Breathing (movie review)

Breathing (drama) (2011) (1 hr 30 mins)

This Austrian film written and directed by first-time film-maker Karl Markovics is a very assured debut. It reminded me of films like The Son by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne in its understated approach and its depiction of ordinary routines that gradually reveal deeper emotions felt by the main characters.

The film tells the story of Roman Kogler (played by Thomas Schubert), a young man at a youth detention centre on the outskirts of Vienna, awaiting parole after serving time for killing a man. He’s uncommunicative and sullen, appears to have no family or friends and faces the prospect of a bleak future. To improve his chances of parole, he’s urged to show he can hold down a job. He chooses work experience at a morgue, collecting and transporting dead bodies. Perhaps he feels more of a connection with the dead than with the living.

 

One day a woman is brought to the morgue who shares his surname.  Kogler decides to track down his mother and find out why she surrendered him to the care of social services when he was a young child. Their meeting provides the emotional crux of the film.

The director apparently spent many weeks accompanying the morgue workers and attending a detention centre to research the script. The attention to detail pays off as the film has a very authentic feel throughout. It doesn’t offer any easy answers to Kogler’s plight but there are moments of hope: a friendly encounter with a young woman backpacker on the train; his work colleagues gradually accepting him as one of the team; and a stirring of remorse for his crime. The crime is never really explained but remains there as a shadow, a constant reminder of the personal demons he struggles with.

The director, an actor himself, extracts a wonderfully natural performance from Schubert in his very first acting role. Schubert manages to convey both Kogler’s detachment and his longing to connect, his toughness and his vulnerability.

There are poignant moments throughout the film: the humiliation of being strip-searched every time Kogler returns to the detention centre; Kogler and his work colleagues weighing one another up and not quite knowing what to make of the other; Kogler being shown by a work colleague how to tie his tie. There is a moving scene where Kogler and his colleagues go to collect a woman’s body in her home. Kogler sees the photographs and mementos decorating her room and telling of a family life and history that he has never had.

There is some inventive use of the camera: Kogler underwater seeing the legs of other boys as they dangle in the swimming pool; and the final scene as the camera rises above a graveyard and turns slowly to the majestic sky above. The title Breathing refers to Kogler’s solitary swimming sessions at the detention centre where he is learning how to breathe underwater, a symbol perhaps of a rebirth which Kogler may be undergoing as he edges towards some kind of future. This is a thoughtful, moving film that will stay with you afterwards.

 
Rating: 8/10  

About Elly (movie review)

About Elly (drama) (2009) (1 hr 59 mins)

With A Separation (2011), Asghar Farhadi became the first Iranian director to win an Oscar for best foreign film. Now his previous film, About Elly (2009), has been given a limited UK cinema release. Catch it if you can because it is an outstanding film, exploring personal relationships, moral dilemmas and the dangers of deception.

Three married couples, old friends from university, set out on a weekend trip to the Caspian Sea. Elly, a young nursery school teacher, is invited along by Sepideh, the mother of one of her pupils. Sepideh is trying to match-make, hoping Elly will hit it off with the recently divorced Ahmad. The party is due to stay in a comfortable villa but the woman in charge tells them they can only stay one night. To get the woman to let them stay the whole weekend in another villa, Sepideh tells her that Elly and Ahmad are on honeymoon.

After some initial game-playing and banter, during which the friends are appraising Elly and deciding whether she would make a suitable wife for Ahmad, Elly reminds Sepideh that she can only stay one night. Sepideh presses her to stay longer and hides her luggage and mobile phone to stop her phoning for a taxi.

Matters take a sudden turn for the worse when Elly is left on her own at the beach to look after the children and promptly disappears, feared drowned. This leads to recriminations among the adults, and matters become complicated when they find Elly’s mobile phone and realise they have to notify her family. What seems like a simple task turns into a series of moral dilemmas as they discover that Sepideh has omitted to share with them some pertinent information about Elly’s personal life. Should they tell more lies to spare her family further pain or tell the truth?

