Incredible beauty and shocking brutality co-exist in Terence Davies's Scottish melodrama, Sunset Song

 Terence Davies's Sunset Song (2015), based on the novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, has the classic beauty of over Davies films, in this case to the extreme, with its many wide-screen shots of the Scottish landscape across the seasons and in various forms of inclement weather known well to anyone who's lived in or even visited Scotland - plus some extraordinary interior of the farm house and the outbuildings on a Scottish one-family planting and dairy operation, scenes with lighting that can only remind your of a Vermeer (props to Michael McDonald for cinematography) - all this and a pretty good melodrama of a plot, with amazing scenes of life throughout the farming community - wedding celebration, funeral services - as well as some scenes of almost unbearable tension (getting the horses into the barn during a midnight thunderstorm) & brutality (see for yourself). The story line, w/out spoilers, involves a few years in the life of a young woman, Chris Guthrie (Agyness Deyn), as she navigates family tensions in their overcrowded farmhouse dominated by the brute of a father, leading to shocking tragic deaths and ultimately her independence and then marriage to a seemingly benevolent young man from the village obvious in awe of her poise and beauty and then, as w/ SO many British films, the war intrudes and her husband is changed in dramatic (and to be honest not entirely credible) ways that threaten her life and her child's. The plot carries us along nicely, and that's all that we need to otherwise enjoy this film for its capacity to capture both the natural beauty of the Scottish lands and the look and feel of the hard life of the small farmer - the film set ca 1915 but maybe the same story could hold today. One drawback: for most American viewers the Scottish language or accent will make this feel like a film in a foreign language; some may opt for closed caption, though we decided to decipher as best we could and not intrude on the beauty of the imagery.  

Why The World of Apu is a classic among world cinema

 Satyajit Ray's The World of Apu (Apur Sanar, 1959), the conclusion of his Apu trilogy (and based on the novel Aparajito, by Bibhutibhashan Bandopodhyay) not only lives up to its reputation as a classic in world cinema, it may even go beyond its reputation, as it looks better, more original, more mysterious than it probably did back in the 1950s, as now its views of Calcutta look like time capsules, a view of another world, whereas the scenes of rural India (the slow boat ride along a winding river to the wedding site, scenes late in the film on the mountainous coal-mining region of what I think is Bengal, in winter) look even more devastatingly beautiful in their b/w imagery, which adds a sense of distance and classic taste to films of its era. The story line - young man (Apu Roy, played by great, expressive Soumitra Chatterjee, who died last week btw) leaves college because he can't afford the fees and sets off on his own, with dreams of becoming a great writer - living in a rundown, dismal apartment, his clothes in tatters, and the landlord threatening him w/ eviction - yet he has an optimistic, survivor's spirit and he looks for work (a devastating part of the film, as we see the conditions in which others, w/out his formal education, are forced to work) and carouses w/ his friend Balu as they share their dreams and optimism. The 2 guys seem entirely contemporary - and a throwback to many other great works about artistic and amorous dreams crashing against reality: think La Boheme, or Sentimental Education, or Great Expectations to name 3. Apu's life takes some dramatic twists and turns, which I will not divulge, as he experiences joy and exhilaration, young love and aspiration (with the beautiful Sharmila Tagore as his wife Aparna), tragedy, depression, and at least partial recovery and reconciliation. There are so many beautiful scenes and moments, but of particular beauty are the many shots of trains criss-crossing the smog-glutted outskirts of Calcutta as well as Aparna's arrival at Apu's dwelling, in particular the long take of her tearfully peering through a threadbare, tattered curtain her new surroundings. Also notable is the haunting score by the then little-known (in the West) Ravi Shankar. 

Joining the chorus of universal praise for The Crown (season 4)

