Hors Satan

HORS SATAN            B-                   

aka:  Outside Satan                  

France (110 mi)  2011  ‘Scope  d:  Bruno Dumont           Official site [France]

In keeping with a current trend of high profile filmmakers that fail to invent new ideas and instead intentionally revisit their own works, such as Béla Tarr in The Turin Horse (2011) or Aki Kaurismäki in Le Havre (2011), where one could also include David Fincher in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011), Dumont has returned to familiar themes from L'HUMANITÉ (1999) mixed with a heavy dose of Dreyer’s ORDET (1955).  While something of an experimental and mostly wordless film exploring the mystical ramifications of good and evil, blending them together so that one can look very much like the other, the film is set in the lush greenery of Northern France not far from the coast (seen here:  Images for Parc Naturel régional des Caps et Marais d ...) where most of the film feels like a road movie.  Beautifully shot in ‘Scope by Yves Cape, the film is immersed in the natural world, where humans are seen as tiny creatures that occasionally dot the landscape, but otherwise barely alter the worldly design.  The featured character is Guy (David Dewaele), who spends most of the film slowly walking through the fields and hillsides, where he can also be seen camping outdoors.  He is joined by Elle (Alexandra Lemâtre), a young girl that follows him on long walks through a good part of the film, where they are friends, but remain distant, showing no intimacy of any kind.  Early on, Guy offers a strange and bizarre form of help, the kind that will send a jolt through the audience, as it seems boldly disturbing, yet she is obviously appreciative.  Nearby, there is a young girl that seems caught in a psychological paralysis, as if her brain is nearly dead, where Guy offers a kind of hands on assistance to heal her, behavior right out of L'HUMANITÉ.

Something of a drifter along the lines of Kwai Chang Caine (David Carradine as “Grasshopper”), the Shaolin monk from the Kung Fu TV series (1972 – 75), the audience senses an otherworldly dimension to Guy, who never expresses his thoughts and seems to perform both good and bad deeds, never changing his facial expression, never eating much, and spending nearly all of his time outdoors, as if gaining strength by the sun’s rays.  Much of this resembles the character of Johannes in ORDET, a slightly disturbed character that is mentally touched in the head but believes he is a living Christ, spending much of the film roaming the countryside reciting scripture to the winds, afraid people believe in the dead Christ, but not in the living one, a fragile creature mysteriously attuned with divine insight.  Here, in contrast, villagers believe Guy holds divine powers, where it’s the audience that may remain suspicious, especially witnessing his willingness to perform brutally violent acts, very un-Jesus like, where it's hard to apply rational laws to an irrational situation, where he does not fit the church’s assessment of a saintly creature.  Instead, like Pharaon in L'HUMANITÉ, it feels like he comes from beyond or outside human comprehension.  This alters the landscape of the film, suggesting nothing is as it seems.  The natural splendor of the world outside, however, remains constant and unchanged, where characters continually walk through verdant grasslands that remain untouched by human development, suggesting there is an Edenlike perfection, but humans, along with the other animals, are not part of it, as they are the beasts that inhabit the earth.  In perhaps the strangest scene of the film, Guy is joined by a female traveler (Aurore Broutin) on the Boulogne Road, a girl looking to camp nearby, where their behavior together borders on beastly, offering a strangeness and peculiarity simply unseen in other films.

Dumont allows the audience to dwell upon Guy’s (and God’s) impact on the landscape, where one wonders what motivates either one of them into action, as mostly both remain a passive, inert force with an unseen darker side that may attempt to help in mysterious ways, where mostly Guy (seen) and God (unseen) simply share time on earth with humans in need, as they’re the ones likely to call upon them.  While we’re clued into the fact both possess unworldly powers, we’re not sure why or under what circumstances either one is prepared to use them.  Mostly nothing happens in this oddly familiar world, set in the isolation of a remote rural landscape where anyone familiar with L'HUMANITÉ, ORDET, or even the most recent Carlos Reygadas film SILENT LIGHT (2007) will have an acute recognition, a déjà vu moment, where Dumont and others have already taken us down this road, where it’s hard to find anything new in this version.  Unlike the other films, which offer an open-ended sense of transcendence, Dumont’s apocalyptic universe is stiflingly predetermined, where humans are no more than specks on the landscape in a cold and indifferent environment, seemingly abandoned by God, having lost their way long ago, where they are seen continually pecking at one another’s open wounds, becoming grotesque, nihilistic irritants in an otherwise Edenesque world.  Like Béla Tarr, it’s this sense of nagging fatalism, that humans are bound to destroy and fail miserably, that one finds continually disturbing in a Dumont film, where despite all mystic and Godlike possibilities, optimism is quickly negated by the darker impulses of the human condition.  

