L'Age d'Or (Luis Buñuel)

Infamy.

A year after their aesthetically shocking "An Andalusian Dog", Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali, two of the most subversive minds in all of modern art, return to form with something that's infinitely more scandalous, blasphemous and, to the eyes of many during the time, even close to pornographic. In a way, "An Andalusian Dog", a boldly offensive film in its own right, is their comparatively tamer (and saner, even) dress rehearsal for this little bad boy, an epic (yes, I think so) 60-minute dissection of societal putrescence.

     

Although the film is comprised of surrealistic images that may or may not ultimately add up to one coherent message, the individual intrigue that the images were able to evoke are truly unnerving. In my personal view, the film's visuals, in all its take-no-prisoners lunacy, is one of the most spot-on recapturing of the social, psychological and romantic insanities of our times.  So yes, despite of the film's highly blasphemous thematic texture, "L'Age d'Or" can be ironically considered as a 'miraculous' achievement in modern cinema, especially considering the fact that both Buñuel and Dali, at the time, were not that acquainted to the rigors of filmmaking.

     

In simple description, the film, at least on surface level, is the story of how two lovers, because of numerous hindrances and disruptions, can't seem to consummate their sexual and romantic longings just like how the bourgeoisie people in "The Exterminating Angel" can't seem to get out of the room they're in or how they can't even seem to eat their meals in "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie". Ultimately, it is in the middle of this kind of futility (specifically this film's two main characters and their misfiring attempts to be with one another) that both Buñuel and Dali were able to paint the landscapes of their film's masterful social probe. By penetrating the rotting core of what founds the pillars of religion, modern society and love itself, these two surrealistic bad boys were able to unearth, with unapologetic humor and shocking images, the intense perversity of human nature and its devastating consequences.

     

Often merely described as a surrealistic satire, I think that "L'Age d'Or" should be more aptly labeled as an anti-religious social nightmare that will make even the most apathetic member of the social populace cringe. Hell, more than 80 years have passed and I still think that this film is not for the faint of heart. After all, what do you expect if you merge the minds of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali, an elegant costume drama? This film, just like the scorpions in its opening scene, may be too small in stature and short in length, but it sure profoundly stings.

FINAL RATING

Scorpio Rising (Kenneth Anger)

Opening scene.

Being one of the more truly divisive films that have since become cult classics, "Scorpio Rising" has always been a curiosity for me, despite of its slightly icky homosexual theme. Indeed, after watching the film in its 28-minute entirety, I can definitely see where numerous film enthusiasts are coming from when they hail the film as an influential piece of underground cinema. Sure, with its psychedelic amalgamation of religious iconography, Nazism and the rising 'rebel' culture of the '60s, "Scorpio Rising" is quite effective in terms of pushing forth a distorted state of mind. But for me, the film lacks the ultimate gut-punch, which Kenneth Anger, its director, could have easily pulled off, especially with the often understated power of terseness on his side.

     

As an experimental film, the film surely has some intriguing moments (the church scene is one of those), but ultimately, I was left quite unsure about the film's focus and where it truly resides. Yes, it is a given that Kenneth Anger is seemingly trying to assert the fact that riders consider their hobby as nothing short of a religion just like how Christians herald Christianity and Nazis highly regard Nazism. But hell, I haven't felt the sense of cohesion needed for such a potentially compelling commentary on hobbyist obsession. And why add the fictitious aspect of homosexuality in the film? For me, whatever the context of this aspect may be, I think it was just injected so that, you know, the film can take on a new layer of pseudo-complexity.

     

Constructively speaking, instead of making the film a befuddling experimental/mood piece just like what it is, Anger could have potentially made "Scorpio Rising" a full-fledged anthropological film about the motorists' alternative lifestyle and whether or not they can bode well with the fabric of mainstream Americana. With that, I think the film could have easily expressed what "Easy Rider" has powerfully done so just 5 years after it. I did enjoy the soundtrack, though. Honestly, I could listen to the songs at any given time.

     

At the end of the day, it's quite easy to see the film's encompassing visual influence on other filmmakers, notably Martin Scorsese and David Lynch. But what is quite difficult now to make sense of is why the film is considered 'great'. If you remove the stock footage from "The Living Bible: Last Journey to Jerusalem" short and half of the film's music, what we're merely left with is a plodding little film that has its sights on nothing but tires and leather boots and its destination to nowhere but the directionless path to pretense.