 I will join in the praise of Season 4 of Peter Morgan's monumental series, The Crown. The series deserves commendation on every level and aspect, starting perhaps w/ the look of the spare-no-expense sets and settings for the royal family, all reconstructed and resurrected it seems in perfect period detail, both big (the airplanes, the cars, the equestrian stuff and hunting) and small (the many object d'art and portraiture in every interior). The series is of course centered on the disintegrating relationship between Charles and Diana w/ the side story being the tension between Thatcher and just about every else during her ten year reign of austerity; several of the episodes concern moments in British history in the 1980s not well known to American viewers - the disappearance of Thatcher's son during an African road rally, an intruder in Buckingham Palace - others are much better known, e.g., the Falklands War, the role of the UK in re apartheid. The lead actors are all terrific, perfectly cast and totally credible in their roles, with Olivia Colman at the top but also standouts for a # of others whom I have to look up: Josh O'Connor as Charles, Emma Corrin as Diana, Tobias Menzies as Prince Phillip, Erin Dohherty as Princess Anne, and Helena Bojnham Carter as Princess Margaret (and note that all of the minor roles are equally well cast and played). Highest praise to Morgan, as the writing (and direction for that matter) is incredibly smart, as well are constantly surprised at the twists and turns of the dialog and feel both sympathy and loathing, at various moments and degrees, for all of the royals, even Charles: How can we not pity him, even when he's at his most brutal, when we see the family he came from, the complete and total lack of affection? he's perfectly cast in this series, but miscast in life. 

A look at the China that tourists never see

 Chinese director Jia Zhangke's debut film, Xiao Wu (1997) is a curiosity, worth watching today for its up-close look at everyday life in China in the late 20th century, a life and setting that American tourists never see, and for the sheer audacity of a film a crime and dissolution among China's youth - all on what must have been an extremely limited budget. All actors in the film were nonprofessionals, working out their characters and the milieu as the project progressed; apparently the film was shot entirely w/ 16mm handheld cameras, and it looks like it, too - though that adds the the sense of place. The story line such as it is in valves the eponymous Xiao Wu, a young man who makes a pretty good living as a pickpocket working the streets and shops in an industrial wasteland of a city on the distant outskirts of Beijing. He doesn't look like much of a thief or a threat - clean-cut, always wearing a red sweater, wonky thick eyeglasses. There's some pressure from family and friends pushing him to go straight and enter a dubious though maybe ominous business in wholesaling cigarettes. All of this is just a means to give us a portrayal of life in China, far from what the authorities or the tourist industry would have liked us to see - maybe that's still true: run-down building and apartments, projects left unfinished, terrible hygiene, prostitutes running a slick business, ineffective policing, everyone chasing money, and not a thought or a moment about China or ideology - although at the end there are hints of building a new urban China to welcome the annexation of Hong Kong. 

A terrific film that uses original and documentary footage to examine the life and death of a powerful Italian leader

 Francesco Rosi's The Mattei Affair (1972) is what today we'd call a "docudrama," a retelling of the life of a man little-known to Americans today, or ever, who was entrusted toward the end of WW2 with the management of the oil reserves of Italy and over the next 20 years or so built the Italian oil conglomerate into a hugely powerful enterprise, broad in scope. Amazingly, in the process of his doing so he seems to have managed his personal integrity - no bribes, no obvious corruption, a relatively Spartan lifestyle (except for his private jet - which he makes a good case that he needs for his constant international travel), and an insistence throughout his career that the oil belongs to the people of Italy and he will do all he can to enrich his country, not himself. Well, of course, in his two decades of making deals for Italian oil reserves he makes many enemies (in particular, the U.S., which tried to undercut him with sales to the oil conglomerates, Standard Oil et al. - one of the great scenes in the film is Mattei's confrontation with a nasty American oil baron who says he won't deal with an "oil salesman"). Mattei is played brilliantly, at an extremely high energy level, by the great Jean Marie Volonte (best known to us as the police chief in Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion). Another one of the best scenes has Mattei speaking to a huge, adoring crowd in Sicily - and you have to wonder in that scene if he had or could have had political ambitions. As it happens, he died in a crash of his private jet in 1962: the scene of his plane crash opens the film, and then we go back 20 years and gradually, as Rosi builds the case that the crash was an act of sabotage. Although no foul play was detected at the time (cover-up?), an investigative team (not sure if they were journalists or filmmakers) began a new investigation in about 1970 - when one of the investigators, in Sicily, vanished and has never been seen since. It was unclear to me whether Rosins used any documentary footage (a check of Wikipedia shows that he did include scenes of himself investigating the death of his friend/colleague) but, either way, it's a powerful film by a truly courageous documentary filmmaker.

