Tree of Life (USA, 2011, Terence Malick)

 

Then Ben:

In 1 Corinthians 13:12, Saint Paul enunciates that we see the world through a glass darkly.  In The Tree of Life, Saint Malick looks at the world through a lava lamp lite-ly.  His cinematic experience is meant to be nothing less than The Way and The Light.  But all he does is rivet together an ambiguous parable and a trippy slide show.  He would have us all believe that we can transcend the epistemological challenge caused by natural distortion identified by Saint Paul.  Direct communion with God's grace is possible, lo and behold, through a Davey and Goliath cartoon on acid. 

 

 

I haven't liked a Terrence Malick movie since Badlands back in 1973.  That film tells a tale about the banality of evil on a very modest scale, making good use of the basic historical facts, strong performances and the absence of metaphysical messages.

For heaven's sake, Days of Heaven (1978) ranks up there with Cimino's Heaven's Gate (1980)  for the most infintesimal numerator of filmic goodness over the most gargantuan denominator of directorial pomposity. The film is dramatically still-born and never does come alive, consistently aborting itself on behalf of a mandate to imply thematic profundity by way of bank-calendar cinematography.

 

 

The Thin Red Line (1998) is considerably better, but ultimately more bothersome for the way it mashes together its quasi-pantheistic reverence for nature and its pseudo-Heideggerian anguish for authentic Being in the context of the existential context to contextualize all existential contexts - war.

 

 

Fortunately for me, I was otherwise disposed doing something better - getting stretched on a rack perhaps - when The New World (2005) was required viewing for those still grappling with the ethical-cultural pronouncements of Disney's Pocahontas (1995) but too impatient to wait for Cameron to explain the moral purpose of civilization with respect to The Other in Avatar (2009).

 

 

Unfortunately for me, I was no longer trapped in an Iron Maiden when The Tree of Life was recently screened at my house.  Hence, I was subjected to its wonderous blend of retro-2001 special effects guaranteed to thrill the stoner set, left-over-Jurassic Park CGI inverted to pacify the pacifists, Planet Earth-wannabe eco-porn to green the hearts of even the most red-blooded predators in the audience, and a nice little family drama that raises narrative incoherence to a point of high metaphoric principle.

 

 

All of this in the service of throbbing theological revelations that offer themselves to the public with so much pretentious force, well, Malick's philosophico-artistic grandiosity is something to see.  Good thing The Tree of Life comes down on the warm, fuzzy side of natural evolution as eschatology confirming God's benevolent plan for us in the end.  It's so nice to know that we won't have to deal with the Book of Revelation afterall.

 

 

But of course, The Tree of Life takes its cue from the Book of Job.  Even though I am Jewish only ethnically and not religiously, I must say that Christians tend to be fish out of water when it comes to this chapter of the Old Testament.  Thing is, it's hard to understand the point of view of the loser when you're on the winning team; you know, officially endorsed by the state since the Third Century AD.  Sure, sure, nobody has a monopoly on feeling abandoned by God.  But for all his individual subjective angst about this, Kierkegaard remains objectively on the winning team.  Job is in the contrary position and his personal abandonment is nothing less than the sign for the negation of his team as The Chosen People.  Or, at least their status as such is brought into radical doubt.  This, in turn, brings the existence of God into radical doubt.

It is this larger social/historical/ontological doubt that underscores The Book of Job.  Bad as it is, the wrath of God is the anger of a God still present.   It is the possibility that He is actually the ultimate absentee landlord that causes true terror for the terrestrial tenant in the ancient shtetl.  This extrapolates universally to our species as a whole.  Perhaps humans are not The Chosen Species because there is no God doing any chosing.  And away we go with why the Book of Job resonates with such philosophical power for us today. 

Malick means to calm the terror of terrestrial tenants the world over, but he actually doen't even begin to confront this terror head on.  He is simply on the wining team.

 

 

Personally, I am rubbed the wrong way by Mallick's mush-headed spiritualism less because it is spiritualism and more because it is mush-headed.  He is allowed to have faith in the grace of God and allowed to promote it too.  But he simply doles out his New Age monotheism for the masses as a sort of feel-good cinematic antidote to that terrible sensation inside that God deserves to be questioned, judged, doubted.  As does Job.  Hey, as does Larry Gopnik, however implicitly and humourously, in the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man.  So just preach your promises of heaven, Terrence, and stop posing as a philosopher who faces the void, body and soul.

 

 

Yet, I expend too much critical energy on the substance of the film when it is even more the style of it that irritates the hell outta me.  Just as it bugs Jerry Seinfield more as a comedian than as a Jew that his WASP dentist has coverted to Judaism and now delivers schtick to his patients trapped in his chair, it is not as an atheist but rather as a cinephile that Malik really pisses me off.  It was after seeing Tarkovsky's mis-en-scenealternatives to the montage paradigm of Eisenstein that I first attempted to theorize the image in motion pictures.  Not too much later, it was after seeing Malick that I found it necessary to differentiate images of conceptual and aesthetic worth from stunning yet superficial visuals.

Malick's movies are pretty, Lord knows, they are easy on the eye.  But they are not really beautiful.  And they certainly are not the sublime visions they present themselves to be.  For the sublime must dialectically admit the ugly.  Malick appropriates the light, always the lovliest light, in every shot, such lovely light - for eye candy.

And Dan:

I have very few quibbles with your take down of Malick's latest New Age Opus. I will admit that I found the family drama portion of the proceedings, and Brad Pitt's performance in particular, engaging (if not exactly spellbinding.) If the movie had jettisoned the portions dedicated to fuzzy headed metaphysical pretension, and focused on the rickety relationship of the emotionally frigid and occasionally abusive father and his sons (and wife), there would have been plenty to praise here.

But, alas, Malick is incapable of leaving well enough alone. His need to see everything in Platonic terms, to search for the transcendent in the mundane (this in and of itself is not necessarily an unworthy pursuit, I want to point out. Except when in the hands of T. M.) He needs a loving god, and a Hallmark beach at sunset afterlife to compensate for the way that this world lets us down. It's all so soft and squishy, and while he may aspire to be a cinematic version of his philosophical predecessor, I find his work less Plato than Play-Doh.

The trailer:

Come and See (USSR, 1985, Elem Klimov)

First, welcome to Ben and my original review, written Jan. 20, 2010:

Ben begins:

I did take your advice. Jacob and I watched Come and See Saturday night while Max was at a slumber party. I believe he could have handled it. I say this not to be a dickwad about you recommending that he not view the film. My purpose is to indicate that I did not find the film THAT powerful.

