Showing posts with label Caché. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Caché. Show all posts

Monday, 20 March 2017

A few Tweets about Asghar Farhadi's traumatic The Salesman (Forushande) (2016)

A few Tweets about Asghar Farhadi's traumatic The Salesman (Forushande) (2016)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

20 March

A few Tweets about Asghar Farhadi's traumatic The Salesman (Forushande) (2016)












 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Friday, 10 March 2017

Michèle : Shame isn’t a strong enough emotion to make us stop doing anything at all

This is a review of Elle (2016)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

10 March

This is a review of Elle (2016)


Prelude :

 The beauty of cinema can also be a film’s bane, in that, just as one creates the film for one’s self as one watches (which, frankly, one just does not with a play – or a symphony, or painting), and then in one’s mind afterwards : one may need a re-examination of what happened at Point A (and / or what it may have meant), because, seen from Point B (and Point C), what one thought then does not fit, or poses questions…

 With a review such as this one, begun on the day of release and worked on amongst other things, time, and over-recreating the film, seem to have taken one too far off course (just now - hence this note) : the film as a whole, and the much more varied aspects of Isabelle Huppert’s role of Michèle, now seem like the coast-line, seen through a telescope, because matters of navigation have taken on an unhelpful life of their own, with one's not consulting the charts, but puzzling over, and cogitating, items noted and brought into the cabin at the time.

Yet, partly, even that would-be poetic description avoids the truth that, when generally trying to make reviews that are no more ‘spoilery’ than a trailer (whatever use a trailer is to someone who wants to watch a film), and by discussing and trying to give a flavour of the film (rather than reciting – an interpretation of – what happens in it), one just cannot be too specific about some things : here, exactly how Michèle’s life fits into that of the others whom we see, and ending up, in what has been said, omitting to be more rounded.





Well, you know I've got me an imaginary friend
And it's his daydreams they buy in the end
He won't let me break, he won't let me bend
He puts it all together and I just press send
And he's a shadow behind me in the light
And he takes me walking in the park at night

 He makes me do something wrong,
Do something right
And disappears before the morning


Quoted, with kind permission of Ezio Lunedei (@eziolunedei)
'The further we stretch' ~ Ezio [Black Boots on Latin Feet (1995)]







During pre-festival drinks one Cambridge Film Festival (@camfilmfest), and talking about Lars von Trier (and where he has been since Breaking the Waves (1996)), it was remarked – to someone likely to be in the know – that von Trier appears to have been working his way through DSM-IV. (Or DSM-V, as he remarked, since he was in the know, and the new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual controversially stood about to be adopted [an article for Mad in America writes 'How Reliable is the DSM-5 ?'].)



Here, we are in a different territory, more as where - in adapting Michel Houllebecq’s novel - Atomised (2006) gives us a generalized sense of the formative parental relationships. Likewise, with the young protagonists of Jeune et Jolie (2013), or, also directed by François Ozon, In the House (Dans la maison) (2012), with Isabelle (Marine Vacth) and Claude Garcia (Ernst Umhauer), respectively, both doing what they can, because they can : when Isabelle is asked for a reason, by her mother, for setting herself up as a sex worker, she provides a sufficient reason for this purpose, but to make money does not account for why she did this. (In this respect, the closest parallel with Michael Haneke's films - please see below - is in the chilling mood of The White Ribbon (2009).)


Three images from The White Ribbon (Das weiße Band - Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte), and its shoot


On the level of the film's ambit, and how it communicates to us the different places where it resides, Elle has something in common with Eastern Boys (2013). However, although the latter - though to very little effect (other than adding variety to the changing dominant scene ?) - evokes a merging of the power-play of the everyday world with that of gaming and gamers, Elle (2016) actually does it. Regarding the 'shop of horrors' shown in the still below (which clearly equates to an armoury, or other repository, for one's character to select weaponry in a game - and which may even have equipped her attacker, with the hood, and some sort of special codpiece ?), one is almost in two minds whether, when someone is feeling threatened to the extent of buying equipment, that disturbing state of mind is being matched by another one, in having such a clear sense of contemplating what to buy, and to achieve what end :

As to Michèle’s purchases, and how we see them used (and notably not used again), there must be some ambiguity whether – however they might have been employed – she was thinking, as in a game, in part offensively. If so, we might wonder whether thinking in terms of attack, rather than defence, helps her generate the perception of danger on which she acts : she does act in a highly precipitate way on slender grounds (and with no consequences (for her)). (If it is, indeed, a genuine apprehension of threat, given that Michèle seems unengaged and disingenuous when explaining her pre-emptive actions - just as when, earlier in the film, she more than mischievously blamed a substantially wrecked bumper on quelqu'un ?)