Les Anges du Péché (Angels of the Street)

LES ANGES DU PÉCHÉ             B+             

aka:  Angels of the Street

France  (96 mi)  1943  d:  Robert Bresson

Bresson’s first two feature films are both overwrought melodramas from the 1940’s, also both feature the presence of professional actors for the last time in his career as well as an orchestral soundtrack, all features he eventually eliminated in creating his minimalist style that strips bare all but the most essential elements.  Of his two early films, this one most accurately resembles his Bressonian film style, where characters are nearly indistinguishable, there’s plenty of uniformity in action, nuns laying prostrate on the ground before their superiors, where the camera routinely follows people moving down long corridors or climbing up or down stairs, where the physical movement itself creates the rhythm he was looking for, also in the directness of addressing his subject matter, in this case spiritual redemption.  What distinguishes this film from all other Bresson films is that it was made while under Nazi occupation “during” World War II, similar to Rossellini’s OPEN CITY (1945), which was shot shortly after the German army vacated Rome, or Dreyer’s DAY OF WRATH (1943) which was shot during the Nazi occupation of Denmark and released to the public when the Danish government had resigned in protest, where the film became a symbol of the nation’s resistance.  Curiously, after spending more than a year as a German POW, this film was released in Paris June 23, 1943, a full year before D-Day, June 6, 1944.  Surprisingly, French cinema thrived under the occupation, especially with a German ban on foreign, particularly American, films.  There are no references to the war, no political mention of any kind, and the film, which began as a documentary, takes place nearly entirely within the grounds of a real-life Dominican convent of the Sisters of Béthany, where the interrelation between the nuns comprises the narrative, an idea supposedly brought to Bresson from Raymond-Leopold Bruckberger, a Dominican priest from Paris, shedding light on an unusual ministry that cares for women prisoners while welcoming former convicts into their Order.  The personal reference to Bresson's own life in prison is the final shot, where a wayward nun hiding out from the law finally turns herself in, finding spiritual salvation in the form of handcuffs and a life spent in prison. 

While this, Diary of a Country Priest (Journal d'un curé de campagne) (1950), and perhaps Mouchette (1967), the latter two both written by the same Catholic author, are his most Catholic oriented films, in each one must overcome the non-believer sentiment and self-doubts, where even the most faithful are challenged and forced to take unpopular actions, where going against the grain leads them to the redemptive path, not following any rigid church hierarchy.  The social structure within the convent might surprise some, as it’s filled with unkind rumors and backstabbers, where purely jealous motives may drive one to undermine another, as another sister’s popularity or social ranking may irk them, feeling they are more deserving.  Sounding a bit like cliques from high school, many of these sisters were deprived of a normal or typical social background due to damaged family relations, while this particular order of nuns seeks renewal through the rehabilitation of female prisoners.  It’s there that the idealistic and ever cheerful Sister Anne-Marie (Renée Faure) is called upon to save the dour and unrepentant prison inmate Thérèse (Jany Holt) who insists she’s innocent of all charges, rejecting and belittling Anne-Marie’s obvious naiveté, but the sister doesn’t back down, becoming obsessed with saving Thérèse’s soul, immediately befriending her when she suddenly and rather unexpectedly joins the convent.  Thérèse, on the other hand, remains chilly towards Sister Anne-Marie, hiding from all the fact that once out of prison she murdered the man responsible for putting her in prison.  Linking the salvation of the two together, the saint and the sinner, Bresson intercuts a shot of Anne-Marie praying in the chapel and Thérèse walking down a hallway on her way to commit the murder. 

