1920’s German Expressionist horror film with the colors of all 1950’s melodramas combined. Suspiria tells the not-that-important story of Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper), an American ballerina who joins an American institution only to find that not everything at the place – especially a few gory murders – seems to follow logic of the natural and the real.

Stolen Kisses / Baisers Volés (François Truffaut, 1968)

The third installment of the Antoine Doinel series, Stolen Kisses is an odd but delightful film by François Truffaut, who gets wiser both in its depiction of semi-autobiographical Doinel, who’s now a young adult in his early twenties, and in his direction. Truffaut here manages to give out some of his impressions of the turbulent France of 1968 and to address the experiences of his youth with more seriousness and tenderness. The erratic nature of Doinel, played by nouvelle vague regular Jean-Pierre Léaud in an adorable, brilliant performance, remains stronger than ever, and to watch him is to watch Truffaut unwrapping his life in front of the cameras with an utter sincerity that reaches peaks of effortless grace.

Perhaps what stops Stolen Kisses from being a masterpiece, besides it’s slow start, is the inevitability of its oddness, marked by Truffaut’s transition from its New Wave period to his later works of art and from a personal adaptation of Hitchcock’s cinema to an adaptation of Renoir’s. The film strikes very high and very low notes, and the shots don’t call as much attention to themselves as they did in The 400 Blows and Jules et Jim. Nevertheless, it’s a gorgeous film, filled with great scenes, great performances and poetic long takes.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (Robert Wise, 1951)

Now there’s one curious movie experience. Versatile filmmaker Robert Wise directed this widely praised classic as a morally powerful tale of union and international peace that could still be seen as great entertainment. The film does work hard to achieve goal, and as a result it doesn’t far enough towards any of its intended directions. It’s not enough of a thriller to scare and excite, not nearly political enough to maintain its moral sparks, not enough of a messianic tale to cement its status as a politically rich E.T. and definitely not scientific enough to be pure science fiction, even though this last direction wasn’t intended.

Yet The Day the Earth Stood Still is still a crowning achievement and a must-see for any science fiction fan. The photography is marvelous, the main performances fit perfectly and the alien props don’t actually hurt; in fact, such a socially minded depiction of extraterrestrials make up for a fascinating premise. The film moves you in many ways, and its innocence and originality are very striking. In the end it’s half a great film, half a downer.

Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967)

In the hands of director Arthur Penn, produced Warren Beatty and his following magnificent cast, in 1967 the New Wave reached Hollywood and things have never been the same again. Beatty plays the American Jean-Paul Belmondo as Clyde Barrow, Faye Dunaway plays the American Jeanne Moreau as Bonnie Parker, and living only seems to be easy when you’re Bonnie and Clyde, but going to the movies is certainly a piece of cake when you go and watch them. 47 years later, it seems to retain all of its freshness and charm.

Bonnie and Clyde remains a groundbreaking, tremendous piece of entertainment, filled with unstoppable performances that populate our minds in the form of Dede Allen’s quick cuts, Penn’s long takes and America big, long wheat fields. No movie looks like it and no one will, especially in its out of bounds sympathetic depiction of violence, which makes it all the more challenging to understand.

This is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner, 1984)

Perhaps it wasn’t the right time for me to watch Rob Reiner’s This is Spinal Tap (it’s ironic that this was my first rock documentary), because this is a hilarious film from start to finish and I only grew that inside of me after some many minutes, when the band members depicted in this mockumentary comment on the harsh reviews their albums receive. One of them says it was “nitpicking”, the other says “I’ve never heard of that one, that’s a good one” and so it goes. The band is so unaware of their badness it’s actually great to watch. The film parodies rock documentaries and their subjects, but the essence of rock and rock stardom is kept alive to the point that many bands loved it and deemed it as one of the great films of the subgenre. The dialogue, derived from a great deal of ad-lib and improvisation, is enormously quotable, losing only to that of people like Monty Python, because the silliness is only hinted, and Tarantino, because Spinal Tap is too stupid to be philosophical.

Shadows (John Cassavetes, 1959)

Tony Russell (Anthony Ray) and Lelia Carruthers (Lelia Goldoni) appear as the leading couple and stay solid as the centerpiece of John Cassavetes’ Shadows. Until a good third into the film, we barely know anything about them. By the end, we believe we know much more and at the same time the ending drifts away from Tony and Lelia and goes back to Benny (Ben Carruthers) and his buddies, who’re just as lost as Tony and Lelia and were the center of attention until the couple emerged in the screen. Such is the vibrancy of Shadows that everything looks abrupt but feels smooth and natural. It’s vibrant and energetic to the point of intoxication, and all of this came from a directing debut that shook the world of independent cinema.

Shadows, in a way, reminds me of the films of Federico Fellini in its love for the urban life and its restless energy, especially at night, only here Cassavetes’ party people are even more restless and far less intellectualized than Fellini’s. While La Dolce Vita, Nights of Cabiria and 8 1/2 seem to move through very definite ways, Shadows goes everywhere at it’s supposed to, and that, along with the largely improvisational and multifaceted plot, makes for a brilliant depiction of the lives of such people. It’s about race, it’s about partying, it’s about informality and it’s about dating both while sober and while drunk. The cast and the dialogue is near perfect, but in the conditions the movie was made, it’s as perfect as it could be. Probably the best film in this list.