The Losey-Pinter 1967 film, Accident, is well crafted in all respects except that the leading characters are loathsome

 The 2nd of the Losey-Pinter projects - Accident (1967) - available on Criterion, is less ominous and peculiar than the first collaboration, The Servant, with it's odd camera angles and the menacing undertone of moral corruption and psychological torment. Accident is a more straightforward socio-drama and it feels much more cinematic and less like that film adaptation of a stage play. Briefly, the plot consists 2 Oxford "dons," close pals apparently, who find themselves in a deadly rivalry for the affections of a student, who herself is something of an exotic femme fatale (and who, by the way, never utter a word about their work, their ideas, or their reading). It's also a bit of a class-relations tragedy, although tempered in that the dons, or at least one of them, seems pretty damn aristo (maybe psueudo aristo, but anyway wealthy) himself. There are a few high-tension scenes, well crafted by screenwriter par excellence Pinter and well managed by the great camera work of director Losey. All that said, both films but especially this one, are headed by morally corrupt and unlikable male characters that by the end you just (figuratively) shrug and say "a plague on both your houses." Nice that the film opens with the eponymous accident, in which the young woman walks, or at least stumbles, away and her young boyfriend apparently dies - and then Pinter jumps back in time to the onset of the web of attractions and relationships and we never learn precisely what happened in the accident until the end - which, by the way, is framed by a weird and provocative closing sequence. 

A good example of Pinter's dramatic style in Losey's The Servant

 The Joseph Losey film The Servant (1963), with screenplay by Harold Pinter (based on a 1948 novel by Robin Maugham - about whom I know nothing) bears all the markings of Pinter's style as a playwright (I assume this was first a stage play?) - dialogue that's enigmatic, concise, spoken obliquely so that we have a sense that none of the characters - usually only two on stage/screen at any time - even understands what's being said. One (of the many) strange scenes takes place at a restaurant where two of the (4) main characters are having dinner - but we here more from the adjacent tables than from the principals (all of the "overheard" conversations are bleak, including a pair of Anglican priests sniping at each other and an unhappy couple, with Pinter taking a cameo role here). The essential plot: A young man, Tony (James Fox) allegedly back in England after a (allegedly) sojourn in either Africa, Brazil, or India (completely fabricated) hires a "manservant," Barrett (Dick Bogarde). The 2 have a strained and bitter relationship, with Barrett at first entirely buttoned down and subservient, but gradually we see Barrett plotting to take control of his life and of the household, bringing in his girlfriend (whom he says is his sister) to seduce Tony, break apart his engagement - which leads to Tony's firing of Barrett and to further complications. the level of tension and of mystery is high throughout with some really imaginative camera work (many mirror shots and staircase shots). One would assume that Pinter cut the novel to shreds in his adaptation for stage/screen; the film, despite its strengths, could have used some trimming during the final segments, as Barrett and Tony become buddies and accomplices (a strange implied sexuality to their time as roommates) in which the scenes become more crowded and dissolute and, at the end, as the two men become bitter rivals once again but with the tables turned so to speak; we get it - and could have gotten it 15 minutes sooner. 

Kristen Johnson's funny, moving documentary about the last years of her father's life - with many surprises

 Kristen Johnson's funny, original, and moving documentary about the last years of her father's life, Dick Johnson Is Dead (2020, Netflix) has many surprises and somehow manages to avoid the lachrymose sensibility that pervades many such projects. This one, in the direct line of Sarah Polley's Stories We Tell, is part of an emerging genre that we might call auto-film, much like the movement toward auto fiction (from Proust to Knausgaard) that has become a dominant trend in literary fiction. KJ's film, made with the complete cooperation of her dad, a successful Seattle-based psychiatrist, widowed for some time (his wife died of Alzheimer's complications) is, as the documentary opens, feeling the first painful signs of the onset of dementia, and his daughter, of whom he's proud, asks if he'd be willing to be the subject of this project (in one of the many touching moments in this film, KJ shows the only video she has of her mother's last years, and she regrets she had so little). All viewers will be struck by how kind, pleasant, and intelligent Dick Johnson is - a well-adjusted man, w/ friends and with patients who seem to care deeply for him. This film is the antithesis of a "Mommy Dearest" project; the family is well-adjusted, comfortably established but by no means wealthy, loving, and caring - what a surprise! The arc of the story entails director KJ helping Dick J relinquish his profession, his independence, and his beautiful Seattle house and re-locate to NYC where he is sharing quarters with his daughter (and his, thankfully, near his beloved grandchildren). He never resists her plan, realizing it's for the best for all, but there's much sorrow and struggle as he gives up the life he knows. What keeps the film buoyant are the many comic "pranks" that KJ creates and stages, all of which dramatize Dick J's calamitous death, e.g., a window AC falls on his head as he walks down a NYC street, or a construction worker carrying a beam turns thoughtlessly and the beam smacks Dick to the ground. But he always "rises," to the point that we become inured to his death - though KJ has some surprises for us right up to the end of this film, an ending that is powerful and a beautiful summary of her father's life and of her art. 

