Two notes on Yang's A Brighter Summer Day

A further note on Edward Yangs's A Brighter Summer Day (1991): The film commentary notes that Yang and his team developed lengthy and detailed biographies of each of the main characters - and there are dozens (+100 speaking parts in the movie), which leads me to think that this work was somewhat ahead of its time in many ways. If Yang were alive today, I suspect he might have tried to resurrect and re-imagine this complex, 4-hour movie as a TV miniseries, giving each character and each plot strand his or her due - and if he didn't do so w/ this movie we can only imagine that he would have thrived in the grand space awarded to filmmakers today, pretty much impossible in the early 90s, especially in Taiwan, with its just-emerging art-film culture. I also need to note two casting mistakes, in my view: the young woman who portrays Ming, the lead female character, never convinced me that she'd be the girlfriend of a gang leader and the enchanting beauty who lured young men into danger. (The woman who played Jade would have been better cast in the lead.) Second, the gang leader and Ming's boyfriend seemed small and puny and not the kind of charismatic figure needed for this role (plus the ridiculous sailors' suit he wears doesn't help nor does his not-tough name, Honey!).

Yang's great if challenging Taiwanese film A Brighter Summer Days

I broke w/ my convention - I usually post on the movies and shows I'm watching the day after I finish watching the film or series - but for this major film, A Brighter Summer Day (1991), I watched it twice, the second time with the excellent Criterion Channel commentary by Tony Rayns, as I really felt I had no grasp on the work after one viewing (spread out over several evenings). Overall, this is a terrific movie by the late Taiwanese director Edward Yang - an excellent examination of the lives of several teenagers in Taiwan in 1960, about 10 years after their families fled from mainland China and Mao's revolution and settled in Formosa. The despite its strengths, is incredible challenging for a # of reasons: first, it's 4 hours long! Second, there are, according to Rayns, more than 100 speaking parts. 3rd, the young men at the center of the film can be hard to distinguish from one another as they are always seen in their school uniforms (a pseudo-military outfit). Most of all, there's a lot of assumed background that very few Western viewers today will have any info about - and Rayns does fill us in well in his commentary. In essence there are 3 youth "gangs" in the film, each from a different social class; knowing that will help viewers follow the intricate plot. There's so much in this film, though, for better or worse: 3 gangs and their rivalries, 3 killings (at least), a story line about young love (Si'r and Ming are the central "couple" in the movie) and its fatal consequences, a story line about a film under production in a local studio, a story line about the interrogation by the Taiwanese police and its effect on a family, a story line about young boys who dream of success singing American pop songs (which they memorize phonetically even though they know no English; the film title is from an Elvis recording that the boys are studying), antagonism between native Formosans and the relocated mainland Chinese, a discipline issue in the school and a father's attempts to get his son (Si'r) transferred into a better program, family tensions between a near-broken father and the socially ambitious wife, class tensions within the school as a lonely but wealthy student stirs up antagonism, and I could go on. Some of the greatest scenes are filmed in a highly unusual manner, mostly in the dark (a great gang fight illuminated only by flashes of light) or dialog with the main speaker - Si'r often - offscreen; Yang does many scenes, however, with just a long take and a camera in fixed position, a style familiar from many classic Japanese films. Yang went on to direct the great film Yi Yi, which is more accessible than Bright Summer Day, but this one seems to have established him as a highly ambitious and intelligent filmmaker. As Rayns says in his commentary, this film is a something like an indie-art film done to epic proportions. Exactly right!

A challenging crime series well worth watching for its characters, plot, and setting: Trapped Season 2

Continuing from Season 1 with many of the same characters - notably the top police officer Andri and the local police chief Hnrika - but w/ a completely new plot line, Season 2 of the Icelandic saga Trapped is a series that will hold your interest and attention through all 10 episodes. Once again the plot focuses on a series of unexplained, grisly deaths in a small Icelandic town that is undergoing a huge economic upheaval, as a foreign conglomerate is building a vast power plant and mining operation - supported by local (and national) politicians but bitterly opposed by some of the local farmers. There are many strands to the story line, and some of these strands are red herrings; at times it's difficult to follow all the leads, especially for viewers, like most of us, unfamiliar w/ Icelandic nomenclature. But close attention will be rewarded, as the complex plot unfolds and the various layers - possible pollution from the power plant, possible bribery of public officials, inter-familiar warfare, tension between foreign workers (from Africa) and others, a homosexual relationship that endangers both men, bizarre behavior by Andri's daughter that makes her a target, kidnap of the Mayor by right-wing activists, a brother's botched attempt to murder his sister who is also the Minister of Industries and responsible for the power plant, plus others. Whew! The tension is always high and the characters are always credible, and even though a few of the plot elements don't quite make sense of close examination that series creator, Baltasar Kormakur, does a good job keeping us in suspense and guessing right up to the very tense dramatic conclusion: a somewhat challenging but always intriguing crime drama that's worth watching. Plus, there's probably no country in the world as photogenic as Iceland - worth watching for that alone!

