My thoughts about movies and TV shows I've been watching

See also my blog on books: Elliot's Reading

Sunday, July 27, 2014

Palestinian-Israeli conflict - a powerful film about this crisis

Not sure of the provenance of the recent film Omar - certainly suspect it's from a Palestinian cast and crew, though very often the low-budget, intelligent "foreign" films such as this one are co-produced - but in any case it's a very thoughtful and well-constructed dramatic look at the Israel-Palestinian conflict through the POV of a single young Palestinian man committed to his revolutionary ideals but torn as he begins to suspect some of his co-activists of complicity and double-dealing. The eponymous Omar takes part in an ambush attach on some Israeli soldiers; the youngest of the trio in the ambush, as a kind of initiation, takes the first sniper shot and kills an Israeli soldier. Subsequently, Omar gets arrested and tortured in prison but he refuses to give information, bravely. A fellow prisoner briefly befriends him and gives him warnings about confessing to a crime; Omar says he will never confess to anything, which proves to be his undoing - the seeming friend is an Israeli intelligence agent, who works to win over Omar to becoming a spy for the Israelis; Omar seems to agree, but then becomes a double-agent - leading to many further complications. Despite the many nuances - a great deal of tension, as we stay strictly w/ Omar's POV and have no idea who among his co-conspirators may have turned, if anyone - the movies is a very clear narrative line and easy to follow - and even has an emotional subtext, as Omar is in love and hope to marry, but the revolution - including suspicions among his people that he may be an Israeli spy - all inform against him. Like most political movies, I guess, this one is very one-sided: the Israelis are universally horrible and the Palestinians are the noble and oppressed minority: to its credit, the film shows them assassinating an Israeli soldier in a random attack, but there is no emotional component to that death - we know nothing about the man who was shot to death or how his death may have affected family, friends, others. Still, it's a strong movie on its own terms and gives yet another window into the tragic dynamics of this increasingly insoluble crisis.

Saturday, July 26, 2014

Looking back at The Last Picture Show

Incredibly enough I had never see Peter Bogdanovich's 1971 film The Last Picture Show until now - and maybe that's to my advantage; it was enlightening to look at the film some 45 years after its making and to see it as a triple-retro piece: it was made in 1971 but set in 1951 and using film techniques (b/w cinema, somewhat stagey dialog, ambitious plotting) perhaps more typical of the 40s or even the 30s. Amazingly, the film holds up very well and we can still see its influence today on many other films that have examined the frustrations, challenges, and social codes of small-town life and the rage of young people who feel both loyal to and stultified by their surroundings: think about the recent, excellent Nebraska, which also used b/w cinematography, though in wide-screen format and with high-def photographic precision, rather than the rather grainy cinematography that Bogdanovich sought. As noted, the film is rich in plot and has several strong lead characters - and supporting characters, notably Chloris Leachman as a sorrowful middle-aged woman ignored by her husband (there are strong hints that he, the high-school coach, is a homosexual) who turns to a young man in town for fulfillment and affection, with the obvious unhappy consequences. There's a lot of sorrow, and humor as well - all the men in town razzing the football players about their horrible performance on the field (this is a an anti-Friday Night Lights, in a sense - the town is much more isolated and lonely and the mood far, far darker). The femme fatale, played well by Cybil Sheppard in the debut, is a force who destroys everything she touches in town; the lead character, Timothy Bottoms, is sweet, weak, and trapped: what will he become? Well, we know the answer, sort of, because Larry McMurtry, who wrote the source novel, did at least one sequel - in fact, it was awful and I would ignore it. He was great on this film, and I think the film helped make his career as a writer - which culminated w/ his masterpiece, Lonesome Dove. It's a shame that the film didn't lead to better things for Bogdanovich - who was really smart and brave to pick this topic and to make such a powerful and heartfelt film from this bleak though emotionally rich material. My impression, from the documentary on the DVD, is that PB was extremely difficult to work w/, which may in part explain the relative dullness of the rest of his movie career (though he's done a lot of TV work and played a great in peripheral role in The Sopranos).

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Hyper-realism in Like Someone in Love

Abbas Kiarostami's 2012 film Like Someone in Love is a further step in his unusual, international career - compare with his early Taste of Cherry set in native Iran and more recent Certified Copy set in France - and in all three cases serious, literary plot, focus on two central characters, long scenes played out in real time - like Rohmer but a step further - little character background, unexplained mysteries about the central relationships, and abrupt endings that don't quite resolve all of the conflicts. I have to say I admired Like Someone more than I actually liked it; K. becomes I think one of the few Western directors to set a movie in Japan, in Japanese, with an all-Japanese cast. This story focuses on a young woman, college student, moonlight as a high-priced call girl (why a woman with her youth, beauty, and charm would do so is completely unexplained and unexamined - she doesn't appear to have a drug problem or any other issue that would drive her to such behavior). In first scene her pimp gives her an assignment with a man whom he says he really respects; she tries to get out of the deal, but relents - blowing off a visit from her grandmother who came to Tokyo unannounced to see her - we hear many poignant voice messages from this elderly woman, and the girl, Akiko, takes a cab to the train station where she sees her grandmother waiting and she keeps going - obviously shamed. The man who's hired her turns out to be an elderly professor; their relationship, at least that night, is chaste - he takes her to her college where she is to finish an exam and there he's confronted by her "finance" who believes him to be her grandfather, and he asks for advice and for his blessing, and of course complications ensue. On the one hand, I do admire K's films and others that develop their story lines slowly, lovingly, and carefully - and he's among the best at use of real time: when we talk with someone for say 10 minutes it seems like nothing but when characters in a movie engage in one scene of dialog for 10 minutes it seems eternal - and K uses this dichotomy very well for effect, the scenes seem realistic but also, within the faster paced grammar of cinema, they feel strange and artificial, hyper-realistic. Sometimes, as a result, my patience waned and I just wanted the story to move along - and as it builds toward its conclusion it ends with a burst of energy and violence, which K keeps at the periphery of his film - though others would have used this as their central conflict, or even their opening scene. He has a style all his own, or mostly his own - one that's not for all viewers but a accomplishment in and of itself.