Thérèse has a poisonous presence within the convent, leading a conspiracy against Sister Anne-Marie, turning everyone against her, using the rigidity of the rules as a way to subvert her more free-spirited and open hearted approach, resulting in a punitive critique by others who are jealous that the Mother Superior holds her in such high regard, where supposed nitpicking of rather minor infractions leads to a personally humiliating and demeaning public condemnation.  Strict obedience to the monotony of daily routine overrides any sense of leadership or moral assertiveness, becoming an absolutist, dictatorial agenda (like an Occupation) from which to impose harsh and punitive judgment.  This blindsides Anne-Marie and many of the nuns who find her cheerful optimism a source of refreshment and spiritual renewal.  Bresson finds transcendent moments in his very first feature, a highly provocative work accentuating dual moralities, filming a cinematic choreography that highlights an ascending moral path for both, though in decidedly different directions.  It should be noted that French director Bruno Dumont’s recent film Hadewijch (2009) may draw heavily from the provocative themes of this film, in particular blurring the lines between sinner and saint, both equally deserving of spiritual renewal, as it also partly takes place in a convent and features a deeply religious teenage Bressonian character who couldn’t be more innocent and pure that becomes exposed to religious fanaticism, drawing a fascinating parallel between the extremism of an austere, cloistered life and a similarly devout Muslim believer who is willing to die for a cause as a martyr, creating a powerful and emotionally cathartic final sequence that rivals Bresson’s own, another film reflecting dual possibilities, the human and the Divine, creating a bridge between heaven and earth. 

2010 Top Ten Films of the Year: #5 Hadewijch

HADEWIJCH               A-                                                             

France  (105 mi)  2009  d:  Bruno Dumont 

The best-laid plans of mice and men 

Go oft awry

—Robert Burns, To A Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest, with the Plough (1785)

I see there is all kinds of misinformation being circulated about this film, as unlike the current IMDb listings, this is the first Dumont film not to be shot in ‘Scope, shot instead with a 1:66 aspect ratio by the same cinematographer (Yves Cape) who shot FLANDRES (2006), yet it retains a luscious 35 mm color palette, also the length of the film varies from 120 mi (IMDb), 100 mi (Toronto), to the correct 105 mi (London, Hong Kong and Pyramide Films).  According to the IMDb message boards (Aspect ratio), Dumont is quoted October 4, 2009 at a New York Film festival Q & A that he decided not to use ‘Scope because “It’s a very complex subject, and for that I wanted to use simple means.”  Indeed, on the surface this may be the simplest of all the Dumont films, a faith based parable on the meaning of God and how to apply that meaning to our everyday human existence.  Non-professional newcomer Julie Sokolowski plays Céline, a modern day Joan of Arc, a true Bressonian character right out of DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST (1951) who has given her life to Christ, a deeply religious young teenage girl initially seen living in a convent as she intends to become a nun, but her refusal to eat and other acts of self-denial are so extreme that her alarmed Mother Superior suggests she is confusing abstinence with martyrdom and is not yet ready to live a cloistered life, suggesting her burning intensity needs a chance to mature, sending her back out into the world where she immediately meets a few young Arab boys who try to pick her up, amazed that she is so agreeable to their requests.  There’s a gorgeous scene where they watch some musicians play down by the river featuring an accordion and sax player, which is followed momentarily by her entry into an exquisitely beautiful and lavishly adorned church, where the sacred music playing is more to her liking, which turns out to be a solo voice and stringed quartet playing André Caplet’s “Le Miroir de Jesus.” 

