L'année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad)

Here is a film that has divided cineasts since it came out.

Some hate it. It has been included in Harry Medved's 1978 book The Fifty Worst Films of all Time (and How They Got that Way), but that book also lists the likes of The Omen, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia or Valley of the Dolls (so it needs to be taken with a grain of salt).

Some love it. Those who do (this includes me), do so passionately, it seems. Roger Ebert gave it a coveted four star review. And while I'm linking to other pages and many an article has been written about Marienbad, here is another one. You're welcome.

The story is quickly told. At a luxurious hotel in Marienbad, a man approaches a woman and tells her that they have met and fell in love the previous year at the hotel and he wants her to run away with him now. The woman, however, does not seem to recall the meeting of the year before. What complicates matters is that she is there with her husband. In the end, we don't know if the first meeting ever happened.

That is really all of the story. There are several theories of what it all means. The most common one is that the narrative is based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, in which the man has to convince the woman to come with him (out of the underwold) and to do so on her own account.

What we are shown is a series of breathtaking images. In wide shots the shadows do not match. The people are decked out in Chanel clothing. The pose like mannequins for a long while before they start moving. Heard words do not match moving lips.

Seeing this, to me, was utterly fascinating. And I am not usually a fan of French cinema of the 1960's and 1970's like so many others, unexplicaply, appear to be.

Love it or hate it, the film is unique and you have never seen anything like it.

10/10

Mephisto

This film is based on the book of the same name by Klaus Mann, the story of the actor Gustaf Gründgens. The book was originally published in 1956 but after Gründgens' death (1963) his adoptive son fought to have the book banned, because it portrayed Gründgens in a less than sympathetic light. Consequently, it was taken off the market in 1966. In 1981, ignoring the ban, the book was finally republished in Germany. The film came out the same year.

The main character is called Hendrik Höfgen (brilliantly portrayed by Klaus Maria Brandauer), an actor that in the 1930s initially supports the Bolsheviks but it may not even be a political statement. He simply does not concern himself too much with the political changes in his country. So ignorant is he that he is not even aware of a vote that puts Hitler in charge in 1934.

His wife, whom he married not for love but because her father had considerable influence before the Nazis took charge, leaves for France and they lose contact. Also, some of his colleagues chose to leave the country. When one actress tells him she is learning English and about to leave for America, because there is no future for literary art and theater in this new Germany she also suggests Höfgen leave, as well. His reaction, "Ich brauche die deutsche Sprache! Ich brauche meine Heimat!" ("I need the German language! I need my home!").

Höfgen stays and bends enough under the new regime to coax his way to the top and into a circle of friends of an influential Nazi. All the while, he hides a friend in his apartment and has an affair with a black dancer, until his Nazi friend suggests she get out of the country and he no longer associate with her.

He spends the best part of his career playing the role of Mephisto in Goethe's Faust. Eventually, he is handed the reigns of an important theater in Berlin. Höfgens is every inch the opportunist, convincing himself that he only lives for the theater and politics barely come into it.

from Roger Ebert's review: This is a human story, and as the actor in this movie makes his way to the top of the Nazi propaganda structure and the bottom of his own soul, the movie is both merciless and understanding. This is a weak and shameful man, the film seems to say, but then it cautions us against throwing the first stone.

The film was nominated in the Best Foreign Language category (for Hungary) at the Oscars.

8/10

Kramer vs. Kramer

Even a divorce and custody drama can be devoid of all kitsch and intriguing to watch when acted out by a couple of the greatest actors ever. Case in point: Mr and Mrs Kramer portrayed by Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep.

Joanna Kramer one day up and leaves her husband Ted, who pays more attention to his job than his family, and their small son Billy. Ted is left to take over a role he never had to fulfill, that of single parent. It is trying and difficult at first, but Ted adapts his priorities, which leads him to be more available to Billy but costs him his job.

In the midst of that particular struggle Joanna sweeps back into town because she now feels fit to take over custody of her child again, which leads to bitter and sad court appearances. The judge sides - like judges often do - with the mother. Eventually however, Joanna decides to not heed the court's decision and lets Billy stay with his father.

from Roger Ebert's review: The movie has encouraged us to realize that these people are deep enough and complex enough, as all people are, that we can't assign moral labels to them.

The film won five Oscars, incl. best picture, best director, both best actor awards. The little kid who played Billy was nominated for best supporting actor, making him one of the youngest nominees ever.

8/10

All or Nothing

Leave it to Mike Leigh to bring you down with a beautifully spun story about people living in a nondescript apartment complex, with no rewards for there daily struggles, just barely making a living.

The family this film revolves around are couple Phil and Penny Bassett and their two overweight kids Rachel and Rory. Phil is a cab driver, accepting of his dreary life and never making a fuss about anything. His wife Penny works on a supermarket check-out and has to put up with Rory's insults. Rory himself just lies around on the couch all day, jobless and lazy. Rachel works as a cleaner at an nursing home.