FINAL RATING

Pierrot le Fou (Jean-Luc Godard)

On the run and going wild.

With the last Jean-Luc Godard film that I have watched (which is "Weekend") tracing back about 3 years ago, that of which I also vividly remember of not liking that much, it's genuinely reinvigorating to watch some of his earlier, more beloved works that are, undoubtedly, the patented heart and soul of the French New Wave. In this instance, it is "Pierrot le Fou", a masterful adventure film about love, self-discovery and, ultimately, self-destruction. But with Godard on the helm, nothing is particularly absolute.  

     

Starring the charismatic yet mischievous-looking Jean-Paul Belmondo and the enticingly energetic Anna Karina, the film, about two star-crossed, perennially on-the-run lovers, is packed with immense intellectual energy and colorful playfulness characteristic of the aforementioned film movement.

     

Although the film sure has a conventional story that's quite easy to follow, it's never the main priority. Instead, "Pierrot le Fou" is a film that follows the impulse not of its surface narrative but of the transgressive potentials the film medium has. In short, "Pierrot le Fou" is a half-comic, half-poetic intimation of cinema itself, and there's never a more perfect filmmaker to handle it than Godard himself.

     

Personally, the key to enjoy "Pierrot le Fou" more is not to be too conscious and reliant of the plot because if you'll be, the film has numerous elements that can surely and gravely deviate from its focus. One of them, of course, is the seemingly disjointed, pseudo-romantic yet nonetheless poetic utterances by Belmondo's titular character. Another is the film's inclusion of random, millisecond appearances of numerous neon signs, some of which read the words 'cinema' and 'life'.

     

These minute details, obviously, are nothing but sheer experimental frolic on Godard's part, which, admittedly, has nonetheless added an additional spark of uniqueness to the film's entirety.

     

"Film is like a battleground. There's love, hate, action, violence, death… in one word: emotions," said Samuel Fuller, who appeared in "Pierrot le Fou" as himself. In a way, this cameo by the said filmmaker is a deliberate embrace of irony on Godard's part, who, from what I think, believes that cinema is so much more than emotions. Sure, they (the emotions) may slightly further a storyline, motivate some characters and justify some scenes, but ultimately, what Godard is more concerned about is his audience's intellectual and subtly didactic journey through the heart and pulse of cinema itself. Or, to be more exact, 'his' own vision of cinema: a vision where anything goes, where obscure music and high-brow literature fit nicely in mundanely immature conversations and situations, and where blood and violence seem highly inconsequential. Hell, even highway accidents have never looked more picturesque and unearthly than in "Pierrot le Fou" (but then again, there's that epic tracking shot in "Weekend").

     

"It's not really a film, it's an attempt at cinema," Godard once said about "Pierrot le Fou". Well, if "Pierrot le Fou" is not, in its basic essence, a film, then perhaps Belmondo's Pierrot (oh sorry, his name is Ferdinand) and Karina's Marianne are not much characters themselves than they are mere devices for Godard to kick-start a necessary road trip and to make his ultimate goal, which is to explore the then-unchartered frontiers of postmodern cinema, as humanly and tangibly flawed as possible. And alas, he has pulled it off.

     

Indeed, "Pierrot le Fou" is a film that's worthy of many future revisits. For me, the film has definitely achieved what many art films haven't, and that is to be thematically dense and genuinely enjoyable at the same breath. Plus, amidst its pop-intellectual discourse about nothing and everything, it has also raised quite a compelling outlook on existence; that after all is said and done', 'we are just dead men on parole.' 

FINAL RATING

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (Peter Greenaway)

A gourmet parable.

Even before I became a full-fledged cinephile, I was already more than aware of the "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover's" notoriety as a taboo-breaking motion picture that navigates around the question of whether or not films with such abhorring themes can really pass as adequate art. For films like this, audience polarization is all but given. But with the history of cinema itself to finely attest and creations like "Pink Flamingos" and "Last Tango in Paris" as lasting proofs, only time can really tell if whether or not thematically questionable films may dwindle into obscurity or shine ever brighter. In "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover's" case and the two other aforementioned films, it's definitely the latter. Personally, only a few films have simultaneously left me in both revolting disgust and stunning awe; count this great, great film as one of the handfuls.