We soon realize Céline comes from a highly privileged background, that her emotionally distant father is a government minister, but her life with him shows a cavernous emptiness, quite a contrast to Yassine (Yassine Salime), one of the boys from the projects outside Paris that takes an interest in Céline, where she’s often seen joy riding on the back of his motorcycle through the streets of Paris, a far cry from the director’s beloved Bailleul, the setting of his earlier films.  Yassine is a guy that would just as easily steal a bike as run red lights simply because the urge hits him, curious yet a little dejected that she clearly states upfront that she is a virgin with no interest in sexual relationships with men, as she’s only interested in the love of Christ, so Yassine introduces her to his brother Nassir (Karl Sarafidis), a devout Islamist teacher who invites her to one of his religious discussion sessions.  But when she does appear, the stares of men make her feel uncomfortable.  However, these two have extended conversations throughout the rest of the film that interestingly lay out philosophic principles that challenge the audience’s own humanity to embrace and love the differences in others as easily as they accept themselves.  Céline has a harder time feeling God’s love in the real world away from the convent, and she misses that intimacy, while Nassir expresses to her that God is never absent, but is everywhere, that humans are never separated from his love.  But he also believes God is more than love, that religion is the means to obtain social justice in an unjust world, even if that leads to violence, understanding that throughout human history, violence begets more violence.  What’s intriguing here is the allure Islam has to Céline, and their interest in her, drawing a fascinating parallel between the extremism of an austere, cloistered life and a similarly devout Muslim believer who is willing to die for a cause, seen here as an awakening, especially after she gives a daunting speech about her readiness to Nassir, expressed while illuminated by a brief passage of sunlight, as if she is suddenly willing to accept God as action where humans are soldiers in the army of God, vessels transmitting God’s love in order to bring about justice.  It’s an amazing moment, as the audience doesn’t know if she’s in full complicity or if she’s being duped by the malicious interests of others.  While she walks with an air of innocence and purity, Céline seems to have a pretty good understanding of how the world works and the people in it, though it is in her nature to be trusting of others, as she sees in herself an open vessel for others. 

Without any explanation, Céline is whisked away outside France somewhere to a place resembling Lebanon, where Nassir shows her a village under air attack, where many are injured or die from this seeming atrocity, an event that leaves her devastated and hurt, as those on the ground are powerless to change the circumstances which likely repeat themselves with regularity.  Just as quickly, again with no explanation, there is a violent retaliatory act, as a bomb explodes in a public metro station, where the audience may be quick to assume as Céline was riding on the train that she was used as a suicide bomber martyr, that perhaps her faith was too easily manipulated by the violent fanatics.  This could easily have been the end of the movie, a statement on how easily the innocent are misled, like lambs led to slaughter, but what follows is another view of the Catholic convent on the hill, set in a luscious pastoral setting, with an open green field surrounded by forests leading up a hill to the convent.  What happens next is open to interpretation, whether it’s told out of sequence or even whether it’s real or imaginary, but it’s a powerful and emotionally cathartic final sequence as the real world remains a blur from which Céline can find no relief, returning to the solace of the convent where she is seen taking shelter from the rain, praying inside the church until someone taps her on the shoulder and tells her someone wishes to speak to her, where police are seen off to one side of the screen as Céline is moving offscreen in the opposite direction, reflecting dual possibilities, dual moralities, the human and the Divine, and of course life or death.  Similar films that come to mind are Bresson’s utterly despairing MOUCHETTE (1967) and the Dardenne brother’s similarly downward spiraling ROSETTA (1999), each with different outcomes, where “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry leaving nothing but grief and pain,” or possibly something else altogether. There's sparing use of André Caplet’s “Le Miroir de Jesus,” Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion,”and perhaps even Mahler is heard over the final credits which come to an abrupt halt, perhaps the suggestion of a simulated death, another new wrinkle from Dumont whose prior films, except for radio playing, eschew the use of a musical score, and this may be Dumont’s only film that does not feature any sex scenes.  Late in the film, Céline assumes the name of Hadewijch, calling it also the place where she was born, but the name is based on a female historical figure from 13th century Belgium, a contemporary of St. Francis of Assisi, a highly educated saintly mystic whose manuscripts include visions and poetry that initially express a perpetual longing for an unattainable worldly love before sublimating all earthly passions to the eternal love of God.  

Postscript Thoughts [To be read only after seeing the film!!!]

The most cynical reading I've discovered so far is that the construction worker/jailbird went to jail for what likely happened immediately following that rescue and hug in the lake, raping her ("at least you didn't kill anybody"), which possibly led to the kind of extremist anger leading to Islamic martyrdom and her choice to become a suicide bomber, which is the chronological end.  If so, like the first use of soundtrack music in a Dumont film, also the first film that does not *show* sex onscreen but may brutally suggest it offscreen, and may also be the first Dumont film to make use of a hugely significant flashback sequence. 