Michèle (Isabelle Huppert - who brought us the insane and transgressive intensity of Haneke's The Piano Teacher (La pianiste) (2001)) is interchangeably gaming in her living whilst also living in her gaming, and so candidly says to Richard Leblanc (from whom she is, if not divorced, then separated), about his young girlfriend, You've broken the rules. (Richard suggests that he was not aware that there were any, but thereby plays her game : he may not recently have read, or at all, Eric Berne's book Games People Play, on transactional analysis...)


Isabelle Huppert and Benoît Magimel in The Piano Teacher (2001)


Oscar Isaac, as the title-character of Inside Llewyn Davies (2013), the pair of Paul and Peter (played, respectively, by Arno Frisch and Frank Giering) in Funny Games¹ (1997) [the German-language original], and Michèle in Elle all have in common that they prioritize their (emotional or other) need over that of others : it is partly in the degree of the middle example that it differs, with its scenario of torture and pain. (Which Michael Haneke says that he is willing us not to keep watching. Having, one way or another, disposed of three members of a family, it turns out to be only so that Peter and Paul can cyclically move on to exploit an earlier introduction to another family as an entrée for their previous opening gambit.) With Llewyn Davies, even if he were not portrayed as a performing artist, persisting until he becomes successful (as we always knew that he did), there is a narcissistic quality to him that may make us find him unlikeable.


In any case, with Michèle in Elle, she is much more nuanced and changeable than Llewyn Davies, who is set (more or less) on his destiny. We see Michèle both as the victim of an attack, but also as one who (as we all can and do) chooses her own victims. For example, just in relation to her ex alone (played with patience by Charles Berling), we see Michèle at least four times exploit circumstances to punish him, whereas, at the same time, she has no anger or retribution for (but a continuing relationship with) three men who have quite deliberately exploited or humiliated her - it may, equally, be a response by them to something in her (and so some sort of match, not exactly made in heaven, but which draws them to each other³), but it seems to unlock something in her psyche to which she can respond. It fascinates and stimulates her, which we are shown, when she takes the opportunity to observe one of these men from a distance, and give free rein to sexual excitement and climax.


[Returning briefly to when Michèle determines to buy the black axe (as shown above), it is only in remembrance, fantasy or dream (or some combination of all) that she imagines, and in a game-like way, the damage that such a weapon could cause. Significantly, picturing this seems to gives her power – as we see on her face, when she emerges from it – but, for some reason, she then does not ready her weapons . Perhaps, on various levels, she no longer wishes to do something so damaging, when it has been so graphically seen. Is it also, perhaps, as if the rules of combat say so (or those, at any rate, of playing an on-line game), where sometimes items are only available to be used once… ? Since Michèle has disarmed herself / is unarmed⁴, her reaction has to be ad hoc - with what happens to be within reach (Verhoeven is obviously causing us to recollect Dial M for Murder (1954)).]

It seems not unlikely that the element of religious observance at this moment heightens, or gives rise to, Michèle’s arousal, and that her being drawn to these men is also because of something in the behaviour or character of her father. However, this film is not Nymphomaniac Vol. I (2013) (or Vol. II (2013)) – although it is in other ways – or Marnie (1964), or Spellbound (1945), and we hardly know any more about Michèle’s father, and her relationship with him, than she herself narrates. Given that she tells what seems a frank and open account to one of the men, but is in seductive mode still (having covertly made her intentions very clear to him), she may want to judge his reaction / arousal, and we then have only bares bones to judge by, from elsewhere in the film, of the truth of the story of her father and her (he is now 76, and her last contact with him was at around the age of 10).