After the opening ten minutes or so, when the characters are being introduced, the film becomes utterly gripping, initially as we wonder what the mysterious Elly makes of the others and particularly of Ahmad, who is trying to take things slowly but is clearly smitten with her. When Elly disappears, it dawns on the others that they actually know very little about her or her family, which soon leads to complications they could not have envisaged. Subtle plot twists ramp up the emotional tension as the characters argue, cajole and harangue one another. What starts as a simple tragedy threatens to escalate into a situation none of them can control.

The script, written by Farhadi, is outstanding. Just when you think the film is about to reach a resolution, it takes off in another direction, creating more dilemmas for the characters to wrestle with. It touches on interesting questions such as the power relationships between men and women in Iranian society, whether it is right to tell lies to try to avoid causing pain to others, and the way people try to control others in subtle ways. The acting and direction are excellent throughout.

The final scene shows the characters trying to push a car out of the wet sand as the tide comes in. Try as they might, they cannot shift it. It is a fitting image for a film in which ordinary people wrestle to cope with an extraordinary situation.

The film won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlin Film Festival and was Iran’s submission for an Oscar for best foreign film. It was voted by Iranian critics the fourth best Iranian film of all time. Look out for the DVD release of Farhadi’s earlier film, Fireworks Wednesday (2006), which came out in Autumn 2012.

  

Rating: 10/10

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (drama) (2011) (2 hrs 37 mins)

The first thing you need to know about this film is that it’s slow. There are a lot of long takes and passages when nothing much appears to happen. But it’s worth persevering with because there is much to admire in this Turkish drama from director Nuri Bilge Ceylan. The critics thought so too. It was co-winner of the Grand Prix at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

The film is based on the experience of one of the film’s screenwriters. It follows a long night spent by the police looking for a dead body in the Turkish countryside. Three cars transport a group of men (police officers, a doctor, a prosecutor, gravediggers, army officers and two murder suspects) from location to location in what seems like a fruitless search for a body that the suspects have confessed to burying. The trouble is they were drunk at the time and can’t remember clearly where the body was left.

The opening scenes are shown in long shot. We hear the characters’ conversation during their car journey but at first we only see the cars from a distance. We don’t even know who is speaking. But then we are inside the car with the characters and they gradually reveal themselves through conversation on a number of subjects, including yoghurt, health problems, work, family and death.

The search seems to be getting nowhere and the leading police officer is growing more and more frustrated. The prosecutor who is in charge of the search decides to go to a village so that they can have a break and eat a meal. The mayor of the village extends hospitality and the chief suspect eventually tells the police where the body can be found. Once the body is found and taken to a hospital for an autopsy, the pace picks up as the film focuses on the uneasy relationship between the doctor and the prosecutor, which leads to a revelation about the prosecutor’s personal life.

The richness of the film lies in the subtle characterisation and the visual details. There are several moving moments: the doctor, exhausted and downcast, looking at photographs of his ex-wife and of himself as a boy, the men captivated by the beauty of the mayor’s daughter as she serves them drinks, the prosecutor’s facial expressions as he slowly moves towards making a confession to the doctor.

The characters spend a lot of the film waiting for things to happen, growing bored and drifting into philosophical musings. The film reminded me of Tarkovsky films such as Stalker and Mirror, while the bleak landscapes put me in mind of Antonioni.  What action there is happens slowly but is beautifully filmed.  The film is maybe half an hour too long but if you have the patience to let the film unfold, you will find it offers much to ponder.

Rating: 8/10

Shadow Dancer (movie review)

Shadow Dancer (15) (1 hr 42 mins)

It’s not often you see a film that is completely captivating from the opening shot to the closing credits but Shadow Dancer is one such film. This gripping thriller relies on a well-crafted plot and believable characters to hold your attention throughout.

The opening scenes are set in Belfast in 1973. Young girl Colette is asked by her father to go out to buy him cigarettes. She persuades her younger brother to go in her place and he is killed in the street (as we later find out) by an IRA bullet.

We then jump to London in the early 1990s. Now a young mother, Colette (played by Andrea Riseborough) is also an IRA operative. She is on a mission to plant a bomb on the London Underground but when the mission goes wrong, she’s arrested. MI5 officer Mac (Clive Owen) offers her a deal: escape from a long prison sentence and separation from her son in return for informing on her own family.

