2025 Top Ten List #8 Grand Tour

 

Director Miguel Gomes

Gomes with the Best Director Award at Cannes

Gomes with his lead cast

GRAND TOUR                     A-                                                                                            Portugal,  Italy  France  Germany  Japan  China  (124 mi)  2024  d: Miguel Gomes

Abandon yourself to the world and you’ll see how it rewards you.                                             —Japanese monk

Winner of Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival of 2024, while also listed at #1 of best films of the year by La Internacional Cinéfila Poll: Best Movies of 2024, and #2 by Cult MTL: Justine Smith: The Best Films of 2024, this well-regarded, thought-provoking film is a loose adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s 1930 published travelogue, Gentleman in the Parlour:  A Record of a Journey from Rangoon to Haiphong (which may be read in its entirety here: The Gentleman in the Parlour. A Record of a Journey from ...), taking him from Burma through Thailand and Cambodia to Vietnam, traveling by train, riverboat, or by mule through the mountains.  Chapter Six (just two or three pages) recounts the story of a man who decides to escape his impending marriage after they had been engaged for 7 years, taking him across Asia as he tries to escape.  While Maugham is not exactly a household name anymore, he’s a quintessentially British writer.  Filtering his vision through an experimental Portuguese arthouse director may not be the perfect match, and yet it is.  Gomes creates a unique, yet exhilarating experience, cowritten with his wife and creative partner Maureen Fazendeiro, as well as Mariana Ricardo, and co-editor Telmo Churro, billed in the credits as the “Central Committee,” introducing a love story of Edward (Gonçalo Waddington), a somewhat shy and reserved colonial British civil servant stationed in Burma who at the last minute decides to escape from his fiancée, Molly (Crista Alfaiate), on the eve of her ship’s arrival from London, set against the historical backdrop of the collapse of the British Empire in the early 20th century.  Among the more mysterious aspects is the continually changing voice of the narrators, both male and female, with a different language coming from each new country visited, while equally mystifying is Gomes having his lead English protagonists speak Portuguese.  Starting in Rangoon, Burma in 1918, the Asian grand tour was a popular travel excursion by many well-to-do European travelers at the start of the 20th century, some of them writing books about the experience, where it is like venturing into a new world as they travel through various Asian locations, including Burma (Myanmar), Siam (Thailand), Vietnam, the Philippines, China, Japan, and Singapore.  What sounds like a humorous film that Wes Anderson would make, with his whimsical idiosyncrasy and darkly satiric edge, nothing sounds more British than an eclectic boating song featured in Charles Crichton’s classic Ealing Studio comedy THE LAVENDER HILL MOB (1951), Eton College Musical Society - Eton Boating Song YouTube (3:26), which might feel more at home in a Monty Python skit, but this becomes more of an exotic experience into the unknown, something along the lines of Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express (1932), or before that Ilya Trauberg’s silent film China Express (Goluboy ekspress) (1929).  Gomes, one of the more inventive directors working today, is best known for making the positively enchanting 2013 Top Ten List #4 Tabu (2012) and the backwards cinematic experiment shot during lockdown, The Tsugua Diaries (Diários de Otsoga) (2021), while we’ll pass over his grim, densely constructed 6-hour epic ARABIAN NIGHTS (2015), a confounding, indulgent, and bewildering exploration in three parts of Portugal’s economic crisis that was simply a chore to sit through, inducing plenty of walk outs, including my own.  This is a return to the miraculous heights he achieved with TABU, like a spiritual sequel.  What that film was to Africa, this is to Southeast Asia, a venture into faraway lands that is unlike anything we’ve seen in years, where there’s an anachronistic quality to the film, with homages to early black-and-white studio movies, and a novel use of interwoven documentary material from the present, yet it doesn’t necessarily have to make sense, as it’s all seeped in a spectacular visual aesthetic that is just fun to watch, revealing what’s possible when cinema is freed from the shackles of a story.