It is with Michèle as she is, rather than how she has come to be, that Paul Verhoeven concerns himself and us - even if she takes herself as a given, with fierce and fiercely held attitudes, and holding others in disrespect (for example, we twice hear her how she just rebuffs criticism for entering without knocking, by asking why she should, when she has the key). Even so, one can say too much about nerdyism in programming or related fields, but Michèle and Anna (Anne Consigny) must have been brought to be friends by something more than occupying the same maternity ward⁵, especially in order that they achieve success in the world of designing and making games of extreme violence and eroticism (which feel quite large and loud, bursting into the safety of the auditorium).



Film composer Anne Dudley, who wrote the score for Elle, appeared in conversation about her career with Matthew Sweet (@DrMatthewSweet), on Radio 3’s Sound of Cinema (on Saturday 11 March 2017)


And then [in the aftermath of the scene of violence] our character, Isabelle, behaves in quite a, an unexpected fashion, and continues to behave in a quite (Laughs) unexpected fashion throughout the film. And, um, when I was discussing this film with Paul [Verhoeven], he said, ‘Well, the music has to give her a heart, because… she… could be seen as quite a cold character’.

 As you say, she’s the CEO of this company that makes incredibly violent… video-games. She seems inured to violence. […] She deals with [her past] in her own way, but she’s potentially quite icy, so the music, especially with the harp, sort of, doing this round-and-round rhythm all the time, gives her a sort of heartbeat, a sort of centre.


Dudley’s score brings that sense of such a centre (and of why it is needed) so well, when we are watching, and yet explains how, afterwards, we might be bewildered by what Michèle has calculatedly (or recklessly) done – and, often enough, with an element of the self-destructive in it. (So it is that, when she has an accident in the car, we are disbelieving at her next choice of person to call, when calls to Anna and Richard both go straight to voicemail.) Or, early on in the film, when she is about to have dinner out with a group of friends (a sparkling wine is just being ordered, so a call has to be made to delay pouring it), she declares to the party, in quite simple terms, that she has been attacked, as if she can do so, quietly and factually, and then they move on to other things : Michèle simply does not see that, in the circumstances, a level of question and comment (which she just does not want) is bound to ensue, and does not accept responsibility when it does, but coolly insists on silencing the line of enquiry (leaving us in no doubt that she likes to try to have things on her terms).



At Michèle's dinner-party on Christmas Eve : Vimala Pons and Charles Berling (as Hélène and Richard)

It is also clear that (as we all can do) Michèle disapplies some rules, in respect of others (to the extent of seriously being told You’re so selfish, it’s frightening), but expecting that they should hold for her : at her dinner-table, we have – of all things – Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 playing [Brief Encounter (1945)], but – as well as flirting, and more – waiting for the right moment to press on the weak point (irrespective of what the consequences may be), and then denying any responsibility again. (It may not be a meaningful distinction (and not one of which she is likely to be conscious) whether Michèle does what she does because she 'needs to', or because – pre-emptively, and selectively – she can : at a crucial time, when she asks, of another who acts as she³, Pourquoi ?, all that she is told is C’était nécessaire.)


However, it is more alarming, when someone is in a coma and Michèle is being shown a scan of an aneurysm, that she can in all conscience ask You’re medically certain this is for real ? - and one can see that the medical practitioner, hearing this response (as she must hear many an unusual response), knows better than to engage with such highly bizarre thinking. As if divorced from the presenting facts, and lacking in empathy, it is borne out by telling the unconscious person that she does not believe it, and calling the aneurysm an act of treachery – but this is not an inter-player chat, berating someone for having betrayed a strategic alliance in a game…


In the very closing shot of the film, when there might be reasons for Anna and Michèle not to be there (after the launch-party for the new game), it does seem - as more than suggested earlier - as if Anna's and her understanding of, and for, each other runs more deeply than between others : we had heard that, at the office, in the oddly delighted inquisitorial energy with which Anna tells her some news about Robert (Christian Berkel)).

Martin Scorsese made The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), truly ahead of the game, because there are people in the world who are / behave like Jordan Belfort - not because he wanted us to like him / his story. Watching Elle twice makes us more aware of what - as we all might (like to) do - Michèle not only subversively does, but how hurt and distrustful she feels.



Final remarks – how little Michèle is really present in Elle :

 If we closely consider our view of Isabelle Huppert, on screen, we will realize that, by one or other of these techniques, her character generally avoids being truly present to us : degrees of soft focus, as well as imparting pallor to her, or limiting the aperture of the camera or the use of light on her so that she is under-lit.