She accepts the offer but is soon involved in an IRA attack on a police detective. When the attack is thwarted it becomes clear to IRA leader Kevin that either Colette or her brother Connor must have tipped off the police. With Mac demanding tip-offs and Kevin watching her every move, she knows that one slip-up will wreck her life.

Meanwhile Mac has problems of his own. He begins to realise that his boss (Gillian Anderson) has her own agenda and that he cannot guarantee Colette’s safety.

Directed by James Marsh (Man on Wire, Project Nim), the film is atmospheric, raw and well-paced. It benefits from an intelligent script by Tom Bradby (on whose 2001 novel it is based) and an outstanding performance from Riseborough as a woman with secrets but no-one to confide in. At the core of the film lies Colette’s inner conflict between loyalty to her son and loyalty to her brothers. How great a sacrifice is she willing to make?

It is refreshing to watch a thriller that is not crammed full of dialogue, car chases and gun fights. In this film what is left unsaid is as important as the words that are spoken, and excitement is built up with clever plot twists and skilful editing. Marsh’s direction is impressive, his varied use of tracking shots, hand-held camera and close-ups racking up the tension.

Marsh won an Oscar for his brilliant documentary Man on Wire (2008), which told the story of Phlippe Petit’s high-wire walk between the Twin Towers in New York. Shadow Dancer proves he can make outstanding films in different genres and marks him out as a film-maker to watch.

I saw this film at the newly-refurbished Ritzy in Brixton and was impressed with the venue. The seats are comfortable, it has a bar and restaurant and also hosts live music. It’s one of the Picture House cinemas, which combine mainstream films with independent and foreign films. Check out their film programme at www.picturehouses.co.uk/cinema/Ritzy-Picturehouse/Whats_On.

Rating: 9/10

The Apple (movie review)

The Apple (drama) (1998) (1 hr 26 mins)

This engrossing film from first-time Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf tells the true story of 12-year old twin girls who since birth have been kept locked inside their home by their parents.

Their mother is blind and their elderly father is worried that allowing the girls to play outside in the yard would make them vulnerable to local youths who sometimes climb over the front wall to retrieve their football. When some of the neighbours send a petition to Social Services, the girls are initially taken into care, then allowed home on condition that the parents allow them to leave the house.

What makes this film so extraordinary is that it has the style of a documentary but is actually re-enacting scenes that happened so that the camera can record them. The director managed to get the family to agree to take part in the film.

The girls’ case was picked up by the newspapers and the father in particular feels aggrieved when it is reported (wrongly it seems) that the girls were chained up and neglected. At times the father breaks down in tears at what he sees as his mistreatment by the Press. The mother remains angry at how outsiders have intruded upon her life.  One wonders why they agreed to take part in a film that doesn’t reflect very well on them. Money perhaps? The chance to give their side of the story?

Most of the film portrays how life changes for the family when a social worker insists that the children be allowed out into the streets to play with other children. The two girls can barely speak, having had no contact with anyone except their parents. Yet the local children quickly befriend them and there seems real hope that the girls can adjust to a more normal life.

The girls themselves seem remarkably joyful considering the limitations that have been placed on them. They take delight in simple pleasures like making handprints on the wall, watering a plant, eating an ice cream. They are clearly not acting but just being themselves. It is hard to tell whether all the scenes are re-enacting events that actually happened but the film has a natural feel and a simplicity that makes you believe this is a true story.

The director was only 17 when she made the film but must have benefited from her father, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, also being a film director. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the film is the way in which the director lets the camera linger over each scene, allowing the story to unfold gradually. The film won the award for best first feature at the London Film Festival.

Rating: 9/10

Brave (movie review)

Brave (2012) (animated fantasy) (1 hr 33 mins)

This latest film from the Pixar stable is an entertaining fairy tale set in tenth century Scotland. It tells the story of feisty teenage princess Merida, who is a brilliant archer and not at all suited to the demure life her mother has trained her for. When the Queen prepares her for the ritual arranged marriage with a prince from one of the local tribes, Merida rebels and runs away.