     

Directed by the subversive British filmmaker Peter Greenaway, "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover" is a poetic shock tale about infidelity, ruthlessness and revenge with a gourmet twist. Anchored by Michael Gambon's intensely frightening (yet also comedic) performance as the gangster cum restaurant owner Albert Spica and Helen Mirren's understated turn as his wife Georgina, the film often takes on a very stagy quality fitting of its highly surrealistic tone. Together, they have both showcased what I think are the best performances that I've seen in quite a while.

     

Right now, fresh from seeing Michael Gambon's wicked portrayal as Mr. Spica, it's really just quite hard to imagine that the very same actor has also more than convincingly played the post-Richard Harris Dumbledore in the Harry Potter film series. The same goes for Helen Mirren, who has just disappeared into the role of the very sensual Georgina that it's quite a tricky mind exercise to muster the fact that she still has enough acting skills (and insane at that) left to pull off the Queen of England herself in an Oscar-winning turn many years later.

     

But aside from the performances, that which also includes Alan Howard's realistic portrayal of Georgina's mild-mannered lover and Richard Bohringer's symbolic embodiment of the defiant chef, much is to be lovingly observed and deliciously absorbed in this film. One of them, although some may see it as a mere production foot note, is the exquisitely transitional costume design (done by Jean Paul Gaultier, whom, weird enough, I have first heard about in "American Psycho"), whose color-coded elegance contrasts with the film's visual and thematic depiction of decay. Oh and there's also the set design, which greatly detaches the film from the organic nature of reality, and the cinematography, an aspect that exceptionally characterizes the film with an ironic degree of formalism albeit its relentless display of grotesqueries.

     

In a nutshell, I think "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover" can be simply sufficed as an operatic comedy of bizarre proportions. Yet on one hand, I think it can also be labeled as a humorously dramatic disembowelment of the superficiality of modern manners. But then, there's also, as what many has claimed, the film's supposedly metaphorical attack on Margaret Thatcher's politics. Though I am sadly quite ignorant of Thatcherism (but I do know of its strict adherence towards privatization among others), it is really not that hard to look beyond the surface of the film and unearth its underlying sociopolitical layer, what with its disturbingly symbolic depiction of the 'ruler' (Albert) and the 'ruled' (Georgina, the chef and all the other characters).

     

"The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover", despite of its satirical attack on Britain's political milieu at the time of its release, is still a timeless achievement in niche filmmaking, especially in how it has made the bizarre look tasteful and vice versa. Also, this is the first time that I have seen a film where infidelity was depicted as if justified, and its perpetrators not as advantageous offenders but as romantic heroes. Now, if only I can see this on the big screen…

FINAL RATING

 

The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo)

Struggle.

Widely heralded as one of the most historically significant films of all time, watching "The Battle of Algiers" is like watching a riveting, 2-hour newsreel footage, complete with all those 'blink and you'll miss it' moments of candid power. But more importantly, what makes "The Battle of Algiers" a fine film is its incredibly unbiased and objective depiction of the Algerian revolution; a quite tricky feat perhaps, considering the fact that for films like this, it's quite difficult not to choose sides. But by choosing not to be emotionally partisan, "The Battle of Algiers" was able to realistically reconstruct the events and make them flow in an intensely natural way.

     

On one side, there's the radical group called the National Liberation Front (FLN), whose tactics border on outright terrorism. While on the other, there are the French paratroopers, whose interrogation methods and counter military acts border on the atrociously inhumane.  Gillo Pontecorvo, the film's director, is quite adamant in highlighting the fact that in the bigger picture, none of them (the FLN and the French military) are completely righteous nor utterly justified in what they do and that the film's real protagonist is not the French's Colonel Matthieu (played by Jean Martin) or the FLN's Ali La Pointe (played by Brahim Hadjadj) but the Algerian people themselves. Ultimately, "The Battle of Algiers" succeeds as a film that deals with the universal language of revolution and as a stunning portrayal of an otherwise obscure fragment of history.