 Twice, when she is telling a story about herself and choosing to charm / be charming (to one of the nurses, and at her dinner-party), Michèle gives a veiled appearance of being candid, but she knows exactly what impression she chooses to give, whereas there are probably only three (or four) occasions when we can say that she is directly present in the way that the other characters are. (There are even extreme out-of-focus views of Michèle, looking across the car to Patrick, as he drives her back after the launch-party – a hint of Crash (1996) ?)



In Brody's opinion, Huppert’s performance is no more than standard — which, for an actor of her rare art, is high — but not distinctive. She is, as she usually is, precise, controlled, dryly witty, understated, fiercely committed, risqué.



A closing thought :

 Giving a childish excuse, youngsters might say that ‘Mr Nobody did it’ – or that quelqu'un had.

What if someone whose treatment caused her to became dehumanized – and was no longer allowed to be Michèle - because, whoever that was, that was not who this person was now ?

 Could that person inhabit the second half of the name Mich-èle, and become just Elle... ?



End-notes :

 ¹ In films from Haneke's oeuvre, we need not limit our thinking to Funny Games, though, because – without spelling them out – themes in The Seventh Continent (1989), Benny's Video (1992), or The White Ribbon (2009) are highly relevant here.

² If so, although seeing Llewyn Davies' narcissism play out (and bothering to contrive to get to Chicago, but with no idea how to present himself) is relatively uninteresting, because his is an almost one-dimensional portrayal, and The Coen Brothers import positivity to the affect through Carey Mulligan and to her in the musical numbers (although they are done less well than usually given credit for). On the level of the quality of the film and of its music, and the depth of the performances, might one think that Un cœur en hiver (1992) has much more to offer ?).

Daniel Auteuil (as Stéphane) in Un cœur en hiver (1992)

³ In the book that he wrote with John Cleese, Robyn Skynner describes The Family Systems Exercise in this way : Its purpose is to show what lies behind the way that couples pick each other out across a crowded room ! Families and How to Survive Them by John Cleese and Robin Skynner, Oxford University Press, Oxford (1984), p. 17.

⁴ Whatever that – and there are very good reasons for asking – says about Michèle's deeper motivations.

⁵ Of course, that does happen commonly enough, at a pivotal time in a mother’s life. Yet we only hear about the connection between Anna and her (seemingly ?) inconsequentially when, with apparent absolute candour, she tells a story that invokes the two women before King Solomon : is Michèle broken in the sort of way where she would want half a disputed child ?

Or where, in all the circumstances, someone might normally be expected to explode at an employee who still cheekily expects to be paid, she just says no.)




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Friday, 15 August 2014

@Film4's 100 Must-See Movies of the 21st Century - analysed (as a list)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

15 August

What is a must-see film ?


Film4.com (@Film4) has recently compiled a list of what it calls 100 Must-See Movies of the 21st Century*



However, can it really be right that fourteen of them (which, after all, is around 1 in 7) were released in 2011 alone ? And, when some critics have hailed 2014 as an exceptionally strong year for cinema, is it justified that only Boyhood (2014) qualifies for inclusion ?

A survey last year, by Time Out Film (@TimeOutFilm), of The 100 best romantic movies was much more candid about how the selection had been carried out, which allowed your correspondent to analyse just how many (sc. how few) votes were needed for a film to appear in the top 10, let alone in the top 100 at all.

Analysis showed that, out of 101 respondents (from six categories), only 19 voted for Annie Hall (1977), but that voting still sufficed to secure it 4th place (not that it is not one of Woody Allen’s best films, of course). Much of the list’s pretence to authority (e.g. in the title of the list) then seemed to fall away ?



So how does this top 100 fare…

In decreasing order, starting with the highest-ranking year, one can see below, in every year since the turn of the century*, how many ‘top films’ – according to this list – were released (figures in bold face), with a cumulative percentage

Where the total number of films that has been selected in each year is equal, the number of films that featured in the top 50 (which is in parenthesis) has been used to determine the order of priority (otherwise they are left in date-order)



2011 – 14 (7) 14%

2013 – 12 (5) 26%

2001 – 9 (5) 35%

2000 – 8 (5) 43%

2004 – 7 (5) 50%

2002 – 7 (4) 57%

2009 – 7 (4) 64%

2003 – 7 (2) 71%

2008 – 7 (2) 78%

2005 – 5 (3) 83%

2006 – 5 (1) 88%

2007 – 4 (4) 92%

2010 – 4 (2) 96%

2012 – 3 (0) 99%

2014 – 1 (1) 100%



One can see quite clearly that 26% of films (slightly more than 1 in 4) were chosen from just two years (i.e. 2011 and 2013), and 50% from just five years (adding in 2000, 2001 and 2004). Is this why people have said that 2014 is a significant year for film, although there is only one film from this year – that they meant the year when films were in cinemas ?