I'm not sure why. It may turn out that it takes a while to sink in. There is definitely a thicker aesthetic density to it than most films and this coupled with the sheer heaviness of the events depicted makes Come and See difficult to assimilate. It won't surprise me if down the road I ask to borrow it again in order to reflect on certain aspects of it, that the film will haunt me.

This possibility entertained, something about the overwhelming quality of the film was for me in the end affectively disfunctional. It is technically excessive. Perhaps the easiest way to convey my sense about it is to mention that I initially flashed on Tarkovsky's Mirror but this gave way to Tarr's Satantango. It's all just a bit too much. In particular, the soundtrack, a deeply disturbing multi-layered texture in its own right, over-powered the film's mise-en-scene. Indeed, my problem with the film may boil down to this, although the hyper-realism of the cinematography and the deep-mask acting are also candidates. I understand that the world becomes for the protagonist an almost surreal experience as he is taken to the very edge of his sanity by terror and we are submerged vicariously by the film into this mental maelstrom. Much of this interiority of the character is depicted by what we hear in the film juxtaposed against the barbaric carnival of the visual images that display the external world gone mad. The weight of all this is crushing to the point that eventually I started to experience the technique directly. That he literally ages right before our eyes and that his face takes on frozen registrations of the horror, this is already seriously strong theatre and the audio underneath it takes it to another level that finally felt like another level too much. Or was this intellectual flight on my part when confronted by emotionally unbearable art? Again, I entertain the possibility.

Thematically, I would have to propose that Come and See is a tremendous achievement and must be ranked among the best war films. One thing is for certain, it would make one hell of a provocative double bill with Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds. The all-important scene in Come and See when the boy finally shoots his gun, not at a flesh-and-blood person but at a photograph, not at any ol' person but THE symbol of the cause of the war and sign of evil, not to engage in what is actaully happening in the present but to prevent it from happening at all by running the film of history backwards... but ultimately not to fire at the face of the infant Hitler, not to be able to rewind real time, not to be able to escape from the here and now, not to be able to disengage from what is actually happening but to take political responsibility for your actions in the existential thick of it; and by association for the audience, not to be able to disengage from the facts of history - is not this all-important scene the radical antithesis of Tarantino's entire movie?

And Dan:




Title from comes from the Book of Revelations "And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth."

Based on the Nazi occupation of Beloruss in WWII, Come and See is one of the harshest movie experiences of my young (heh) life. That said, there was a point in the film's second half where I felt like I had been bludgeoned so thoroughly that there was nothing the film could do to me anymore. I don't think that this sort of desensitization quite works to the film's benefit, benumbed as I became to the horrors that surrounded the protagonist as the film reached its climax.

Despite these complaints, there is no doubt that Come and See is a real horror show, a film that takes us from youthful exuberance, as the teenaged Florya excitedly searches for guns so he can join in the fight, through disappointment, disillusionment, despair and, ultimately, disintegration. It is a helluva journey, told with with brutal bluntness and numbing, unflinching realism.

Some of the film's early scenes are almost a reverie, as teenage Florya's (Aleksei Kravchenko)
experiences with the Soviet partisans are weirdly reminscent of passages in Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood, particularly when Florya is left behind as a reserve and wanders the forest weeping his misfortune, and later as he and the villagers struggle through the bog in their flight from the Nazi invasion. The lyricism of these sequences are psychologically valid, and encourage us to identify even more closely with Florya's character. This, of course, makes us feel his terrible fall from near-grace all the more profoundly.

Once the German's make their inevitable appearance on the scene, the film makes an abrupt left turn at Albuquerque. We aren't in Kansas anymore, Toto. The Nazi's aerial assault is accompanied by a devastating bombardment that causes Florya to go temporarily deaf, while subsequent images of the brutalized citizenry make him (and us) wish he was blind as well, which further invites us to consider the terrible irony of the film's title. Do we really want to bear witness to this?

Well, we are given little choice in the matter, as Florya's descent into Hell continues apace. The viciousness and relentlessness of the Nazi's invasion makes the cause of Florya and the partisan's feel inevitably hopeless, which does soften the blow a bit, as we find ourselves out of emotional necessity stepping back from our intimate connection to Florya. While there appears to be no way out for him, this is not true of the audience, and the bludgeoning we take at the hands of the filmmakers may be historically accurate, and, given the level of horror brought to this world by the Nazi's, completely necessary, that does not mean an audience will necessarily go along for the ride when the destination is so clearly without hope or redemption.

I felt violated by the end of Come and See, but unlike your similar reaction to Lars Von Trier's AntiChrist, I can see that there is a greater cause afoot here. While director Klimov can be forgiven for driving the point home with the sort of mercilessness that forces us to reflect upon the consequences of the Nazi's inhumanity to humanity, von Trier has no such larger concern with which to distract us from his.

Now, welcome to Ben's second tour of duty. This review was written after a second viewing of the film:

Ben returns:

"Or was this intellectual flight on my part when confronted by emotionally unbearable art?... It won't surprise me if down the road I ask to borrow it again in order to reflect on certain aspects of it, that the film will haunt me." (9/21/2009)

Well you know it's been haunting me and you know I borrowed it again and we both know that, yes, confronted by this emotionally unbearable art, I took intellectual flight. Whatever technical/aesthetic reservations I registered in 2009 I now rescind. Come and See is a masterpiece.

Made in 1985 just a few years before the USSR fell apart, Come and See is Soviet-style realism on drugs. Very very hard drugs. The result being a nightmare that is not a mere halluncination of hell but a genuine vision of actual hell on earth. It is one of those extremely rare works that simultaneously achieves maximum realism and an exaggerated, hyper-realism that takes on surreal dimensions. The film authentically recreates history and provides retrospective interpretive understanding of the past at the same time, all the while making use of obviously theatrical tactics and striking cinematographic devices. The point of view is dialectically there-and-then and here-and-now at once. There is also a complete unity of symbolic imagery and poetic conceits with the unflinching verismilitude of the narrative. And in the end, there is the impossibility of turning back the hands of time and the duty to remember.

After it was done, Max declared that it was the best holocaust film he had ever seen (adding that he has seen a few even though he is just a kid). Jacob was quick to correct him, insisting that Come and See is not, per se, about The Holocaust, (definite article, capitalized). But I was just as quick to correct Jacob that Max was right to realize that the film depicts holocaust. That the Nazis destroyed 675 Belorussian villages. Exterminating everyone in them. Or just stare at the final figure. The Soviet Union lost over 23 million people in WWII. Growing up during the Cold War, listening to right-wing America-first types tell me that The Ruskies were out to bomb us all to Kingdom come, I always pointed to the unfathomable devastation they went through and suggested that it was fathomable that they might not want to go through anything like that again... eh?