An ambitious film from South Korea based on a Murakami story: Burning

Chang-Dong Lee is one of the many fine directors from South Korea (Oasis, Poetry) who hasn't by any means become a household name in the U.S. but who continues to writer and direct highly intelligent and engrossing movies, the latest of which is Burning (2018, avail on Netflix). I wouldn't say it's a great movie, but it has some great moments and scenes and is a puzzling, disturbing study in character. In brief the plot in involves a young man, son of a dirt-poor farmer living in the distant suburbs of Seoule,  who says he wants to be a writer and that he is working on a novel, though there's little evidence that he's really doing so. At the outset, he meets an attractive young woman who was a neighbor when they were children; she invites him to her apartment, where they have sex; she is obviously much more experienced and worldly than he is. She is about to leave for Africa - clearly, a vacation she cannot afford - and asks him to stop by daily to feed her cat. When she returns, she calls and asks him to pick her up at the airport, and she arrives accompanied by another Korean man, a little older, extremely wealthy, and in every sense a despicable character. The lead character - Jong-su - is obviously troubled and puzzled by the appearance of this rival. So to this point it appears we're looking at a love-triangle movie: Will the sad but likable man win? But gears shift. The young woman vanishes, and attempts to find her lead Jong-su down many strange pathways. The ending is a bit of a shock - I won't give it away - and I didn't quite understand all of the elements. In part this confusion and oddity comes about because this movie is an adaptation of a Murakami story, Barn Burning; Marukami always moves his narratives into strange and disturbing places, sometimes to great effect - but the effect wears a little thin in cinema, where everything looks "real" (whereas in fiction, we can believe more oddities and ambiguity because the images are all "in our minds"). There are beautiful moments throughout - the nighttime driving through the Korean countryside, the young woman's stone dancing, the views from her apartment of the crowded, thriving city, to name a few. That's probably enough to make the film worth watching, though the plot and its resolution will probably puzzle most viewers. [ See related post on Elliotsreading]

The surprisingly unconventional original Danish v of After the Wedding

Susanne Bier's Danish-language film After the Wedding (2006) has been remade in English w/ some major plot twists; the remake has gotten tepid reviews at best (as one would expect - these attempts to Anglicize and cash in on small budget "foreign"-language films never seem to work), but I went back to the original version last night - I'd seen it more than a decade ago and hardly remember it - and was struck by how good this film was in its original (all of us watching agreed, btw). In brief the story concerns a 40-something man (Mads Mikkelsen) devoted to his life's mission of running an orphanage in Mumbai (called Bombay in this film) who gets summoned (home) to Denmark at the request of a philanthropist who wants to make a major donation but wants to meet the head of the enterprise face to face first. The philanthropist (Rolf Lassgard) invites Mikkelsen to his daughter's wedding, and it turns out that Mikkelsen has had a relationship w/ Lassgard's wife (Sidse Babett Knudsen) - all three in epic performances. I won't give any of the plot points away except to say that there are many surprises and, unlike most movies full of arbitrary and manipulative twists and turns and coincidences, all of plot twists are credible within the plot and deepen our knowledge of the characters. Any attempt to predict where this movie is headed will derail - it seems at many points to be headed toward a romcom drama, but it's always a step ahead of us and it always seems to find a way to defy convention: props to Bier and Anders Thomas Jensen on the screenplay. I'd encourage anyone thinking about seeing the English-language remake to see this original version instead or at least in addition.