She comes upon a witch and asks her to cast a spell upon her mother to make her back down. But the spell misfires and turns the Queen into a bear. After a good many fights, chases and a dose of heart-searching, the Queen is restored and harmony breaks out between mother and daughter.

The story is rather slight but the action is carried out with the usual panache and humour we have come to expect from Pixar. The Scottish setting gives the film a rustic feel and the cast, which includes Kelly Macdonald, Emma Thompson, Billy Connolly, Julie Walters and Robbie Coltrane, throw themselves into proceedings with gusto.

The central relationship in the film is between mother and daughter so I would expect the film to appeal especially to pre-teen girls, though the cinema I watched it in had a very mixed audience including younger children, teenagers and quite a few adults. I saw it with my 15-year old daughter and she enjoyed it. We saw it in its 3D version, which probably made it more interesting to watch.

I think adults might find the story a tad twee and the characters rather one-dimensional. The action moves along at a fair pace under the direction of Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman (The Prince of Egypt) but doesn’t have much of a message. Apparently Pixar rewrote their animation programs for the first time in 25 years for this film but I can’t say I noticed any difference in the animation.

Before the film there is an amusing animated short called La Luna by first-time director Enrico Casarosa, which has received an Academy Award nomination.

Rating: 6/10

Woody Allen: A Documentary (movie review)

Woody Allen: A Documentary (2012) (documentary) (1 hr 53 mins)

This engaging documentary from Robert Weide is a timely reminder of the comic genius of one of the world’s great comic actors and film directors. If you only know Allen from Midnight in Paris, be assured that he has made many better and funnier films in a long and distinguished career.

There are interviews with Allen’s family and friends, critics and actors including Diane Keaton, Scarlett Johansson, Josh Brolin, Naomi Watts, Penelope Cruz, Larry David, Mariel Hemingway and Marshall Brickman. However, the most revealing scenes are the reflections of Woody Allen himself. It becomes clear that he is not motivated by money or fame but by the hope of making a great film worthy of his heroes, Fellini and Bergman. He is clearly disappointed at how some of his films have turned out, though why he should single out Manhattan for criticism (widely regarded as one of his very best films) is puzzling.

At the start of the film, Allen reveals that it is the writing of scripts that is his first love. Translating the screenplay into film is a frustrating process for him. His first involvement in film came when he was commissioned to write the screenplay for What’s New Pussycat? (1965). Studio interference mangled his script and left him feeling bitter. He resolved that if he ever made his own films, he would demand complete control. He’s never had any studio interference on any of his films.

The documentary gives an informative account of Allen’s background, an upbringing in Brooklyn, his early love of the cinema, early success as a gag writer for newspaper columnists and how he forced himself through the ordeal of stand-up comedy until he made himself a success.

The film provides a good overview of Allen’s career as a film director but it was a shame there wasn’t more attention given to some of his best films, particularly Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanours, two of his most ambitious and critically acclaimed films. After the scandal over his private life when he left Mia Farrow to marry Farrow’s adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, his films struggled to secure a cinema release for a number of years, which led to some good films being rather overlooked. These included the very funny comedies Anything Else and Curse of the Jade Scorpion.

One of the features of Allen’s film career has been how many established film actors have wanted to star in his films. Very few have turned him down. Scarlett Johansson and Naomi Watts speak of appreciating the freedom he gives actors to interpret the script in whatever way they see fit. On the other hand, Josh Brolin clearly wanted more of a steer from the director.

Allen comes across in this documentary as a driven man, compelled to bring out a film every year. He also appears to be a humble, warm and very funny man. If you enjoy this film, you’ll also enjoy Wild Man Blues, a 1997 documentary by Barbara Kopple of the European tour Allen undertook with his jazz band. That film reveals a Woody Allen close to his neurotic screen persona, and again brings out his natural humour and warmth.

There have been some great Woody Allen films, a lot of very good ones and quite a few mediocre efforts. Let’s hope he will be remembered for his best films, which hold their own against the very best films ever made. He should certainly be remembered as the funniest film actor there has ever been.

Rating: 8/10