     

Speaking as a citizen who is born and raised in a country (the Philippines) that had its fair share of political uprisings, I can easily connect with the Algerian revolutionaries' fevered sentiment towards freedom and colonial deliverance. But what I cannot particularly embrace in the Algerian Revolution is the unnecessary bloodshed, which was starkly captured by the film's black and white photography (by Marcello Gatti) and was intensified by Ennio Morricone's iconic musical score.

     

Personally, I did not enjoy "The Battle of Algiers" that much because, after all, there's no way that the film is an entertaining one to watch. It's never a film that wholly glorifies the Algerian Revolution and carelessly trivializes the violence involved in it. Instead, the film shows the titular conflict merely as one thing: a bloody footnote in human history. And for this, I praise the Algerian government, which has commissioned the film's creation, for not peppering it with spirited propaganda. With a faceless crowd as the protagonist and with no sides taken, "The Battle of Algiers" is a clear-cut proof of how neutrality can make a cinematic difference.

(Note: In 2003, the film was screened in the Pentagon to highlight the pressing problems faced by the United States in its invasion of Iraq. Quite ironic, isn't it?)

FINAL RATING

Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais)

Remember.

"Last Year at Marienbad", certainly one of the most enigmatic motion pictures in all of cinema history, is an exhilarating piece of art whose main intent is not to tell a coherent story but to evoke a multitude of moods, feelings and states of mind. Its director, Alain Resnais, is not much concerned with narratives of any kind but on the utmost potential of film as an art form when there's little to none. His earlier film, "Hiroshima Mon Amour", has a slight semblance of a story but instead capitalizes on the emotional landscapes of the characters. This one on the other hand, a pure masterpiece of modern cinema, is a journey of shifting moods and of the ever-changing nature of memory wrapped in the poetic repetitiveness of a love story that may or may not have been.

     

Set within the confines of a lavish chateau populated by high society people luxuriating in certain stagnant joys (card games and endless drinks), "Last Year at Marienbad" is about two people, a man ('X') and a woman ('A'), and their struggle to remember a romantic affair that they, according to the man, might have had 'last year at Marienbad'. Oh, and there's also another character ('M'), the man that may or may not be the woman's husband/lover. Mysteriously code-named like parts of a mathematical equation, these three characters are involved in an emotionally treacherous attempt to make sense of events that are eye-deep in abstraction. Can they even arrive at something akin to certainty?

     

Through the use of exquisite editing, "Last Year at Marienbad" was able to channel a hauntingly cerebral texture, which makes the film even more mysterious than it already is. And by merging flashbacks (or are they?) with the inferred reality of the film (or is it?), the film was able to take on a very dream-like feel which ultimately speaks of the utter unreliability of memory and the consequences of not having remembered much.

     

As with all avant-garde films, "Last Year at Marienbad" is a highly divisive picture that may either be branded as a stunning masterpiece or merely as a highly-ornamented piece of pretentious gunk. For one, it is clearly understandable for some viewers to categorize the film in the latter, with the film's lack of narrative being one of the primary culprits why it can easily be labeled as nothing but a pseudo-profound waste of time. But still, no one can deny the film's powerful simulation of what goes on inside a person's mind when love (especially a forbidden one) is painfully involved.

     

But then again, "Last Year at Marienbad" may really not be about love just like how "Hiroshima Mon Amour" is not simply about a happenstance romance. At least for me, the film's lasting effect is not really about how memories twist reality but about how love twists life itself. And in this elliptical masterpiece that is "Last Year at Marienbad", the ultimate victim is the mind.

     

Alain Resnais, one of the seminal movers of the French New Wave (although indirectly at that), has created his ultimate masterpiece in the form of this film, a hauntingly nightmarish depiction of the fragility of memory, of a love affair that really wasn't, and of a reality that betrays. "Last Year at Marienbad" is, at least for me, a profoundly anomalous take on how the phrase 'last year' could have easily been 'last month', 'last week' or even 'last hour or so'; it plays a bitter puzzle game on its three main characters and, ultimately, on us, the viewers. How did we come to participate on it? I have the slightest bit of clue. Perhaps the game just ceased to be.

FINAL RATING

Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa)

To live.