Only 2010 significantly moves position, from 12th to equal 6th, on the basis of using the score for the top 50 instead (otherwise 2012 and 2014 swap places).


Top 20 by country (accounting for 12 countries), with a cumulative percentage

USA, as the country with the most films produced, is listed first, and, as it was the country of production of the top-listed film, 1 is given as the highest position scored (in parenthesis)

Where, for example, a film was a UK / US production (as with Gravity (2013), each country has been awarded one-half

Where the number of films is equal (1 or ½), the ordering is by the position in the list of the highest-ranked film (given by a figure in parenthesis)



Directors are noted who have two films in the top 100 (with the name, date and position of the films) : only Richard Linklater and Michael Haneke have two in the top 20

Joel and Ethan Coen are the only directors with two films in the list not to have one place in the top 20 (No Country For Old Men (2007) (at 25) and The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001) (at 69))

If the 300-film list had not been curtailed, how many more pairs (or trios) of directors might there have been... ?



United States - 8½ (1) 42.5%
3 : Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood (2007)
[also 45 : Punch-Drunk Love (2002)]

5 : Richard Linklater, Boyhood (2014)
[also 17 : Before Sunset (2004)]

10 : David Fincher, Zodiac (2007)
[also 30 : The Social Network (2010)]

United Kingdom - 1½ (4) 50%
4 : Jonathan Glazer, Under the Skin (2013)
[also 41 : Sexy Beast (2000)]


France - 1½ (8) 57.5%
14 : Michael Haneke, Hidden (Caché) (2005)


Taiwan - 1 (2) 62.5%

China - 1 (6) 67.5%

Hungary - 1 (7) 72.5%

Japan - 1 (11) 77.5%

Spain - 1 (15) 82.5%

Germany - 1 (16) 87.5%
16 : Michael Haneke, The White Ribbon (2009)

Greece - 1 (18) 92.5%

Iran - 1 (19) 97.5%


Belgium - ½ (8) 100%



It has become clear that, when the introduction to the list says that it is ‘Drawn from 29 countries around the world’, although Mexico and Spain, which were co-producing countries of Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), could have added two to the total of 29 countries (but only one film), this has not been done in the list (as one establishes by having added all of the totals (below))



The rest of the top 50 (21 to 50) by country (which adds 10 countries, to make 22)


United States - 8½ (23)


France - 5 (28)


United Kingdom - 4½ (39)


Sweden - 2 (26)


Romania - 1 (22)

South Korea - 1 (24)

Thailand - 1 (27)

Russia - 1 (29)

Turkey - 1 (33)

Senegal - 1 (37)

Germany - 1 (47)

Australia - 1 (48)

Japan - 1 (49)


Mexico - ½ (21)

Spain - ½ (21)




Adding these totals gives the Top 50, together with a cumulative total


As above, where the number of films is equal (1 or ½), the ordering is by the position in the list of the highest-ranked film (given by a figure in parenthesis)


United States - 17 (1) 34%


France - 6½ (8) 47%


United Kingdom - 6 (4) 59%



Germany - 2 (16) 63%

Japan - 2 (11) 67%

Sweden - 2 (26) 71%


Spain - 1½ (15) 74%


Taiwan - 1 (2) 76%

China - 1 (6) 78%

Hungary - 1 (7) 80%

Greece - 1 (18) 82%

Iran - 1 (19) 84%

Romania - 1 (22) 86%

South Korea - 1 (24) 88%

Thailand - 1 (27) 90%

Russia - 1 (29) 92%

Turkey - 1 (33) 94%

Senegal - 1 (37) 96%

Australia - 1 (48) 98%


Belgium - ½ (8) 99%

Mexico - ½ (21) 100%



The cumulative total shows that the United States, the United Kingdom and France alone account for 59% of the top 50, with 41% (as calculated) spread between, and adding four further countries accounts for nearly 75% of the listing for 1–50