Gomes discovered the Maugham travelogue on the eve of his own marriage, where the newlyweds decided to follow the route of the grand tour themselves before writing the script, filming documentary style as they went with a 16mm camera shooting present day footage that would become the background of the film, a five-week trip that was cut short by the Covid pandemic, forcing them to return before completing their journey, where it all plays out like an exotic dreamscape, where the merging of dreams into ordinary existence becomes a prominent aspect of what films can do, as Gomes seems to specialize in this kind of otherworldy landscape.  What takes us by surprise is the overall style of the film, where the continual use of different narrators adds an alienating sense of detachment, as if reading a book, fueled by the magisterial imagery captured onscreen by three different cinematographers working with 16mm, Thai Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, who has worked with Luca Guadagnino and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Portuguese Rui Poças, who has worked with Lucrecia Martel and João Pedro Rodrigues, and Chinese newcomer Guo Liang.  The brightly colored opening sequence is set in the present as we witness the whirl of a hand-operated ferris wheel, with several acrobatic carnival workers climbing up to the top hanging precariously on edge while avoiding the rhythmic motion that potentially engulfs them, while some daredevil has the nerve to swoop under the carriage at its lowest point as if playing limbo before it rises again, one after another, with perfect timing, where his dexterity is simply phenomenal, yet the first thing we notice is that the narration does not match the images, seemingly having a life of its own, suggesting we’re in for a ride.  Shifting to free-flowing, dancing puppets on strings, each one connected to a human figure who is kept in the dark behind the screen, yet we’re privy to see, while the sound of pulsating drums conjures up moments of pure ecstacy.  In a switch to black and white, like documentary footage, we’re suddenly jettisoned back into the past as workers walk precariously on overhead telephone pole power lines like tightrope walkers as they diligently work on repairs.  At some point, we catch up to the narration with a debonair, white-suited Edward waiting at a Mandalay railway station holding a bouquet of flowers awaiting the arrival of his fiancée, but by then we realize how out of sync we are, like a series of kaleidoscopic images that continually changes shapes before our eyes, all of which suggests the infinite power of illusion.  Suddenly, without a word of explanation, Edward impulsively flees the scene, giving the flowers away before stowing away on a steamship, then hopping a train that strangely derails in the jungle, 'Grand Tour' - Miguel Gomes - Clip 1 - Cannes Film Festival YouTube (53 seconds), the first of many stops in his meandering odyssey through Southeast Asia, a continent still unknown to Europeans.  At first motivated by sheer panic, his mood changes over time, evolving into melancholic reflections, as if contemplating the anguished emptiness of his existence.  It’s all a bit discombobulated and hard to follow, like sequences told out of time, as if we’re watching an ever-shifting magic show, with exalted images that linger in the mind, but these few short scenes reveal both an excitement and a wondrous beauty in the art of cinema.  Recalling the first Claire Denis film, Chocolat (1988), often blurring the lines between dreams and reality in its blistering examination of colonialism, while also reminiscent of Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil (1982), finding ourselves somewhere between an experimental travelogue and a stream-of-consciousness montage, Gomes has created an abstract homage to cinema itself, making this as rewarding and breathtaking as they come.  The set pieces of distinct locations were shot on soundstages in Lisbon and Rome, given such a recognizable look of artificiality that Gomes ends his film with a shot of the crew concluding their work. 