Their neighbor's life's are no better. There is the single mother, getting lip from her daughter, who gets abused by her boyfriend and finds out she is pregnant. One of Phil's colleagues lives in the complex, as well. His wife is a drunk and the daughter wanders about making trouble.

There are no ups in their lives, only the occasional down. It is one particular tragedy that breaks open the small collectives of wounds of the Bassett family but makes Phil and Penny understand each other a little better.

from Roger Ebert's review: Watch carefully how it happens, and who reacts to it and how, and you will see that Leigh has made all of the neighbors into characters whose troubles help to define their response.

Sad and desperate, but also beautifully told and acted.

7/10

Big Night

Brothers Primo and Secondo came to America to make it in the restaurant business, but there little Italian place is failing while the restaurant across the street - run by Pascal - is thriving.

Primo is a very gifted chef but unwilling to compromise his art because a 'philistine' customer wants a side order of spaghetti with meatballs to her risotto (starch with starch!). His younger brother is trying to keep their business running but knows they need money fast to keep the place open.

Secondo comes to Pascal for financial help but Pascal offers him a way to make some business. He will call up an 'old friend', a famous jazz musician to come and eat at their place to get some publicity.

Now the brothers start working towards the big night feverishly. And if that alone didn't keep them busy, they also both have trouble with the women in their lives - Secondo is cheating on Phyllis with (of all people) Pascal's girlfriend Gabriella. And Primo has his sights set on the flower lady Ann, but is to shy to even ask her out.

Then the big night comes and all their friends and neighbors have been invited, but the guest of honor takes his time. When it gets later and later - and the guests get drunk and start dancing around the room - Secondo decides it is time to eat - big shot jazz musician or no. Everyone agrees that the food is divine. As the night progresses, Secondo gets more and more nervous about the coveted guest and the publicity and word-of-mouth he should have brought the restaurant. In the end, he never shows. And he was never going to because Pascal neglected to call him in the first place in a rouse to drive the last nail into the restaurant's coffin and convince the brothers to word for him.

An absolute joy to watch.

from Roger Ebert's review:Big Night is one of the great food movies, and yet it is so much more. It is about food not as a subject but as a language - the language by which one can speak to gods, can create, can seduce, can aspire to perfection.

9/10 

Me and You and Everyone We Know

This is indie darling Miranda July's first feature length film as a director.

It starts with shoe salesman Richard (John Hawkes) getting thrown out by his wife and him setting his own hand on fire to entertain his sons. WTF? Right?

He meets and starts up a relationship with video artist and freelance taxi driver Christine (July), while she takes a client shoe shopping. Their relationship is in no way straight forward and often interrupted. They will, eventually, work it out.

Meanwhile, Richard's sons Peter and Robby spend (waste?) their time in an online chat room, possibly mistankenly using the emoticon ))< >((. This, apparently, translates to "pooping back and forth, forever". (But you probably knew that, anyway.) The emoticon prompts a woman to suggest a real-life meeting.

The woman on the chat room turns out to be the curator of an art exhibiton that accepts one of Christine's little videos.

Also, there are two teenage girls giving head to Richard's colleague because they want to know which one of the two is better at it. The guy decides they are equally good.

Strangely enough, all this weirdness is entertaining.

from Roger Ebert's review:
As Richard slowly emerges from sadness and understands that Christine values him, and he must value her, for reasons only the two of them will ever understand, the movie holds its breath, waiting to see if their delicate connection will hold.

7/10

Unforgiven

Normally, I am not much of a fan of wild west films. The cowboy romantic doesn't do it for me. What I require for me to enjoy this type of film is one of two things - (1) humor, (2) a good story. Unforgiven, luckily, covers (2) nicely.

A prostitue in a small Wyoming town gets her face cut up by one of her costumers. When the sheriff Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman) doesn't punish the cutter and his friend to the other prostitutes liking, they throw their money together and offer a $ 1,000,-- reward to have them killed. One of the groups gunning for the money are one young wannabe killer ("Schoffield Kid"), and two retired ones, played by Clint Eastwood (William Munny) and Morgan Freeman (Ned Logan).

The main problem anyone trying for the reward money face is the no-nonsense sheriff, who takes anyone's gun in his town and beats them up - sometimes for no reason other than them not having noticed the sign specifying that no guns are allowed in town. A real asshole, that one.

After the trio kill the first of their targets, Ned Logan gets captured by the sheriff's men and eventually tortured to death. The Schoffield Kid finishes off the second target (his first ever kill), the climax sees William Munny facing (and killing) Little Bill Daggett.

A sometimes brutal, sometimes sad film, that won the best picture award at the Oscars and established Clint Eastwood as a great director.

from Roger Ebert's review:A lot of the shots are from the inside looking out, so that the figures seem dark and obscure and the brightness that pours through the window is almost blinding. The effect is to diminish the stature of the characters; these aren't heroes, but simply the occupants of a simple, rude society in which death is an everyday fact.

6/10