Sin City (Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez, 2005)

The big downer of this week. While this attempts to be extensively, cartoon digital filmmaking at its finest, Sin City sacrifices its own great effects with terrible storytelling and a weak vision of thrill. The visuals are actually very interesting: you keep wishing that Miller and Rodriguez would explore it more with a stronger variety of camerawork and other stylistic devices, and wonder how did it go so wrong afterwards in films like 300 and Sucker Punch. But apart from Mickey Rourke’s hugely likable turn and Brittany Murphy’s brief appearance, the film never decides whether it wants to play cool or to go cheesy camp overdrive all the way, and as a result the film succeeds at neither. The majority of performances is enormously stiff, the voiceover is even stiffer and the script, besides being morally questionable to a fault, never allows its character to develop into their full forms.

Next week: One Ozu, one Rossellini, one Paul Thomas Anderson, one Fassbinder, one Griffith and more.

Once Upon a Time… The Killing Fields

War movies have always been the subject of much analysis. They’re the cinematic depiction of the worst atrocities, the look on the most controversial political conflicts. They show the bottom of the barrel of humanity’s deviation from the simples ethical and moral values, and, unfortunately, some of them depict the hero’s violence as the personification of bravery. In fact, it’s hard for a war movie to keep away from glorifying the battlefield, because war by itself is intriguing, curious and, in a way, exciting. The Killing Fields is not a war movie, and its main purpose is to avoid the flaws that generate from the miscalculated movies in the genre. It shows the consequences of war from outside the adventurous journey of the warriors who changed Cambodian lives forever. This perspective on the Vietnam War and on the brutality of the Khmer Rouge comes from two men who are neither the gunmen nor the victims, but remain fighting in their positions: an American reporter and his Cambodian friend.

A romanticized adaptation of the real-life story of Sydney Schanberg (Sam Waterston, Law and Order’s eternal Jack McCoy) and Dith Pran (Haing S. Ngor, a Cambodian refugee himself), Roland Joffé’s debut feature film draws the evolution of the two partners’ friendship amidst the de facto and the de juri ascensions of the Khmer Rouge, the communist party that ruled over Cambodia between 1973 and 1979. Schanberg and Pran’s story was particularly famous even before the movie’s release, as the adaptation came from the touching Pulitzer-winner book written by Schanberg himself, “The Death and Life of Dith Pran: A Story of Cambodia”. 30 years later, the film’s sparkle has harshly faded, much due to several factors. Ngor, whose brilliance as a non-professional actor surprised everyone by the time, was murdered in 1996; Sam Waterston migrated to the TV business, opting for other  types of roles; Roland Joffé would win the Palme d’Or two years later, but he would never the same again; Dith Pran passed away in 2008. The film itself has qualities and problems that make it a hard film to watch, and its format is different from the kind of movie.

Schanberg and Pran lead this journey into the depths of the communist takeover as a New York Times reporter and his translator and assistant, respectively. The latter becomes incresingly important in their work as he serves as an intermediary not only between the cameras and the desolated people, but also between Schanberg’s stubborn determination and the rebels’ aggressive opposition. As the years pass, they become great friends, and this friendship intensely tightens when they have an opportunity to leave Cambodia and both decide to stay. This happens for good when Pran, in one his many moving speeches, tells his foreign buddy “but me, I’m reporter too”. As they stay, they struggle to do their jobs, and the longer the they stay, the harder is to get information – and to survive.

Unlike most similar stories, the focus isn’t only on the American brave leader, but also on his correspondent, who is as important and meaningful to the story, if not greatly more. The Killing Fields benefits from that because that was the main point in Schanberg’s book. Moreover, we have a clear opposite between Waterston and Ngor that defines the story. Waterston’s performance is solid, efficient and constant, and his character’s struggle in Cambodia shows us a man who stood out in the middle of cold press members and a gradually disastrous situation in a country his own country’s ignoring in anyway but in Nixon’s and Ford’s artificial and hideous statements. Ngor, on the other side of the coin, is the one who’s character sees his own country on the verge of a political and social breakdown, who suffers under the hands of the extremists and keeps his intellectual background a secret and his instinct of survival permanently on. Some of Pran’s plans are terrifying and extremely risky, but he has no other way. Ngor would end up to be one of the only two non-professional actors to win Oscars in an acting category, both for Best Supporting Actor.

Putting the film’s strange soundtrack and its fast pacing during some of the harshest scenes aside, the whole technical and personal background for the center of the plot is deftly organized and carefully arranged. Film mostly in Thai territory, the picture succeed in placing us in the middle of the mess, including a ton of beautiful shots that gives us the everlasting feeling of agonizing wait for the results. Then we have John Malkovich as an interesting supporting character, the fellow reporter Al Rockroff. Rockroff is a character that could inavertedly be an allegory to the whole heavy work executed from the press in Cambodia: he’s a cold, sarcastic reporter, who’s just doing his job down there; when he’s utterly needed in dangerous situations, however, he reveals his true feelings, and glows as a man who’s heart is actually pounding for the Cambodian people.

The Killing Fields divides itself in its scenes in English and its scenes in Khmer, which are incredibly poignant and beautiful. This is a movie for the feelings, for the understanding of the Cambodian situation. No subtitles are given for Pran’s dialogues with his oppressors, and they aren’t needed. Everything can be seen through Ngor’s eyes. It’s through the eyes of a man who suffered from the same pains and who went through the same brutality that we see episodes of a forgotten story that need to be told more often, like many others. If there’s any interest in the matter, here’s the story (again) of when Roger Ebert met Haing S. Ngor, and it’s beautiful.

The Killing Fields

Year: 1984

Director: Roland Joffé

Cast: Sam Waterston, Hains S. Ngor, John Malkovich, Julian Sands

Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor (Haing S, Ngor); Best Editing; Best Cinematography; Best Picture (nominated); Best Director (nominated); Best Actor (Sam Waterston, nominated); Best Adapted Screenplay (nominated);

Winner of 8 BAFTA Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Haing S. Ngor)