A masterpiece. The film is a masterpiece. Technical/aesthetic reservations? I should be so smart as to be able to understand how Come and See was conceived and crafted. In my review two years ago, the attention I paid to the soundtrack in its own right and in relation to the imagery was appropriate but for my inability to process the power of this package as a whole. I was overwhelmed. Well, that's the point. The artistic point about the historic truth. It's just a monumental cinematic experience. This second time around I can now also add that the editing, the pacing of the narrative, the staging of the conflagrations, the camera tracking through the woods, the mask-wearing performances, and on and on - all together being so much more than the sum of its parts; such that the atrocities are for us visceral, eclipsing the limitation of the screen, reaching out, grabbing us and pulling us into the picture.

Wiki: Elem Klimov did not make any more films after Come and See, leading some critics to speculate as to why. In 2001, Klimov said, "I lost interest in making films ... Everything that was possible I felt I had already done."

The trailer:

Red Road (UK, 2006, Andrea Arnold)

Then Ben:
This is a good film but not a great one, not even a damn good one. I believe it is instructive to compare it to Fish Tank (2009), which Arnold made only three years after this one and which truly is an excellent film. The difference does not have to do with the screenplay, performances, cinematography, editing or anything else technical one might want to examine. Nor does it have to do with the subject matter, for both films are equally focused on seriously tough social relations in dire circumstances. The difference resides, rather, on drama that is absolutely determined by ruthless realism and drama that is not. Fish Tank generates the tremendous power that is does by allowing the mundane facts of the matter to generate their own authority. The truth about things dictates the narrative and not vice versa. Red Road, conversely, relies on certain concessions in the service of story-telling that ultimately feel false, or at least exaggerated beyond any suspension of disbelief allowable for such gritty fare. I will provide three examples. One: The protagonist tracks the movements of her chosen antagonist far beyond the potential of the technology at her disposal. At one point she leaves her station to temporarily sit at the station of one of her co-workers in order to follow her target as he moves out of her designated observation area into that of her co-worker. That she probably would not be allowed to take such liberties on the job is beside the larger point. To put it in sports terms, those cameras are trained to play zone defence, not play the man. Related to this and even more critically, the urban neighbourhood she is watching is almost always displaying the population density of a town in Saskatchewan too tiny for its own grain elevator. Hence, she is able to zero in consistently on her target who, in fact, would often be unidentifiable as part of a crowd. Two: In the end, when she finally confronts the man as the killer of her family, one line of dialogue is provided to justify that he has not recognized her as the wife/mother of the two people he killed. "You never once looked at me in the courtrooom," she shouts at him, or words to that effect. It's not that this would have been impossible. It's that it would have been improbable. Especially given that he killed them by accident in drunken manslaughter. But this we only learn in this same late scene. Indeed, so much of the suspense of the film has to do with us not even knowing exactly what crime/sin he has committed against the woman, how evil he is. It comes down that he is not evil, of course, and this thematic complexity is welcome. Nevertheless, it seems highly likely that any not-evil person who made a terrible mistake would attempt to apologize/atone at the time of his trial, at least to some extent. And this would involve looking at the women, eh? Or maybe, her experience at the time notwithstanding, he did take a peek at her before, but she has cut her hair since then, we are informed in a previous scene, so now she is unrecognizable? Posh! Three: I am no expert in police business. Even so, I am pretty confident in saying that any cop shop that received a report by a woman claiming she was raped by the same man who killed her husband and daughter, a man only recently released from prison for this crime, well come on, how much detective chops are needed in order to approach this with some skepticism? Plus, she changes her mind, drops the charges and there are no legal consequences as a result of her bearing false witness. I'm sorry, this is simply shabby.

And I could pick away at a few lesser faults, but enough. I raise these objections because on the basis of Fish Tank, and Wasp too, I feel that Andrea Arnold is the menage a trois love child of Ken Loach, Ramin Bahrani and Germaine Greer. Red Road is not yet up to this high standard but I am optimistic that the director is taking on a committment to realism that will increase in profundity. Her perspective as a woman is no small aspect of what makes her an important artist on the scene today. It is actually because of its otherwise fine features that I am so hard on Red Road. The film is something serious with which to contend on a number of levels. It is a disturbing study of surveillance in the city which would be worthwhile to compare with Michael Henke's Cache, (2005) which came out only a year before Red Road. It is also a portrait of grief that plays out without any trace of sappy sentiment. And it is - my criticisms above set aside now - a very suspenseful story that keeps you on the lookout for some sort of menace to manifest itself. When this is ultimately circumvented by the appearance of a basic humanism with just a touch of forgiveness, the impact is considerable.
And Dan:

I concur with most of your analysis, and certainly with your ultimate appraisal of this as inferior to Fish Tank. I will say that I found the film tense and often riveting, and only in its latter stages did I become aware of the mechanisms of coincidence and implausibility being put in place to heave the plot along towards its conclusion. Further, I really wish the film had made more out of the set-up, which led me to hope that it would have more to say about the Orwellian surveillance society in which we currently reside. Still, it is always good to see a film maker working in The Lower Depths, willing to examine the marginalized and victimized in our world, and the acting certainly was first rate throughout, so in the end I'm happy to have seen it, and certainly look forward to whatever Ms. Arnold comes up with next. The trailer:

Day of Wrath (Denmark, 1943, Carl-Theodore Dreyer)

Then Ben:

Prior to making The White Ribbon (2009), if Michael Haneke didn't watch this film, oh I dunno, once, twice or a hundred times... The line from Day of Wrath (1943) could not be more direct. The same debt is owed by Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible (1953), although as a man of the stage, Miller may have reached past Dryer's film to the original Norwegian play, Anne Pedersdotter (1908). In any case, we are mining in the mother lode of paranoiac patriarchal authority laid in the rough rock of theocratic domestic terrorism, of which the most jagged stone is the witch-hunt.

And just as Miller recalled the Massachusetts trials at the end of the 17th Century in order to address McCarthyism in his own day, Dreyer's film about witch persecution in Norway at the end of the 16th is an allegory about his own Denmark under Nazi occupation and the pressure of Quisling collaboration in Norway. Or consider a comparison with another film from 1943 made in another occupied European country. Observing the distance separating Day of Wrath from Clouzot's The Raven would probably go a long way in describing the difference between the Scandinavian and the French temperaments in general. Be this as it may, they are definitely worlds apart as expressions of resistance to absolutist state repression. Clouzot's film is a critique of unprincipled conduct resulting in societal self-sabotage, clandestinely covered over with sarcastic jokes. Dreyer is dire, and Day of Wrath is just that; austere honesty about societal self-sabotage resulting from what are supposedly the highest principles. What is rotten in the state of Denmark is rotten because the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The accusatory inquisitors in Day of Wrath are not sinister sadists. They are fine fathers and husbands trying to do the right thing, however hypocritical and ultimately wrong they are.