A series worth watching regardless of your interest (of lack of interest) in chess: The Queen's Gambit

 After a bit of a rough start - the first episode seemed heavy-handed - the Netflix series The Queen's Gambit (2020; by Scott Frank and Alan Scott, based on the novel by Walter Tevis) really picks up w/ episode two. The series begins in an orphanage where the young Beth Harmon first views a chessboard (the janitor plays the board in the basement of the orphanage) and is immediately recognize as a gifted player; in the 2nd episode we see Beth, newly adopted by a well-off couple w/ a load of problems and issues, as a high-school student, and she really picks up, with Anya Taylor-Joy in the role, a young actor clearly destined for great things. She's terrific, in a demanding and complex role, through her 6 episodes, as we follow Beth's career from local tournaments to international competitions - and along the way to many personal struggles and awakenings and to some surprising plot twists, which never feel gimmicky or improbable. The conclusion in particular is dramatic and completely satisfying, intellectually and emotionally - a rarity for a dramatic miniseries, most of which abandon the need for resolution as they try to keep the doors open for a sequel. It may sounds like damning w/ faint praise, but the chess matches, even for novices (maybe especially for novices) are the most exciting moments in the series - but it's a tribute to the writers and directors how well they stage these constrictive scenes. There are a slew of secondary characters, all of whom contribute to the plot line and the development and deepening of Beth's characters. All told, it's a series well worth watching regardless of your knowledge of or even interest in chess. 

Blind Alley is a curiosity from the 1930s but still kind of fun to watch, esp for the dream sequences

 Charles Vidor's 1939 film, Blind Alley, is today more of a curiosity thank a great film - I was led to it because the Criterion Channel promoted it as part of its look at cinema and psychology - but that said it's a kick to watch and the film is only about 70 minutes long: Imagine that! The film is adapted from a stage play and it looks it, though I have to say the play was probably pretty good, in the Agatha Christie mold, perhaps. Basic plot? We begin with a professor leading a college (all male, all white) class on psychology; he just begins to discuss abnormal behavior and the fundamentals of Freudian psy - not nearly as well known then as today - when the bell rings, class dismissed. As it happens, that very night!, when the prof goes home to a house full of weekend guests and his young son, a convicted "killer" breaks out of jail, holding the warden hostage (it makes no sense that they kill the warden, btw), and they are looking for a hangout and head for the prof''s house, where they hold the whole household hostage while awaiting a boat pickup for a getaway. The plot turns own the prof's ability to "analyze" the killer and unbury the childhood memories that have tormented him for his whole life and have make him the killer that he is. The premise is intriguing, and the development of the plot, while far from probable and a complete distortion of the process of analysis, but who really cares? It's kind of fun, intense at times, and it features a few highly imaginative dream sequences that probably inspired later such passages in Hitchcock and others. 

The South Korean Joint Security Area is a fast paced thriller with lots of surprises - though at times it's difficult to follow

 Park Chan-wook's highly successful South Korean film Joint Security Area (2000), based on a novel (not on "true events"), is at first a challenge for American viewers who may not be familiar w/ some of the protocols and procedures regarding the military standoff at the DMZ between the 2 Koreas - in fact, it may help to story the film (on the great Criterion Channel) about 30 minutes in and rewatch those to make sure you have the principals and principles clear in your mind. From that point on, the movie is dramatic and exciting - centering on an investigation by neutral nations (in particular, one of the investigators is a Geneva-born Swiss army Major of Korean descent) of a fatal shooting - execution style? - in the North Korean border outpost. There are numerous twists and surprises in the plot, and if you can't quite get them all clear in your mind just enjoy the movie for the drama and the interactions among some extremely different types of the military personnel, from hard-line extremists on both sides of the line to everyday soldiers filling out the terms of their required military service. Some of the characters who seem heroic at the outset turn out to be everything but - as the film continues to surprise us and disrupt our expectations at many turns