A horrifying film like none other, with strange resonance today: The Cremator

Czech director Juraj Herz's 1969 movie, The Cremator, is a creepy and horrifying film that's unlike anything I've seen before. Made in the height of the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, the film slips around the obviously censorious political climate of its time by adapting a period setting: Set in Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s, as the German armed forces were amassing at the border and the Czech's were anticipating the inevitable invasion and occupation. The film has the look and feel of the time of its setting; you could think it was a film from the 30s (the bw cinematography, the chintzy decor) except for some odd quick edits to shift from scene to scene and a haunting, contemporary score that makes everything seem nightmarish. The odd story line concerns a middle-aged, unctuous, completely bourgeois businessman, the strange name Kopfrkingl, who has practically the only speaking part in the film (played well by Rudolph Hrusinsky). He's in charge of a crematorium, and at the outset he's trying to build up his business by holding information sessions at which he touts the virtues of cremation. He's proud of his business and honored to take visitors on a tour of his facilities. Slowly and subtly over the course of the film we begin he hear statements and observations about pure German blood and the evils of Jews and Judaism and over time Kopfrkingl gets drawn into these discussions, which pervert his mind and turn him into a psychopath, while maintaining his odious facade: a family man who goes to brothels, and loving husband he murders his (half-Jewish) wife and his children, an enthusiastic proponent of a super-crematorium that can incinerate hundreds of bodies at once. What happened to him? How could he have been taken over and transformed, without any recognition of remorse? This film is history as metaphor, and is in addition to its dissection of the Nazi mentality it's also a sly warning about the ease with which supposedly good people can be blinded and perverted by a fascist ideology - something the Soviet censors were too dumb to see [note: Have learned that Soviets did crack down, but after the release of this film], something with painful resonance today.

The beauty of Bergman's Summer with Monika

Summer with Monika was, I think, Ingmar Bergman's 2nd film (1953) - racy and controversial for its many scenes of sexual foreplay and many leering shots of Monika (Harriet Anderson), but by today's standards not at all remarkable in that regard. The film doesn't quite have the literary qualities of many of Bergman's later films, nor the wrestling with faith and destiny that was such a part of his work, especially in the 1950s/60s; however, it's a strong and straightforward narrative (based on a novel, I think) about the course of young love: The protagonist, Harry, meets Monika in Stockholm, each of them badly mistreated in their workplace and each from a troubled home - though the troubles differ (Harry is the only child of a widowed, gravely ill father who provide no love or emotional support; Monika is the oldest in a large family of squabblers, dependent on Monika for whatever she can contribute to the family welfare). Long and short, the two run off and spend the summer what I think on island in the Stockholm archipelago. After several adventures and much romance - they shake off the evident hardships of living on an island w/ no running water or sources of food - it's time to head back to the city when summer ends - and that leads with huge conflict (Monika is pregnant and gives birth to a girl) and a fatal strain on their relationships. On one level, we are highly sympathetic to these two poor souls, and it's good to know that today there are much better social resources in Sweden to support young families; on another level, it's disturbing the Bergman makes Monika out to be an unfaithful betrayer and a whining harpy: We can recognize the pressure she's under, but why is she the villain and Harry the innocent dupe? Throughout, there's is fantastic cinematography that will keep anyone's attention - not just the loving closeups of the two principals but also beautiful footage of the island and the Stockholm waterways, plus many views of the industrial core of Stockholm, particularly at night - the crowded streets, the soaring bridges, the cheap nightclubs, all against the beautiful background of the always nearby waterways. One character pauses to praise the beauty of this city, and it's something w/ which viewers will concur.

Swedish series on Netflix: Quicksand

The six-part Swedish series on Netflix "Quicksand" (not sure what the Swedish title is or means) held our interest throughout, a well-written and we'll-acted drama about a teenage girl in a posh public hs outside of Stockholm who is charged w murder and conspiracy in the wake of a school shooting that involved a # of her classmates. The story unfolds in layers, and only well into the series so we learn the particulars of the shooting, w some key elements not revealed till the final episode when she, Maja, is on trial. It must be said that most of the characters including Maja are far from sympathetic, but on the other hand they are highly credible and typical of their class and social setting. The ending, which I will not reveal, was a bit of a let-down; I was anticipating a huge dramatic twist that was not to be. I was pretty frustrated by the seeming incompetence of her attorney, but evidently he was working under strictures unknown in the us justice system (eg the accused is kept in isolation even from family until the resolution of the case!). The door is - slightly - open for a second season. Meanwhile this is one of the better term hs dramas and what seems a realistic look into a system of justice quite different from ours in the us. (Recent Italian series about scholarship kids from a tough neighborhood in Rome is another in this vein worth watch - will paste in title later [note: The series is called Elite, and it's set in Spain, sorry])

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