But of course, this boils down to the difference between a modern sensibility that has long ago departed from any concept of sin and Dreyer's ongoing orbit within the gravitational field of old-time religion. In regard to this, seeing Day of Wrath now substantiates for me what I claimed about Haneke's The White Ribbon in my review of it previously. There is no perversion of the Platonic Good, no egotistical falling away from God's Love, no abomination of human nature, no metaphysical snake eating it's own tail, no sin. The White Ribbon is systemic secular sociology. It doesn't matter who committed the crimes because the message is that in effect everyone did. In this framework, all the children are of the corn a la Stephen King. So to speak, there's no need to fear that a witch-hunt will happen because everyone in town is a witch anyway.

Day of Wrath is not open to this specifically modern dreadful option. Dreyer dreads the witch-hunt for all the appropriate liberal reasons but still centered on sin as he is, he also dreads the possibility of witches; again, so to speak. Just as he presents a miracle in no uncertain empirical terms in Ordet (1955), in Day of Wrath he presents in very uncertain empirical terms an act of black magic. Very, very uncertain. There is no way to resolve the ambiguity at the core of the plot. It is possible that the wife - so attractive and sympathetic a character in the main, whose adultery is understandable and even forgivable - it is possible that she really did cause the death of her husband by conjuring sorcery. It is just as plausible that he was done in by a coincidence of physical collapse and psychological trauma, with some pathetic fallacy thrown in for theatrical good measure. The jury is still out. But that's the point. She might be a witch.

This possibility is plainly put forward in the film; in both the acting and the cinematography. Of course, Dreyer is not a headcase who thinks it's Halloween every night of the year. The point is that he takes sin seriously and sees it at work in ostensibly innocent human words and deeds. Watching Day of Wrath reminded me of reading St. Augustine on the manifestation of original sin in the behavior of infants, whose self-centered screaming he saw as the sign of nasty pride. It has a more scientific spin when Freud calls it primary narcissism but the fact remains and Dryer goes to what he considers to be the Christian heart of the matter. Personally, I am having none of it philosophically but Dreyer's theological orientation is nothing if not consistent.

This makes him one hell of an artist. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) is one of the greatest films of all time. It must be ranked among the top ten. Ordet is an absolute masterpiece. Day of Wrath is not as outstandingly powerful. But it's pretty goddamn powerful! When the son/lover makes the wife/lover fall to her knees beside the coffin of the dead father/husband to swear to God that she did not kill the man, and Dreyer draws a black shadow across her eyes for just an instant - Jesus have mercy on my soul. Christ, the scene of the naked old woman being tortured alone... Here's hoping his vampire movie is a comedy.

You can watch the whole film online, if you've got the nerves for it. Here's part one:

The Red Balloon

Then Ben:

Dan, I remember you did a Five For The Day at The House about changing your mind, seeing a film again after many years with new eyes. If I recall correctly, it drew a lot of response and most everyone was presently enthusiastic about films that previously they had found wanting. Well, today we are dealing with the exception to this rule. In defense of both the film and myself then, I was just a kid when I saw it years ago. I was enchanted by it then as only a kid can be and in the end, it truly is a film for kids. Just not my inner one now.

Half of the enchantment then came simply from the on-location setting of Paris and this does hold up. All these years later, The Red Balloon is probably even more powerful on this score. In 1956, Paris was good and recovered from the worst of the war; psycho-civically speaking, architechturally speaking the place was ironically the beneficiary of having limply let the Nazi tanks simply drive in without having to blow the place up to overcome resistance. All of the urban nooks and crannies in the film are delightful in their own right and wonderfully on-the-ground from a child's point of view, not cinematographically but experientially in the plot.

With all this blue-grey, old-world character in the background, the other half of the enchantment is the sheer aesthetic force of the brightly colored sphere in the foreground. Looking at it today, it's just a relief that it's not a floating billboard for some corporate logo. The balloon is that much more of an alluring Christian metaphor for this purity. But I suppose even today, Coke or Nike would rather not get crucified in the end. Not so much because they are above exploiting even the most common and tragic of cultural references. No, the problem would be the practical one of having the logo become unrecognizable or even invisible once the balloon is crushed to death into a rumpled rag. But I am digressing for the sake of anti-advertising speculation. The visual power of the balloon is pure and inescapable, that's my point; think of the most famous William Carlos Williams poem.

This is the extent of the impact, however. The awful truth for me personally is that the drama of the film is actually quite weak. There are three reasons for this. The first is no fault of the film. I could not be surprised by the ending again. Alas, my expectation of it made it's arrival rather B-flat. The second reason is a fault of the film but is nonetheless forgivable. The director's son in the lead role cannot act a lick. He's a cute enough fella and he fits in fine with the verite vibe coming off of everyone anyway. But there are a few moments that call for more of a theatrical response, more facial business and the kid does not deliver. Indeed, there are very few close-ups on his mug and I can't help but see this as dad avoiding the reality of the lack-luster performance.

This brings me to reason three, the crux of the matter, perhaps related to reason two but not necessarily. There is a terrible choice in the story-boarding/editing. We are not shown the boy grieving over the dead balloon until AFTER we have seen all the other balloons emancipate themselves from their situations and start to gather enroute. The director does not allow for a moment of hopeless pathos. We already suspect that some sort of collective redemption is underway BEFORE we have a chance to reflect on the cruelty of the scenario and contemplete the possibility that it is pointless . The Red Balloon rushes to Sunday School security, instantly assuring that the resurrection is coming soon to a theatre near you children. We are made immediately confident that The Sacrifice has happened. We do not have to dwell for even a second in uncertainty and confusion, never mind despair, that the balloon's love was futile and his death even more for nothing.

Since I am writing this on Good Friday, please observe with me that we have to get through a tough 72 hours before Jesus shows up next Monday. Entirely skipping over the interim period without paying even the mimimal dues involved in enduring it defeats the impact of the whole story. One scene. A few seconds long. That's all that's missing from The Red Balloon. Either it was never written or it was cut out, but either way, it's absence renders the film pablum.

Forget the trailer, here's the entire 34m short film:

Young@Heart (USA, 2007, Steven Walker/Sally George)

Then Ben:

Ya gotta love these guys. How can you not love these guys? The whole choir and this film about it is one big, wonderful footnote to Harry Nilsson singing "I'd Rather Be Dead," with a bunch of geezers in a nursing hoom, (Son of Schmilsson, 1971).