What follows is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle, a kaleidoscopic collage of different languages and cultures, a blend of the past and the present, where recognizable characters come into view, two figures chasing each other through time, where their grand tour comes to symbolize broader themes of identity and purpose, and how easily change affects culture, time and space, and our understanding of history, but we’re guided by spontaneous trips to ticket offices, as Edward always wants to stay one step ahead of the jilted bride who is tailing him.  She only comes into play at the midway point, as the story shifts from Edward’s intensely brooding runaway groom perspective to that of his determined and modern bride Molly, who has a ferociously stubborn independent streak of her own, and a silly, somewhat grotesque laugh, not necessarily unhappy with the turn of events, which may seem surprising, as she’s open to the idea of playing this cat and mouse game, traipsing through various hotels, jungles, and temples, traveling on trains and boats, seemingly amused by his attempted escape, always sending telegrams ahead of her impending arrivals, absolutely certain it will all come together in the end.  Viewers, however, are not so sure, as what initially feels playful turns ever more dour, as if these characters are lost in their own self-inflicted abyss, mirrored by the last vestiges of the British empire, where the end is inevitable.  As Horace Seagrave (João Pedro Bénard), an opium-loving British consul in China says in the film, “We will leave without having understood a thing.”  That is ultimately where we find ourselves, where each adventure has a timeless quality, like a self-contained encounter, or like a mosaic in a larger puzzle, reflecting the vastly unexplored existential terrain that offers a ponderous and contemplative perspective, GRAND TOUR de Miguel Gomes (2024) – clip 3 YouTube (36 seconds).  There are scenes where people are speaking in foreign languages with no subtitles, as the characters themselves are equally clueless about what they’re saying, which mirrors what one of the characters says, “Asian culture can never be understood by the white man.”  Along the way, Molly meets a ridiculously wealthy American cattle baron, Timothy Sanders (Cláudio da Silva), who, after hearing her story, actually proposes to her, but she expresses no interest, yet after a health scare he does offer help in the form of his Vietnamese maid, Ngoc (Lang Khê Tran), who nurses her back to health, and in the process Ngoc becomes a trusted friend.  Much of what this film is about is something we cannot see, but exists only internally, like a yearning for freedom, or a deep sense of belonging, where there’s a Westernized romanticization of the colonial era, but also a critique, with signs of disintegrating cracks and limitations, as there’s an unbridgeable gap between the various cultures, just as there may be in this seemingly impossible romance, yet the magic of cinema, along with other forms of art, can bridge these gaps, creating a dialectic between cinema and reality, offering a window into a world we don’t normally see.  There is something that approaches the rapturous joy reflected in Richard Halliburton’s extremely popular travel memoir The Royal Road to Romance, first published in 1925, a Princeton grad who circumnavigated the globe with almost no money, traveling through the Khyber Pass, sailing on the Nile, swimming the Panama Canal, climbing the Matterhorn, sneaking into the Taj Mahal at night, or flying to Timbuktu, always in pursuit of the adventure of a lifetime, where one can only sit back and wonder what a long strange trip it’s been.  This film has a killer ending, one of the best seen in a while, with a musical cue that in the midst of tragedy just generates a smile, where one of the more outstanding aspects of the film is the prevailing use of absurd humor, and while there are grim aspects, this is far and away the filmmaker’s funniest film, one that delights in subverting audience expectations.  

Miguel Gomes on Grand Tour | NYFF62  Film at Lincoln Center artistic director Dennis Lim interviews Gomes following a screening, YouTube (20:55)

Zama

 

Director Lucrecia Martel

ZAMA                           B                 

Argentina  Brazil  Spain  France  Netherlands  Mexico  Portugal  USA  115 mi)  2017   d:  Lucrecia Martel

Europe is best remembered by those who were never there.

—Luciana Piñares de Luenga (Lola Dueñas)

Martel’s first film in nine years, bearing more than a passing resemblance to the ostentatiousness of Herzog’s AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD (1972), this is an oddly mystifying and morbidly detached film about being lost and stuck in time, like a weary time traveler who loses his ability to freely move back in time, feeling somehow forgotten, abandoned, humiliated, and ultimately defeated.  Any plot is superfluous, instead delving into an interior state of mind where every character seems to be speaking directly to you, laughing or shaming you, like taunting voices from a Fellini movie, leaving you helpless, in a state of paralysis, yet seething with each incendiary comment.  Examining the aftereffects of the era of Conquistadors, sent by the King of Spain to vanquish the indigenous Indians and pilfer precious resources, this offers a somewhat comedic look at the so-called civilized stability left behind, seen through a Kafkaesque lens of exaggerated absurdity, where an 18th century Spanish officer, Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho), is the picture of nobility and success, but also, apparently, a laughingstock to the locals, offering a picture of dignity and reserve that is undermined at every step along the way.  Adapting a 1956 Argentine novel by Antonio di Benedetto, Martel satirizes the myths of noble white privilege and heroicism, challenging the ideas frequently taught in textbooks, offering a less than civilized exposé of colonial times.   Bathed in the pretense of class status, wearing a three-cornered hat and a white wig, Zama holds the prestigious position of a Corregidor, an official appointed by the crown in an oversea empire to represent the interests of Spain, whose duties combined police investigations with judicial powers, while also serving as marriage counselors or trade ambassadors, paving the way for illicit profiteering, allowing a wealthy class to prevail with unhindered access.  While it’s easy to see how they could easily extort money from the profiteers, taking payoffs and bribes, Zama is supposedly above all that, yet his underlings are rewarded for their common failings, transferred to prestigious locations, with recommendations from the crown, while the inscrutable Zama sits and waits for his opportunity.  Set in a backwater village of Asunción in what is now Paraguay, Zama dreams of being transferred to a bigger city where he’ll have more influence, leaving a wife and infant child behind in Spain, believing they might join him, but he sits instead in a state of limbo patiently waiting for the transfer that will never come.