This reading is aided by the use of music over the end credits which does come to an abrupt halt, like a death, which is certainly a significant clue, because if the film was shown in sequence, she was alive at the end. 

The shot in sequence scenario is obviously a more hopeful and optimistic view, one that suggests what we're searching for in God and religion can certainly be found within ourselves, that humans are our own salvation.  The use of Bresson may only be the surface, while Dumont may be more interested in the primal instincts under the surface, both of which play out against one another in pretty much all of Dumont's films. 

Nonetheless, what's truly unique is that Dumont has made a film that plays equally well into both endings.  Again, this may be a reference to his own finale of HUMANITY (1999) where there are again two possible endings, one where Joseph confesses to the hideous crime, and yet another where it was Pharaon, who is the one seen in handcuffs afterwards, though perhaps either one could confess out of love for the other.  Still -- most confusing.  After seeing HADEWIJCH, the most likely reading is that in HUMANITY both are responsible, and in HADEWIJCH both endings are true. 

2010 Top Ten Films of the Year: #9 Everyone Else (Alle Anderen)

EVERYONE ELSE (Alle Anderen)   A- 

Germany  (119 mi)  2009  d:  Maren Ade

The ultimate break-up film, shown here in a deliciously slow burn of insecurities, everything that the highly acclaimed, warm and nostalgia-tinged Olivier Assayas SUMMER HOURS (2008) pretended to be but was “not,” a scathing exposé of social convention, showing the hypocrisy and emptiness of a couple that, like the Wheeler’s in REVOLUTIONARY ROAD (2008), want to be unconventional, that doesn’t want to be like “everyone else.”  An extremely provocative film, well-written and intelligently directed by Ade, choosing unusually ordinary or uninteresting lead characters as her subject, a mirror image for the audience to identify with, a self-centered and bored German middle class couple, yet they are onscreen the entire length of the film together, rarely more than arms length away from one another.  With six years between films, plenty of time has passed, yet the distinctive finale of Ade’s last film is still fresh in the viewer’s minds, as the disturbing ambiguity remains unsettling to this day.  In THE FOREST FOR THE TREES (2003), all signs indicate a perfectly ordinary middle class setting, but as the director gets inside the head of a well-meaning teacher who can’t control her class, signs point to a psychological breakdown which the director meticulously details, where one might call Ade an on-the–fringe miserablist, though not full-fledged like Austrian Ulrich Seidl.  Both show a fondness for documentary realism, then embellishing the prevailing social order with remarkably downbeat unpleasantries.  As French director Claude Chabrol passed away this week, I’d like to point out the similarities with his style early in his career, especially the amazingly realistic Les Bonnes Femmes (1960), which for all practical purposes was a breezy lightweight comedy until the final reel which completely re-contextualized everything that came before.  That film was half a century ago, targeting the boredom of lower class working girls all at the same dead end job, an appliance store with few if any customers, while this film sets its sights on the economically successful, well-to-do German middle class, where they encounter so few hardships in their lifetimes that they lose the ability to express dissatisfaction, as they’re always expected to be happy doing whatever they choose, yet freedom becomes a weight they carry on their shoulders.  What’s compelling about the film is the evaporation of the supposed happiness that exists between this couple that hops in the sack at one moment and then has next to nothing to say afterwards or even well into the next day, where their specialty becomes cutting each other to shreds, where they fall under a blistering attack of acid-tinged criticisms hurled with the precision and accuracy of heat-seeking missiles. 