The film is pretty horribly manipulative with respect to editing and the use of background music, but it's for a worthy cause and the narrative voice is honest enough about the positive bias underwriting the proceedings. Besides, if the chronology of events presented is factual, this is enough to make Young@Heart a legitimate tear-jerker.

After the second singer died, Max objected. He complained in a typically teenage and male manner that the film should not be dwelling on these deaths; come on, let's get back to the humor of seeing a geriatric white man sing a track by the Godfather of Soul, let's keep laughing about how he can't remember his two lines of a groove by James Brown that only has four lines in it anyway. He complained because he was pained, because he was so saddened to see those old guys go, and it's easier to be bothered than to feel sorrow. It's genuinely moving when those two individuals pass on. And even more so when the returning choir vet sings in remembrance of them, in what was for him a life-theatening performance and probably his last time with the group.

It's also very worthwhile to hear these old people give the lyrics a brand new spin. Sometimes hilarious, sometimes pretty profound. Ya gotta love these guys. How can you not love these guys? The choir director obviously does. On this side, I wish the film had explained the origin of the choir, how it is financed and the involvement of the band. I wanted to hear from the muscians especially. It is clear from everyone else involved - including the audience (the prison performance was fantastic) - this is not some joke or novelty act. This is genuine artistic expression, cultural communication, call it what you will. But the most serious and specifically musical validation, the ultimate endorsement of singers has to come from the instumental players who accompany them as their peers. I am optimistic that the band behind this choir would have readily given it up to them as peers. But I wish this had been made explicit.

The trailer:

A Taste of Cherry (Iran, 1997, Kiarostami)

Then Ben:

Before criticising this film, I do want to register that this film has made me want to comment on it, in itself a basic sign for me that a thing is worthy of the attention.

The conclusion of ATOC so flabbergasted me, I was curious to know what others had made of it. So I Googled around. Alas, the mostly favorable opinions I encountered only confirmed my own, which is decidedly critical. It is one thing to leave the plot unresolved and the viewer in doubt. And this one thing might have been very powerful. But the addition of the frame-breaking postscript brings this ambigious ending itself into doubt, introducing recursive skepticism as to the meaning being conveyed such that there is nothing but a spiral into meaninglessness. While some have found this to be an intellectually valid meta-movement that deprives the passive viewer of any vicarious identification with the protagonist in order to compel the viewer to actively introject his own subjectivity into the scenario, I found it to be a hackneyed move that provides a pretentious cover for a failure to commit to the story as it has been told in its own right. Considering how minimalist is the plot in the first place - and given the absolute absence of any back-story of the protagonist - the last act of ATOC for me comes close to being a covert confession by the film-maker that even this much telling of the tale has been a complete waste of time.

My disappointment with the ending of the film is directly in proportion to my appreciation of the rest of it. I don't think ATOC is the profound exposure of suicidal determination it takes itself to be. The long takes and slow pace notwithstanding, this ain't no Camus. But it is a remarkable film for the high degree of suspense it generates without resorting to action and/or the intense threat of violence. I found it genuinely gripping. This is a hell of an achievement when you reflect on the fact that fuck all happens in the film. The few negative reviews I read were bored by ATOC but I can't imagine how anyone found it boring as it so explicitly deals with life and death in a morally charged context. Other than momentarily feeling irritated that we had been manipulated at the outset into suspecting that the guy was cruising for homosexual service, once his purpose is made plain the undertow of the film was hardcore dread that kept me on the edge of my seat.

At the same time, the cinematic composition of the thing is very sophisticated. There are many engaging images, some of which offer strong visual metaphors that speak directly to the situation. The man is looking for someone to bury him while all around industrial machines pour piles of earth. The shot of his shadow cast against a stream of falling gravel is quite exquisite, just for one example. There are a number of instances of him being separated from the immediate environment by a pane of glass, most frequently his only partly rolled-down car window, simultaneously indicating his having gone over to the death project and his holding onto a shard of ambivalence about this plan. The distancing techniques employed in the film include a keenly crafted soundtrack that brings the dialogue and certain ambient noises to the foreground in shots that either place the characters very far away or refuse to establish them in the same frame. The social alienation thematically underwriting the proceedings is presented with considerable artistic grace that I found as compelling as the suspense.

Comes down to cool form and empty content when the credits roll, though. Setting aside the frame-breaking postscript entirely, the ambigious ending and the complete lack of historical information explaining the protagonist's motives may or may not be acceptable but the premise of the story is simply weak stuff to begin with. The man is a Muslim who has managed to make suicide acceptable to his faith. This is a fancy bit of theological footwork if ever there was a step so subtle. Yet he is unable to rationalize killing himself without being properly buried afterwards. This is hardly a difficult dance compared to the big leap about God being cool will self-murderers. It's a lame plot contrivance because there is no psychological explanation for it. But of course, this amounts to saying that the lack of historical information explaining the protagonist's motives is not acceptable. No wonder that we never actually care about the guy one way or the other, and ATOC comes down to an exercise in style.

The trailer:

Exit Through the Gift Shop (UK/USA, 2010, Banksy)

Ben Livant:

Street art in the gallery. Ain't that, like you know, by definition impossible or some shit?

Framed graffiti. What the fuck up with that?

Counter culture yesterday. Now that culture be available at the check out counter? Exit through the gift shop - most def!

How much more ironic can post-modern irony get? I don't know at what point in all of this theatrical staging a matter-of-fact detective would be right to put his foot down, but a hoax is certainly being committed. Even if Mr. Brainwash is an existing brandname in the actual art market today, the little factory behind it is in the simulacra-of-simulacra business; with or without deconstructionist intentions, somebody is laughing all the way to the bank. Or should I say, all the way to the Banksy?

I enjoyed this film. It's a hoot. And I'd like to think that the brains behind the operation continues to be in it for more than the money. There is no shortage of mocking critique in this increasingly obviously phoney documentary, but it is not at all clear what the targets of this are. Exit Through the Gift Shop is just as clever as the work of Sasha Baron Cohen, but not nearly as culturally worthwhile because it is not nearly as politically candid.

It is also a bit spineless when it comes to identifying the point of view producing the picture. Cohen adopts a false persona through which he can engage with real stuff. Exit Through the Gift Shop does the opposite. It hides behind an illusion of documentary to present a world in which it is impossible to figure out what is real. This is not without its entertainment value. But it is not a substantively valid approach to whatever it is about the real world that is negatively compelling the film-maker to make his film. Instead of wearing a mask in order to say something you could not say without wearing that mask, something is being said in order to wear a mask that could not be worn without saying what is being said . Maybe just drop the mask and say what you have to say.

And Banksy's professional need to maintain his personal anonymity in no way validates this. At best, his excuse is a wicked sense of humour.