While there’s little involvement with character, yet this is a film that creeps up on you through sheer style alone, where one of the intriguing aspects is the separation of nobility, with all its extravagance, from the rest of the villagers, which includes an indigenous presence as servants.  This social model exists in Argentina even today, with an exclusive middle and upper class that is mostly white and a much larger lower class that is indigenous, where some are deluded enough to believe they are actually Europeans, as that’s the social class they identify with, refusing to accept the indigenous as part of the Argentine community.  Squabbles over land rights have existed for 200 years and are no closer to resolution today, with a ruling class refusing to cede anything to the indigenous people, dominated by a racially tinged superiority complex that suggests supreme arrogance.  Spending a great deal of time inside his head in a collective stream-of-conscious voiceover that becomes a singular identity, Martel transfers a modern era existential viewpoint to the hapless Zama, turning him into a colonial era Marcello Mastroianni from Fellini’s 8½ (1963), literally bombarded by a random series of collective thoughts that may not be his own, that come from a communal Greek Chorus of anonymous villagers, mostly heard but not seen, with Martel utilizing an eccentric sound design (by Guido Berenblum) that is an assault to the senses, whose mere audacity has a way of ridiculing his every move.  Zama is attracted to Spanish noblewoman Luciana (Lola Dueñas), wife of the Treasury Minister who is always on the road, whose sensual physique is the object of his dreams, yet she has him wrapped around her little finger, hilariously remaining flirtatious and coy, using any flimsy excuse to keep him at a distance while continuously sipping exotic brandy (likely a bribe) smuggled in under his watch.  Because the story itself is so preposterous, identifying a mythical enemy as Vicuña Porto, who may be dead, may be alive, or may not exist at all, associated with every evil crime apparently in the last hundred years, where people still fear his presence, despite legendary tales of his demise, with the governor wearing a prized necklace that purportedly includes one of his ears, taken before the scoundrel was burned to death, setting a surreal tone for a whirlwind of continuing misadventures in an otherwise heroic saga like The Three Musketeers or THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT (1965), where legendary feats are continually stated and restated, yet anything resembling the truth is nowhere to be found.  At least initially, Zama identifies with the virile masculinity associated with these tales, where his name is synonymous with a moral strength of character. 

Shot by Portuguese cinematographer Rui Poças, who also shot 2013 Top Ten List #4 Tabu (2012), featuring occasional musical interludes, like Los Indios Tabajaras - Maria Elena - YouTube (3:09), the slow pace and bewilderingly unfathomable aspect of the film has a way of suggesting Zama is sleepwalking his way through time and history, as the period covers ten years, still languishing in the exact same place, with no real prospects that he’ll ever amount to anything more.  In a sign of his growing impotence, one of the more amusing scenes has Zama straining for significance in the corridors of power, where a stray llama on the loose garners much more attention than he does, reducing him to second tier status.  With rampant corruption seemingly the norm, thinking he needs to build some acclaim associated with his name, as if that would garner the King’s attention, Zama joins a rag-tag militia group assigned to eradicate Vicuña Porto from the territory once and for all, expecting they’ll be welcomed back as victorious heroes.  But plans are never what they seem, languishing in the swamps for what seems like an eternity, with each effort leaving them no closer to their goal, his masculinity constantly subverted, becoming ridiculously absurd after a while, humiliated by having their horses taken from them, right from under their noses, becoming utterly demoralized when an indigenous force literally runs circles around them, outmaneuvering them on every flank, comically speeding up the film, making them everywhere all at once, using their own horses to express dominance, leaving them slavish prisoners who are scoffed and laughed at with contemptible derision, revealed to be whimpering cowards.  This excursion into the heart of darkness is mindnumbingly surreal and hard to make sense out of, where the whole idea may only be taking place in his head, as it seems like a boneheaded plan.  Nonetheless, one of the strangest moments occurs when one of his own men identifies himself as Vicuña Porto, mixed in with his own, though cleverly concealing his identity.  While the entire adventure feels like a myth, an Odyssean journey into the unknown, a glimpse into the void, Zama remains powerless to do anything about it, as their dwindling team has been met by superior forces throughout, left in tatters, leaving them vanquished and thoroughly humiliated.  Zama chooses this lowest moment to reveal the identity of Vicuña Porto, thinking he will be captured, but he quickly turns the tables, shown to be a ruthless brute who savagely renders his own form of justice, representative of the same kind of barbaric treatment levelled by the Conquistadors against the Indians.  Thoroughly disgraced and defeated, Zama’s downfall becomes the stuff of legends.