Lars Eidinger is Chris, who is the picture of proper rearing, as he’s intelligent, well-mannered, reserved, polite, soft-spoken, self-aware, yet distant, vacuous, aloof, and unreachable, the kind of guy who always has a book in his hand but has a hard time expressing his ideas.  He fancies himself as an architect, but he hasn’t really broken into the field just yet and has few job offers, so he’s likely still supported by his parents, who are unseen, but their presence is everywhere, as the couple is vacationing at his parent’s villa on the island of Sardinia, and the house reflects his parent’s bourgeois taste.  Birgit Minichmayr is Gitta, the much more unconventional and outgoing between the two, an impulsive girl that has no problem whatsoever speaking what’s on her mind, and can be seen in an early scene interacting with the young daughter of Chris’s sister, urging her to communicate her real feelings, to come right out and say “I hate your guts,” or “I despise you,” eventually pretending to be shot by this kid, falling into the pool acting dead.  It’s a humorous scene the way it’s presented, especially with a charming little girl who plays along, but the same theme continues to play out in various permutations between the couple for the rest of the film.  Their interplay, however, is so naturalistic and their real feelings so disguised that at times you can barely tell there’s tension in the air.  And that’s exactly how the characters see it as well, blind to what’s obvious, and not looking to dig deep enough to uncover what’s under the surface.  The focus of the camera is intimacy, zeroing in on an accumulation of tiny details while capturing the couple in close proximity, always within eye contact, but rarely actually looking at each other.  Gitta continuously confesses her love and never leaves this guy’s side, annoying him with her suffocating presence, yet she’s obviously well-intentioned and has a sexy charm about her possessiveness.  Chris, on the other hand, is more indecisive and aimless and needs room, plenty of it, and the island itself is a visual paradise with what appears to be tropical trees, a jungle-like forest with high grass, and an ocean nearby.  You’d think anyone could get lost in that Edenesque atmosphere, but with these two, it’s like they’re either the first or last two people remaining on earth just waiting for someone to hand them an apple, as they couldn’t be less optimistic about their future together. 

It’s interesting the way Ade chooses to test this couple, as it’s with a stereotypical boorish German male, Hans, actually named Hans-Jochen Wagner, an established architect who’s loud, obnoxious, opinionated and totally condescending, yet he’s continually seeking out Chris as if they’re old school friends.  Chris, on the other hand, has a near phobic desire not to be seen by Hans and is successful for half the film, but once they meet, it’s clear Hans is handing them the apple, as Chris immediately defers to Han’s smug masculinity and sucks the toxic fumes of his pig-headed and overbearing nature, accepting without return a volley of insults directed at himself and Gitta, all with a patronizing air of superiority, where Gitta rises to his defense, but is then abandoned by Chris who thinks her unconventional and outspoken honesty is out of line.  Hans calls her a Brünnhilde defending her man, a reference to the sword carrying, war-like maiden in Wagner’s Ring Cycle, which is nothing more than insulting name-calling, one German stereotyping another with an unflattering Nazi-tinged label.  But Chris seems to think it’s OK for Hans to joke around with demeaning insults all told with a smile, but not for Gitta to call him on his noxious contempt for others.  In other words, it’s socially acceptable to insult and disparage others so long as it’s only words, where the manner in which it’s spoken trumps the meaning behind it.  Chris then falls in line with the odious and egotistic behavior of Hans and leaves Gitta dangling on her own.  In perhaps the scene of the film, Chris invites Hans and his more shallow pregnant girlfriend Sana (Nicole Marischka) over for dinner, a social makeup for Gitta’s previous overly blunt outspokenness, where after dinner they show the couple his parent’s villa, carrying drinks up into his mother’s room where Hans immediately disparages his mother’s taste as well, but she’s got a “cool” stereo, which plays the German version of Barry Manilow or Neil Diamond, a live version of Grönemeyer singing a typically popular mainstream love song, “Ich hab dich lieb.”  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VlmB3YWnc8)  Sana reveals her middle-of-the-road mainstream streak as she’s enchanted by the nostalgic simplicity of idealized love, where she and Hans embrace all affectionately over the cheesy lyrics while Chris and Gitta, shown on each side of the perfectly composed frame, may as well be light years away.  That shot alone expresses with poetic clarity just how difficult it is to authentically connect with someone else, because this couple wouldn’t be caught dead with cheap sentiment, but without it, they’re lost in a no man’s land with nothing to connect them together, each stuck inside their own heads instead of one another’s.  Revealing a bonanza of rarely seen truths onscreen, there’s something reminiscent of Bruno Dumont’s contrasting 29 PALMS (2003), featuring a superficial relationship held together by nothing much more than sex, shown as not much of a defense on a desert-like road to nowhere, but here in the luscious palms of a tropical paradise, these much more sharp edged and carefully nuanced characters actually attempt to communicate but fail just as miserably.