The trailer:

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (USA, 2008, Mark Herman)

Then Ben:

Rented from Pic-a-Flic yesterday and just watched today, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (BSP). I think it's a good movie and by extension I presume that the book upon which it is based is good literature. As you mentioned yourself, however, it is not a great film. I begin with what is commendable and then take up my critique.

As much as I object to how certain Zionist formations have generated a "holocaust industry"in order to legitimate the policies of the Israeli state, historical memory is absolutely essential for ethical consciousness and affective fiction can be powerfully worthwhile for grasping terrible fact. BSP is affecting. I was drawn into the story and I cared about the characters. Monica anticipated the conclusion and said so out loud. I was more naive. But we both thought the way the moral message was delivered was impressive for its narrative economy and emotional subtlety. Sure, there was too much music telling us how to feel. But it was good music. And the performances all around are solid, especially from the actor playing the father, David Thewlis (whom I have always really liked ever since I saw him in Mike Leigh's Naked [1993]), but the kid in the lead role of "Bruno" is to be applauded given that the whole picture rests on his shoulders.

Most of all, the story itself is a fresh entry point into material that has been addressed many, many times before. To the extent that we identify with the protagonist, his ignorance of the situation and innocence within it is ours. So we can learn the truth for the first time, at it were, and be appropriately horrified by it. Monica proposed that BSP would be a valid teaching resource for school children, although she was not entirely confident that it would be appropriate for kids as young as the characters in the movie. One thing is for certain, never mind a Social Studies or History class, any student in English class still struggling with the concept of irony will understand it at the end of BSP when the father is looking at the mass gas chamber, now silent.

Turning to what is not so laudable about BSP, I have an historio-empirical grievance and even more, a politico-theoretical problem. With respect to the former, what's an eight-year old Jewish boy doing in that camp along with all the grown Jewish men? Families were torn apart and the first tear ripped the able-bodied adult males away from the rest in order to have them put to hard labour. The Nazis were nothing if not organized and orderly - Jesus, what a terrible understatement - and no little kid would have been allowed where little kids were not allowed. The film pushes its unbelievable plot premise even further by the seeming ease with which young "Shmuel" escapes his work detail, as if it were just as easy to do as play hookey in grade three. There he is, regular as rain, hiding behind a junk pile conveniently located at a fence furthest from surveillance. Et cetera.

Another factual failure, what specific camp is portrayed in BSP? All the references are to Berlin, so it would seem that the setting is somewhere in Germany, although admittedly this is not definitively clear. Be this as it may, the fact is, there were concentration/work/deportation camps within Germany along it's eastern border, but all the extermination camps were outside of Germany. But perhaps the most questionable historical issue is the proximity of a senior officer's wife and children to a death camp. Either they would have been far removed from the site of such gruesome murder and blissfully ignorant or near enough to know what's what. No way, anybody on the scene could have been so clued out.

Of course, the entirety of BSP rests on the protagonist being near enough to know what's what, yet know nothing. And the key to this fiction is that he is a mere eight years old. And you know what, I was prepared to go with the flow of this poetic license and in doing so, the film affected me. But what I am not prepared to accept and which I now criticize along a politico-theoretical line is that the eight year old boy in the camp would know just about as much nothing, because the thing is, he is not merely near enough to the camp to know what's what - he's actually IN the goddamn place! Shmuel would understand all too well the reality of his situation. And what is more, I suspect he would be just a smidgen more outspoken about it. Ya think? (!)

BSP makes Shmuel a loveable victim to pity and that would work for me if it wasn't at the expense of his deeper human agency. He is denied a voice, the force of his personality. He is rendered little more than an object of the protagonist's compassion. His own subjectivity is not presented as something with which to contend. The film wants the audience to partake of a transcendental morality about the pure friendship of innocent children. But those two characters are fucking far from equally innocent.

Jacob, just recently we were remembering together the kid character from Come and See, who is literally grey at the end of the film, which is in turn a metaphoric sign of a spent human; he has - overnight - become an old man. This is the point. What Come and See documents with unflinching directness, BSP completely bypasses. The result is a movie which ultimately does a disservice to the very people it purports to represent. I could unpack the ideological implications of this but I will spare you. Suffice to conclude that BSP is not to be let off the hook by the dull-witted defense that it is telling Bruno's story and not Shmuel's story. The only reason why we give a shit about Bruno's story is because it becomes Shmuel's story. You feel me?

The trailer:

The Fighter (USA, 2010, David O. Russell)

Then Ben:

I liked this film a lot more than I thought would. I went into it having just seen True Grit 20 minutes prior and I presumed that it would be a disappointment after that completely successful Coen confection. Plus, a TV ad for this film had flashed before me and I thought to myself that I needed to see yet another Rocky not too much at all. Not that I don't like Rocky (not enough to bother with Stallone's own sequels, that is), but who wants to see somebody else's sequel or prequel or equal or whatever? Add the fact that the somebody in question is Mark Wahlberg... I mean, ever since Boogie Nights I have forgiven him for once being Marky Mark of the supposedly Funky Bunch. And him being an executive producer of In Treatment raised his profile in my view. And he was perfectly alright in The Italian Job, The Departed, et cetera. Even so, The Fighter? - didn't want to know.

Well, it is not at all one more go around with Rocky and Wahlberg's work is solid for its measured restraint in keeping with the character. It is also commendable for its modesty. For the acter generously allows his co-star, Christian Bale, to take centre stage, also in keeping with his character. No doubt, it is this performance that is generating all the award buzz for the film. It is certainly a very good piece of acting. Melissa Leo as the mother turns in a great characterization as well. But the film is ultimately an ensemble effort and this too is appropriate for the story and what makes it not at all Rocky.

The Fighter is a misleading title for the film. It really should be called "The Fighting Family." For it focuses not on a single individual boxer and his ambition, but rather on the difficult interpersonal dynamics of a family whose entire well being is investing in excelling at the sport. On this topic, The Fighter enters into the socio-economic and cultural context conditioning the family with considerable depth. There are definitely Hollywood aspects to the film and certain consessions are made for dramatic expedience. Nevertheless, the film is based on actual events in the lives of real people and it does not glorify these folks. What makes them worthwhile for us are their all too believable individual failings and dysfunctional relations. That the story ultimately resolves with triumph, reconciliation and affirmation is legitimately earned. Hence, for example, the use of classic rock and roll tracks to underscore certain scenes does not feel like a cheap device. It feels damn right for these working-class, Irish louts who dare to be the "pride of [economically depressed] Lowell" not just once but twice, and pull it off even bigger and better the second time.