"This stomach belongs to the protagonist of our story," says a narrator, who's pertaining to an x-ray image of a stomach obviously ripe with cancerous complications. And so begins "Ikiru", a meditative film of quiet power that tackles mortality and life's purpose yet also dips its fingers on issues concerning the cons of bureaucracy. The film's protagonist is Kanji Watanabe, an old man who seems to be no more alive than a dysfunctional machine.

     

In many ways, films like "Scent of a Woman" and "About Schmidt" derive from "Ikiru's" main emotional drive, which is as timeless as it is life-affirming. As what the film suggests, maybe it is only in the face of death and mortal desperation will we muster change and find true significance; indeed, life is brief. In the words of the narrator in "Fight Club": "This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time".

     

Takashi Shimura, who has previously played the woodcutter in "Rashomon" and who will later play, after this film, the noble Kambei in "Seven Samurai", plays Watanabe, a bureaucrat who, for the longest time, has led an uneventful life drained of all meaning or worth. Making his living by stamping insignificant papers for approval, he is as mechanized and emotionless as he can be. But in one ill-fated day, he is diagnosed with stomach cancer. According to the doctor, he has around six months to live. 

     

Devastated, Watanabe has never felt more strangely detached from the land of the living. His already hunched posture even becoming more contorted and his already fragmented articulation of words becoming even more so, Watanabe, as maybe what Kurosawa has intended, is the defining image of a modern man who has nothing to say about his life other than the painful fact that he has merely 'lived'. 

     

Going home, Watanabe then pitifully tries to tell his son about his terminal illness but is discouraged by the latter's coldness. Finding no sense of belongingness either in his own home (with his son being mainly concerned not with his father's well-being but with his pension) or in his work, he suddenly had this craving to just lash out. Guided by a struggling novelist, Watanabe then tries to navigate the busy, booze-laden nightlife of '50s Japan to find out whether or not it can make up for his final days. As it turns out, it does not. 

    

After his bar-hopping misfire, he then gets closer to a young woman named Toyo, an office subordinate of his who has recently tendered her resignation in Watanabe's office in favor of working in a toy factory, and whose exuberant and pure love for life leaves Watanabe in utter awe and in disgruntled fascination.

     

Miki Odagiri, who plays Toyo, has this distinct kind of energy that finely balances out Takashi Shimura's seemingly stagnant and doomed presence. By often framing Shimura's Watanabe, hunched, blank-eyed and ever-brooding, in the foreground and Odagiri's Toyo in the not-so-distant background, Kurosawa was constantly able to highlight the two characters' contrasting traits, behaviors and overall existence within the spatial landscapes of the film.     

     

"…In other words, why are you so incredibly alive?" Watanabe blurts out to Toyo, who innocently mistakes his desperate need to understand his own existence as romantic advances. Toyo answered him that all she does is work and eat. She then gets a toy rabbit from her bag, one of the many products being made in the toy factory where she's employed; "Making them (the toy rabbits), I feel like I'm playing with every baby in Japan," Kimura then said. 

     

Seemingly refreshed from Toyo's all-too-naïve yet honest response, Watanabe then sets out to do something that may hopefully make him matter. In a stunning turn of events, Watanabe transforms from an old nobody to a defiant spirit reminiscent of Jimmy Stewart's Mr. Smith determined to will through the lethargic incompetency of the city hall officials so that he can convince them to turn a mosquito-laden cesspool into a children's park.     

     

Much like "Rashomon", we then get to see another epistemological discourse on Kurosawa's part, this time not about the truth (or the lack thereof) behind a mysterious murder but about the legacy of a man who everybody never expected to have left one. And by piecing together some fragmentary moments in Watanabe's life as witnessed by his co-workers, from his brave persistence to stand up for the children's park to his starry-eyed admiration of the sunset, we then finally arrive at what Watanabe is looking for all his life: meaning and self-worth. 

     

"Ikiru", which literally means "To Live", is a an affecting film that explores man's search for existential meaning not through philosophically sophisticated means that may alienate viewers but realistically through an old man's eyes who just want to be at peace with those around him and, more importantly, with himself. Despite of "Ikiru's" apparent and sometimes much too overwhelming commentary on political bureaucracy, I'd rather remember it as an honest and reflective film about mortality and the often undermined beauty of life; simple as that. This then reminds me of a quote by Monty Python's Michael Palin: "Don't talk about living, just live".

FINAL RATING