NB As co-producing countries, Belgium and Mexico would not have been counted by Film4 on this part of the list, nor, in the second part, would Ireland, South Africa or New Zealand (even though that entry is for three films)



The remainder of the top 100 (51 to 100) by country, with cumulative percentage


As before, where the number of films is equal (1 or ½), the ordering is by the position in the list of the highest-ranked film (given by a figure in parenthesis)


United States - 23 (53) 46%


United Kingdom - 16½ (54) 79%


Canada - 2 (56) 83%


Brazil - 1 (51) 85%

Italy - 1 (52) 87%

Argentina - 1 (61) 89%

Japan - 1 (71) 91%

South Korea - 1 (76) 93%

Denmark - 1 (94) 95%

France - 1 (98) 97%


New Zealand - ½ (53) 98%

South Africa - ½ (90) 99%

Ireland - ½ (95) 100%


The top three countries (USA, UK and Canada) account for 83% of the films in positions 51 to 100, and only ten other countries are accounted for in this part of the list



Nearly last, the full list (by adding the last two lists), with cumulative percentage


United States - 40 (1) 40%

United Kingdom - 22½ (4) 62.5%

France - 7½ (8) 70%

Japan - 3 (11) 73%


Germany - 2 (16) 75%

South Korea - 2 (24) 77%

Sweden - 2 (26) 79%

Canada - 2 (56) 81%


Spain - 1½ (15) 82.5%


Taiwan - 1 (2) 83.5%

China - 1 (6) 84.5%

Hungary - 1 (7) 85.5%

Greece - 1 (18) 86.5%

Iran - 1 (19) 87.5%

Romania - 1 (22) 88.5%

Thailand - 1 (27) 89.5%

Russia - 1 (29) 90.5%

Turkey - 1 (33) 91.5%

Senegal - 1 (37) 92.5%

Australia - 1 (48) 93.5%

Brazil - 1 (51) 94.5%

Italy - 1 (52) 95.5%

Argentina - 1 (61) 96.5%

Denmark - 1 (94) 97.5%


Belgium - ½ (8) 98%

Mexico - ½ (21) 98.5%

New Zealand - ½ (53) 99%

South Africa - ½ (90) 99.5%

Ireland - ½ (95) 100%



Where the single-country entries appear

The final study explores where the 30% (or fewer) of films that are not from the main countries represented come from : the listing above shows that there are sudden little runs, such as 48 / 51 / 52, 18 / 19 / 22 and 6 / 7 / 8 (that one includes where France’s top-rating film appears), where a country’s single film appears – other decades are dominated by the States and the United Kingdom’s productions, as listed below (with the number, in bold, of such films, and the films from other countries given, in italic and within square brackets, by placing)


0 – 10 6 : [2 / 6 / 7 / 8]

11 – 20 4 : [11 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 18 / 19]

21 – 30 3 : [21 / 22 / 24 / 26 / 27 / 28 / 29]

31 – 40 4 : [31 / 33 / 34 / 35 / 36 / 37]

41 – 50 6 : [44 / 47 / 48 / 49]


51 – 60 6½ : [51 / 52 / 53 (with United States) / 56]

61 – 70 9 : [61]

71 – 80 8 : [71 / 76]

81 – 90 9½ : [90 (with United States)]

91 – 100 7½ : [95 (with United Kingdom) / 97 / 98]



Looked at quickly, there appear to be runs of films not from the United States or the United Kingdom within the Top 10, and the fifth decade (from 41 to 50), and those decades have more films that are not from those countries

After the sixth decade (which is similar), a pattern sets in of almost all films being from the United Kingdom or the States. e.g. an almost uninterrupted run from 57 (in the sixth decade) through the next two decades, 71 to 80 and 81 to 90, to 94 : seemingly, only 4 non-US, non-UK ‘must-see’ films in a run of 39 films

We must pass it over to others to calculate what that might signify by way of selectivity…



End-notes

* Even it was actually on 1 January 2001, because 2000 was the last year of the twentieth century...