What makes this film not-Rocky, then, is its completely communitarian ethic. Given my own political values, I find it gratifying that Stallone's individualistic Horatio Alger tale is a fiction, whereas the social fabric that is celebrated in The Fighter is grounded in fact. Whether or not the film does as well in its professional competition for an Oscar as its subject did in his professional competition for the welterweight championship is anyone's guess. But I can see why The Fighter is being considered for awards. Not that I think it's so great. But it's much better than the 2004 Oscar-winning boxing movie, Million Dollar Baby, which squandered it's own interpersonal drama and working-class insights - refreshingly on behalf of a female in that sport - for a sappy sermon about euthanasia.

Here's the trailer:

True Grit (USA, 2010, Coen Brothers)

Then Ben:

If nothing else, the multiple Oscars the Coens received for No Country For Old Men were official recognition that they have a definite style. While they have explored a wide variety of stories in all sorts of settings, their style has most obviously developed in narratives that make extensive use of the great outdoors, in particular, on topography that harkens back to their personal origins in the American mid-West. It is in wide open spaces - not necessarily flatlands but any terrain with a big horizon line - that the Coen's ironic pessimissim best plays out aginst the cruel existential elements. And their cinematographic sensibilty - Terrance Malik lite because light-hearted about the inevitably dying light - appears to be most at home on the bald prairie or places similar.

The awards heaped on No Country by the Academy also confirmed the long-standing but erroneous prejudice in dramatic criticism that tragedy is more profound than comedy. Not that that film didn't display the Coen's characteristic black sense of humour. But the dominant tone was bleak failure; hey, the title plainly indicates that heros have become an impossibility. So it was hailed as a post-modern Peckinpah masterpiece. Meanwhile, since their second film, the down-right farcical Raising Arizona, the Coens have demonstrated that their take on the mythical content of "The West" is so sarcastic, they can just as effectively pursue it with characters who are unproblematically sympathetic and stories that have unequivocally happy endings

Now with True Grit, they've done it again. I must say I was thoroughly entertained by this movie. Impressed I was by all of the usual Coen talents, but also for the film being the least cynical work they've ever given us. It must stand as the most fun-for-the-whole-family film the Coens have ever made. Sure, there's one scene where the youngsters in the audience would have to see one man's fingers get chopped off and another man's face get shot open. But the PG13 rating is entirely appropriate. True Grit is basically warm-hearted and upbeat. The big stars in the picture are having great fun delivering the sometimes thrillingly articulate dialogue in the vernacular of the period. The adventure unfolds with superb pacing. And of course, thematically the whole affair is about overcoming personal differences to forge authentic bonds of mutual admiration and ultimately affection. True Grit is as close to Disney as the Coens get. And go figure, this time out, I mean that as a compliment.

Perhaps the easiet way to signify how they've given their twist to the 1969 film - for which John Wayne's portrayal of Rooster Cogburn finally won him an Oscar - is to notice (thank you Wiki) that in the 2010 film the Coens put the character's eye patch on the opposite eye. Who knows, perhaps Jeff Bridges - whose work the year before in Crazy Heart finally won him an Oscar - personally reversed the patch for whatever symbolic or practical reasons. Or maybe on this issue, it's simply that the new film is being true to the 1968 novel. This particular issue aside, Wiki informs me in general that the Coens' version is indeed more faithful to the book in that the original monograph is consistently told from the adolescent female character's point of view.

Hence, True Grit offers up an outstanding role model for young women; not just exceptionally intelligent, also exceptionally tough. True git - exactly! I believe this film would make an excellent double bill with last year's absolutely outstanding Winter's Bone in a film studies course for teenagers that intended to provide a lesson in feminist orientation. And just as Jennifer Lawrence in the latter is remarkably good, Hailee Steinfeld in the former is just wonderful. She fires off her fightin' mad, book learnin', step o'side, bluffers-pay-double, kick-ass speechs to perfection. Bridges, Damon, Brolin, everybody's having a hoot and making it happen. But it's a deal-breaker for the film if the girl can't hold her own. Steinfeld holds her own and then some.

Well pardner, you can check out that there trailer out rightchere:

Rabbit Hole (USA, 2010, John Cameron Mitchell)

Then Ben:

Monica saw a production of the play in Vancouver. She feels the playwright-come-screenwriter did a good job of switching from saying-on-stage to showing-on-screen. The decrease in dialogue and increase in action also entailed moving off the set inside of the house and into the wider world. The big change resulting from this resides with the character of the adolescent driver.

In the play, he comes to the house of his own accord, obviously seeking forgiveness but himself not quite in touch with this need. Considerable drama has do do with this need becoming obvious to him and, of course, with the parents struggling to absolve him of blame; just as they must do this for themselves, each other, the dog and God. Clearly, the film gets into all of this as well. But it is considerably more contrived in the plot how contact is made with the driver and it is dramatically reversed insofar as it is the mother and not the driver who initiates the contact.

I find this difference between the play and the movie interesting because, for me, the character of the driver and the mother's relationship with him was the most engaging aspect of the film. The actor playing the young man was well cast and brought more than just an appropriately understated performance to the part. The guy has a certain quality I can't describe that really worked for me. I like Nicole Kidman and she delivers here. But it was the pathos coming off the teenager that raised the bar for me. Again, I don't know what it is about him that makes me feel this way... or could it just be that he is far from handsome?

I point to the power of the homely when it comes to tragedy (or comedy, for that matter) because Aaron Eckhart as the father was very problematic for me in the heaviest scenes. His Ken (as in Barbie and Ken) quality undermined his interaction with Kidman. On the screen doing his own thing, not too bad at all, but the two of them together did not have grief chemistry, as it were, and I find the fault on his side. Be this as it may, there was something just a bit too yuppie-perfect about the couple that did not crack as it should have under the pressure. I am not cynically complaining about them staying together. The hopeful reconciliation at the end is fine by me. What I'm saying is that the strain in the marriage due to the death of the child never reached down into the deepest depths of despair. The darkness in Rabbit Hole is actually lite.

I could expend some effort substantiating my view that the socio-economic signals and sex appeals in the movie render the protagonists too happy in general to be unhappy in particular, but I was not moved enough by the film to bother with this now. Suffice to finish here by mentioning that the film shamelessly imports a religious sensibility under cover of scientific open-mindedness. When the radically atheist mother ultimately embraces the multiverse hypothesis of the boy's "Rabbit Hole" comic book, the message is so much about the transmigration of souls.