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Friday, 21 December 2012

Not Haneke's way

This is a reaction to seeing Michael Haneke's Amour (2012)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

21 December

This is a reaction to seeing Michael Haneke's Amour (2012)

* Contains spoilers *

Michael Haneke shows something, but leaves it to us what it means, what happened, and he has not deviated from it with Amour (2012). This is something that I value and regard as honesty, that he wants us to be co-creators of the film, and, in interviews that are the ‘extras’ on DVD releases, he has talked clearly about this aspect of film-making, e.g. with Hidden (Caché) (2005) and its ending.

That said, a friend of a friend thought the film was depressing and that it was obvious - not open to question - what had happened and why that was, so one can’t please everyone : on that view, the path had been shown, and was an inevitable and downwards one, and the response was to feel that the film itself was gloomy.

I disagreed, not because, for its own sake, I embrace the depiction of someone deteriorating (although, obviously, people do deteriorate, and that is not unrelated to death and mortality, but Amour is not a documentary), but since deterioration was not, as I saw it, the point of the film, but, rather, that it said something about Anne and Georges, about their relationship : this, too, was an account of the film to which this other viewer could not relate.


If one doubted that there are ambiguities, here are some examples :

* Anne does not tell us why she asks Georges to turn off the new CD of her former pupil Alexandre Tharaud (as himself) playing Schubert – she does not explain the request, so we could infer one of several things, such as that she does not wish to be reminded of Tharaud’s recent visit (for any number of reasons), or of her own inability to play

* When Georges is playing the piano, why he stops, and does not continue or explain, when Anne asks him why he has stopped

* Why Georges dismisses the second nurse whom he engaged – is it really because he is disgusted with her care of Anne, or because he does not want her around and invents a pretext to pay her off ?

* What becomes of Georges and why he chose to do as he did (then and now)


I do not think that I need go on. The point is that Haneke and his film are silent on these things – he is not telling us the answers, and we have to decide for ourselves the rationale in these two people’s minds and hearts. He may have a choice in mind that they made, but he has left it to us to make inferences and not pointed to it. So the viewer who finds the film depressing may be projecting a trajectory onto it, but I say that it is not the only one, and that maybe it was hoped that we would feel more torn, not just about the judgements that we may find ourselves making here, but more generally in life.

Not, though, a didacticism in film-making, I would say, but merely mirroring the complexity of our being, that I may guess at what you mean or your actions, but can I be sure? And was Emmanuelle Riva as Anne ever really helpless ? She was defiant, in pain, stubborn, she was a person, and Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant), her husband (and another person), was caring, bewildered, resigned, and even frustratedly angry with her.

The film, on my view, was about them and only about what happened to Anne in how it affected them : at the outset, when Georges has been trying to determine what has happened to Georges, she says that he is a monster, but that he is also (I forget the exact word) kind (or caring), and that description rang with me, in a quiet way, as I saw him during the film, and saw her for seeing him that way.

Both actors were in these roles fully, Trintignant, for example, with his trainers about the flat and his varying facial expression, and the reality that Anne and he brought to the everyday made the moments of imagination, memory, dream and even terror that came more powerful – a seeming naturalism against which their unusualness could come to the fore.

As I have suggested, we felt that we were on the inside of Anne’s experience, not that something was happening to her and she was a victim : when she desires her death, there is even a recollection of the grim humour of Samuel Beckettt’s novel Malone Dies, where he writes (Malone is the writer / narrator) that, if he had the strength, he would throw himself out of the window.

Their daughter Eva, played by Isabelle Huppert, seemed on the outside of it all, not just because she was kept out, but because her belief in medical science meant that she was to slow to acknowledge what had happened and was happening (and that led to her being kept out). Tharaud, too, concentrating too much on what had happened to Anne and not on being with her, almost seemed to doubt that Anne, whom one felt he viewed as her wheelchair, could benefit from hearing him play for them.

This film contains beautiful French, beautifully spoken, and with subtitles that intelligently interpret the dialogue. As to why it is called Amour, not L’Amour, I have puzzled over that one. Thanks to http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amour_(homonymie), I know, though, that a film of the same name in 1971 also dropped the article (although the title of the novel by Marguerite Duras did not):

I still busy myself with whether, as I suspect, the meaning ‘love’ is changed by the omission to be of less general application, as in amour fou, where one knows that Love is not embodied, but a type (or example) of love.




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