The trailer:

Mother (Korea, 2009, Joon-ho Bong)

Ben begins:

The film has just finished, the credits have only started to appear, and Monica says: "What a performance! She should win an Academy Award. And they give the thing to Sandra Bullock..."
Whereupon Monica went online to read that The New York Times also gave the actress A+ while slapping the director on the wrist a little bit for a touch of sketchiness in the narrative. Considering I recently took Animal Kingdom to task for what I regarded as a greater degree than just a touch of this, let me say that I could not disagree more with the Times' take on Mother. Monica consulted Roger Ebert as well who holds the shifts in the story to be a virtue and not a vice. He says that Mother is the sort of film that American audiences should see all the time and never do. Not only do I agree completely with Ebert on this but I will elaborate the point further.

The lack of lock-step linearity in the plot, atmosphere and tone is aesthetically challenging in its own right, but this challenge carries over into the deeper conceptual terrain of the film's moral and even metaphysical concerns. The organizing principle of Mother is mystery. This is pursued on a number of levels, some of which unfold and resolve in straight-forward ways and some of which twist and turn and never do settle down, touching on mysticism. The latter is usually applied pejoratively by me but not this time.

Before I make much of the mystery in Mother, however, let me guard against what might be my own stupidity in this case. I recently celebrated an aspect of Lust, Caution as "far Eastern exotic" while stressing that I meant no racist "Orientalist" meaning. The same adheres now to my appreciation of the mysterious in Mother. I do not mean to imply any notion of "Asian inscrutability." This is to acknowledge that my interpretation of Mother may be confused by my Western ignorance of Korean culture.

With respect to this, Monica's research also brought forth that the actress in the film is famous in that country for an ongoing television role. She portrays what is apparently typical in Korea these days; an overbearing, overprotective, over-over-over mother who has everything invested in her only child. The obvious comedy with which the film starts gives way to serious suspense and eventually ethical discomfiture in my eyes. Yet it may very well be from a contemporary Korean perspective that Mother is consistently satirical; lampooning a popular melodrama and even going so far as to be postmodern about it insofar as the spoof of the soap opera employs the star of the soap opera. The culturally specific irony compounds further in a pun. In the written language of Korean, the script for "mother" and the script for "murder" are differentiated by only a single brushstroke.

Even though I cannot fathom this consistent satire, I too find the film to be consistent. The shifts in the story are not like Bollywood potpourri. They are facets of an integrated whole. And be the satire as it may for Koreans, I am prepared to speculate that for them also, Mother delves beyond the superficial level of a murder mystery to the mystery of the origin of the son's mental incapacities. The mystery of how the mother could even contemplate - never mind attempt - the murder of her son and herself. The mystery of her power to erase painful memory in him and herself.

The questions asked about these things are answered by the film but only partially. Rational explanations are given but these explanations only go so far. They do not make complete psychological sense. The cognitive disability and emotional repression remain; not in the same place, they are relocated from one person to the next, yet they have not gone away. Nor do the explanations prove adequate empirically. Events happen and are perceptually reconstructed along lines that are physically and socially realistic. Yet, there is more going on with respect to the acupuncture science worked by the mother, and the alienation in the community takes on an almost supernatural presence.

I won't go so far as to argue the thesis that the town is cursed and the mother's original sin is the source of evil. Nevertheless, it strikes me as reasonable to view her as a kind of witch, albeit one who is her own worst victim. What is it if not magic, the insertion of a needle into the flesh to erase any recollection of wrong-doing done in the past? Ostensibly a benevolent therapy, this is the annihilation of conscience itself by a black art. In my review of Heneke's The White Ribbon, I categorize the sinister society depicted in terms of a strictly secular "poison-in-the-well." In Mother, there is also a sort of poison in the well, but it is not so strictly secular Far from it.

But even without this metaphysical reading, the moral universe of Mother is disturbing in the extreme. How can such true love turn in on itself to become so perverted? A mother's love, no less. And how refreshing that the good ol' Oedipus Complex is not the pat answer to this question. The cause of the perversion is highly problematic and this is really what makes the film challenging, not the superficial issue of moving from being a light comedy to a serious drama by way of a crime story. Near the beginning of the film, a golf club is wielded as a weapon and we are certain that no injury will result. Near the end of the film, a pipe wrench is used as a lethal weapon and the killing is no joke. But the big change signaled by this has to do with us coming to realize that there is something profoundly no-good within the mother and son relationship, after it initially warmed our hearts as wholesome and humorous.

The difficult truth of the matter is that the son did, in fact, kill the girl, however much by accident, and the mother most definitely does murder the junk man, however much in the panic of the moment. In short, our protagonists are guilty, so deeply deeply guilty. And this is very tough for us because we sympathize with them so strongly. We have been sucker-punched. They were so benign and funny at the outset and they become so dangerous and tragic in the end. They are a couple of killers, inseparably together in their twisted devotion and criminality. Meanwhile, a real retard - not a person who has had his intelligence truncated by trauma and a lobotomy conducted through the upper thigh - a God-given dim-wit who is innocent of any sordid conduct, he takes the rap. But of course, he doesn't have a mother.

I can't believe that this isn't the experience for a Korean audience too. You don't have to be Greek to get the Greek coming off of all this, eh? If I am to allow that Mother is a satire, it must be allowed in turn that there is more to this satire than meets the eye. And speaking of what meets the eye, what a good-looking movie! There were a number of beautiful interiors, but some of the exteriors struck me even more, especially those that drew on the suburban or rural landscape. From the water traps of the golf course shimmering back the moonlight to her among the dancing of the tall yellow grass, or let me just sum it up with the following high praise; the burning house in this film reminded me of the burning house in Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice.

The New York Times would have me be bothered by the character of the son's friend. How can he extort money from the mother yet help her with her detective investigation at the same time? It would be nice to disregard the issue by simply deciding that this shows the complexity of the character. But he is actually not that complex; his speech to the mother not to trust anyone in town, including him, notwithstanding. He is essentially a plot instrument. At the same time, though, without being complex, his commitment to the son is genuine enough and overall I see him signifying the same thing as the rest of the townsfolk; i.e., the terribly tenuous bonds barely holding the community together.

I suppose that The Times even more would have me object to the plot function of the junk man. Upon leaving the prison, the son observes the burnt wreckage and the friend comments something to the effect of, "oh right, you didn't get the memo." In other words, everyone in town knows the junk man. Everyone, that is, except the mother, who has only a vague recollection of his identity after buying an umbrella from him in passing. Mind you, she knows full well where he lives... hummnn. And he, for his part, cannot recognize her when she comes to call on him at his place. Mind you, he does scratch his head that she looks familiar at first and... hummnn; we're back to the terribly tenuous bonds barely holding the community together. More than that. We are looking directly at the curse upon the town and the mother's recapitulation of her original sin that is the cause of it. Hummnn... turns out I will go so far as to argue that thesis.

Very good, very cool piece of cinema. And Monica is so right. The woman should get the Oscar.

The trailer: