2012 Top Ten Films of the Year: #2 Post Tenebras Lux

POST TENEBRAS LUX         A                    

Mexico  France  Germany  (120 mi)  d:  Carlos Reygadas 

Pierre had learned, not with his mind, but with his whole being, his life, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfying of natural human needs, and that all unhappiness comes not from lack, but from superfluity.

—War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy, 1869, quoted at a dinner party by Juan (Adolfo Jiménez Castro)

Carlos Reygadas makes challenging art films that play in film festivals, where you can count on extreme visualization and an austerity of form, where in this film he nearly disregards narrative altogether, feeling very much like a Godless Bruno Dumont film, as he examines many of the same themes evoked from the title, “After the darkness, light.”  Impressively shot by Alexis Zabé, for the first time not on ‘Scope, strangely using a boxed 1:37 aspect ratio with refracted images on each side of the screen which has a dizzying way of expressing shadow images that suggest an everpresent duality of meaning.  Told out of sequence, as if that hardly matters, suggesting it’s the overall whole that matters, not each individually selected piece, the film does suggest a good and evil scenario, also God, the Devil, and redemption, class differences, also crime and punishment, where once again nature is viewed at its most thunderous best, literally overpowering the people that populate this film.  While there are likely moral and spiritual messages, they tend to get lost in the random order in which this film is told, where perhaps they are the hardest for each individual to discover in their own lives as well.  While this may be the most challenging film of the year, many are instead taking the easy route, suggesting it is so incomprehensible that the odor of pretentiousness defines this picture.  One must understand that similar charges were weighed against Andrei Tarkovsky’s THE MIRROR (1975), for instance, yet many now think this may be one of Tarkovsky’s most hauntingly beautiful films.  There is a dramatic, Dumont-like scene near the end that takes place in an open field, where the aftermath of rainfall can only be attributed to Tarkovsky, offering a baptismal-like cleansing that evokes John the Baptist, as if this mythical undertaking might wipe away the sins of the world.     

The experience of viewing a film like this is certainly unlike that of seeing other movies, where in a similar manner of say Yasujirô Ozu, the director forces the viewer to alter their perception of what they’re seeing onscreen simply by the way he chooses to express it, where in Ozu’s case he uses a fixed point of reference where he’s simply observing life as it is, while with Tarkovsky or Dreyer, cinema is a means that transcends human limitations, like music, literature, or great art.  Even before the viewer sets foot inside the theater, they know a Reygadas film will be visually spectacular, where nature manifests itself in a glorious, Edenesque simplicity, while also exploring the pathetic interior failings of mankind, pitting spiritual themes against the existential crises of men.  Described as a semi-autobiographical film where reason barely intrudes, Reygadas has suggested this film is “like an expressionist painting where you try to express what you're feeling through the painting rather than depict what something looks like,” supposedly shot in Mexico, Spain, Belgium, and Britain, all places where Reygadas has lived, which might help explain the final shot of the film, which otherwise seems quite random, though the director played rugby for the Mexican national team.  With this in mind, it may be useful to view this as one might an experimental film, perhaps even a video installation, where you’re not so much interested in what’s going on at any given moment as the effect it’s having internally as you experience it.  All Reygadas films have premiered at Cannes, where his first film JAPÓN (2002) won the Caméra D’Or award for the best first feature, SILENT LIGHT (2007) won the Jury Prize (3rd place), while for POST TENEBRAS LUX, Reygadas was awarded the Best Director at Cannes in 2012.

The opening of this film is as powerful as anything seen this year, where a small girl (the director’s daughter Rut) is wandering around a waterlogged open soccer field pointing out various animals like dogs, cows, and horses, while thunder and lightning flash across the sky, as man and nature commingle, but the most prominent effect is the incessant sound of dogs barking.  A supernatural element follows, something along the lines of what we might come to expect in a Weerasethakul film, before a realist, more recognizable family scene reveals Rut is the younger sister to Eleazar (the director’s son), whose affluent parents are Juan (Adolfo Jiménez Castro) and Natalia (Nathalia Acevedo), living in what resembles an architecturally designed house in what is otherwise a poor rural area of Mexico.  The parent’s relationship revolves around old literary language, continually calling one another love, or my love, even though Juan has a vile temper, seen viciously beating one of his prized dogs (offscreen).  Sometime later, the parents are at a wealthy dinner party, where Juan proudly quotes Tolstoy, generating mocking sneers behind his back, finding him pretentiously arrogant and snobbish.  In stark contrast, the couple later enjoys themselves visiting a hip Paris sauna when trading partners was in vogue, where Natalia is a big hit literally offering herself to the somewhat lecherous clientele.  Each of these scenes is an example of the disharmony in man, a fall from grace, where there are eventual consequences, even when expressed as a random act.  In some mysterious way, man is ultimately punished, perhaps by God, perhaps by the Devil, but this film presents apocalyptical acts of damnation, followed by a Biblical cleansing.  Whatever one makes of this film, there is little to suggest it is an act of extreme provocation, or an empty exercise of self indulgence, as claimed by some, as there were a scattering of boos at Cannes as well, instead one might suggest it’s a profoundly influential modernist and narrative free work that simply operates in a different cinematic vernacular, existing in a dreamlike plateau where humans often play a secondary role.

Post Tenebras Lux

POST TENEBRAS LUX         A                  

Mexico  France  Germany  (120 mi)  d:  Carlos Reygadas 

Pierre had learned, not with his mind, but with his whole being, his life, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfying of natural human needs, and that all unhappiness comes not from lack, but from superfluity.

—War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy, 1869, quoted at a dinner party by Juan (Adolfo Jiménez Castro)

Carlos Reygadas makes challenging art films that play in film festivals, where you can count on extreme visualization and an austerity of form, where in this film he nearly disregards narrative altogether, feeling very much like a Godless Bruno Dumont film, as he examines many of the same themes evoked from the title, “After the darkness, light.”  Impressively shot by Alexis Zabé, for the first time not on ‘Scope, strangely using a boxed 1:37 aspect ratio with refracted images on each side of the screen which has a dizzying way of expressing shadow images that suggest an everpresent duality of meaning.  Told out of sequence, as if that hardly matters, suggesting it’s the overall whole that matters, not each individually selected piece, the film does suggest a good and evil scenario, also God, the Devil, and redemption, class differences, also crime and punishment, where once again nature is viewed at its most thunderous best, literally overpowering the people that populate this film.  While there are likely moral and spiritual messages, they tend to get lost in the random order in which this film is told, where perhaps they are the hardest for each individual to discover in their own lives as well.  While this may be the most challenging film of the year, many are instead taking the easy route, suggesting it is so incomprehensible that the odor of pretentiousness defines this picture.  One must understand that similar charges were weighed against Andrei Tarkovsky’s THE MIRROR (1975), for instance, yet many now think this may be one of Tarkovsky’s most hauntingly beautiful films.  There is a dramatic, Dumont-like scene near the end that takes place in an open field, where the aftermath of rainfall can only be attributed to Tarkovsky, offering a baptismal-like cleansing that evokes John the Baptist, as if this mythical undertaking might wipe away the sins of the world.      

The experience of viewing a film like this is certainly unlike that of seeing other movies, where in a similar manner of say Yasujirô Ozu, the director forces the viewer to alter their perception of what they’re seeing onscreen simply by the way he chooses to express it, where in Ozu’s case he uses a fixed point of reference where he’s simply observing life as it is, while with Tarkovsky or Dreyer, cinema is a means that transcends human limitations, like music, literature, or great art.  Even before the viewer sets foot inside the theater, they know a Reygadas film will be visually spectacular, where nature manifests itself in a glorious, Edenesque simplicity, while also exploring the pathetic interior failings of mankind, pitting spiritual themes against the existential crises of men.  Described as a semi-autobiographical film where reason barely intrudes, Reygadas has suggested this film is “like an expressionist painting where you try to express what you're feeling through the painting rather than depict what something looks like,” supposedly shot in Mexico, Spain, Belgium, and Britain, all places where Reygadas has lived, which might help explain the final shot of the film, which otherwise seems quite random, though the director played rugby for the Mexican national team.  With this in mind, it may be useful to view this as one might an experimental film, perhaps even a video installation, where you’re not so much interested in what’s going on at any given moment as the effect it’s having internally as you experience it.  All Reygadas films have premiered at Cannes, where his first film JAPÓN (2002) won the Caméra D’Or award for the best first feature, SILENT LIGHT (2007) won the Jury Prize (3rd place), while for POST TENEBRAS LUX, Reygadas was awarded the Best Director at Cannes in 2012.

The opening of this film is as powerful as anything seen this year, where a small girl (the director’s daughter Rut) is wandering around a waterlogged open soccer field pointing out various animals like dogs, cows, and horses, while thunder and lightning flash across the sky, as man and nature commingle, but the most prominent effect is the incessant sound of dogs barking.  A supernatural element follows, something along the lines of what we might come to expect in a Weerasethakul film, before a realist, more recognizable family scene reveals Rut is the younger sister to Eleazar (the director’s son), whose affluent parents are Juan (Adolfo Jiménez Castro) and Natalia (Nathalia Acevedo), living in what resembles an architecturally designed house in what is otherwise a poor rural area of Mexico.  The parent’s relationship revolves around old literary language, continually calling one another love, or my love, even though Juan has a vile temper, seen viciously beating one of his prized dogs (offscreen).  Sometime later, the parents are at a wealthy dinner party, where Juan proudly quotes Tolstoy, generating mocking sneers behind his back, finding him pretentiously arrogant and snobbish.  In stark contrast, the couple later enjoys themselves visiting a hip Paris sauna when trading partners was in vogue, where Natalia is a big hit literally offering herself to the somewhat lecherous clientele.  Each of these scenes is an example of the disharmony in man, a fall from grace, where there are eventual consequences, even when expressed as a random act.  In some mysterious way, man is ultimately punished, perhaps by God, perhaps by the Devil, but this film presents apocalyptical acts of damnation, followed by a Biblical cleansing.  Whatever one makes of this film, there is little to suggest it is an act of extreme provocation, or an empty exercise of self indulgence, as claimed by some, as there were a scattering of boos at Cannes as well, instead one might suggest it’s a profoundly influential modernist and narrative free work that simply operates in a different cinematic vernacular, existing in a dreamlike plateau where humans often play a secondary role.

L'Argent

Director Robert Bresson

L’ARGENT                 A-                  

aka:  Money

France  Switzerland  (85 mi)  1983  d:  Robert Bresson

The corruption of an innocent soul is a familiar theme in Bresson’s works, adapting a Tolstoy short story The Counterfeit Bill, where oddly each are the last works of the two great masters.  But unlike previous works, where the soul is eventually cleansed and finds redemption, not so here, as the misguided protagonist instead becomes consumed by society’s picture of him as damaged goods, tainting him with a Macbethian stain of impurity and corruption that doesn’t wipe off, where his life takes a downward descent into what can only be called Hell.  There was little evidence of God in Bresson’s last picture, but there is none here.  At 82, the French director has created one of his most radical works, where this is another uncompromising glimpse into the human soul, branded with a kind of scorn and bitterness non-existent in other Bresson works.  The finale of this film is simply unfamiliar territory, handled with some of the most exacting filmmaking in Bresson’s career, where the framing and lighting and precise compositional camerawork couldn’t be more sublime, yet the bleak subject matter is shattering.  It’s quite a leap from the banal simplicity of the film’s first hour to the profound devastation of the finale, where the culmination of raw power by the end is unprecedented with this director.  This is hardly the kind of film one enjoys to watch, but this is certainly the kind of storytelling and cinematic art one can’t help but appreciate.      

The story concerns the passing of counterfeit notes, how the passing from one to another only enlarges the scope of the crime, especially when the passing is not accidental but intentional, where individuals may feign innocence to protect themselves, unaware of the damage they cause to others.  Yvon (Christian Patey) is that unlucky someone who just happens to have been stuck with the notes, completely unaware that the money is counterfeit, who picks up a payment during the regular rounds of his delivery, accompanied by a receipt.  When the police pick him up with false money, he returns to the store that handed it to him and they deny any knowledge, even pay off one of their clerks to lie in court to protect the store’s reputation.  Despite a show of leniency by the court, Yvon loses his job anyway, which starts his circuitous path into a life of crime, eventually ending up in jail for a bungled robbery, where he eventually meets one of the clerks from the store that passed him the notes in the first place, who still believes his crime was one without victims.  Yvon’s imprisonment is proof otherwise, where it’s clear all who passed the money are in some way tainted by the crime.  By changing the title of the story, Bresson has also shifted the emphasis to money as a means of exchange, which includes all the nefarious acts associated with it, including lies, embezzlement, and theft, all of which have greater implications than the two individuals making the transaction.       

Once released from prison, the story takes on an onerous shift.  Discovering his wife is lost to him and his daughter dead with diphtheria, Yvon moves far away, staying in a countryside inn where he can’t seem to stop himself from taking advantage of the situation, as rural ways are more lax, and to him, more inviting, beckoning him to rob the place, which he does easily, but also leaves no trace behind, all of which happens offscreen.  What happens next is simply baffling, as the color pattern of the film alters sharply, where the rich hues of a forest colored green meet Yvon just after he passes next to an old woman (Sylvie Van den Elsen), as both quickly pass glances, where his mysterious behavior is just as shocking, as if he internally recognizes this change, suddenly confessing his crime to this woman, who doesn’t seem the least bit phased by it.  As he enters into this new realm, Bresson’s focus couldn’t be more mesmerizing, as his attention to detail is meticulous, using an oil lamp in an otherwise darkened space, adding richness to the color while the film composition by Pasqualino De Santis, who shot the two previous films by Bresson, is equally as masterful.  Because so much happens offscreen, and what remains onscreen is so gorgeously visualized, this has a surreal quality to it, given a very painterly look by Bresson, who was initially a painter, but the dark and dreamlike tone adds so much complexity to the constantly changing atmosphere, as it sneaks up on the viewer and comes out of nowhere.  The finale is simply stunning.  By the end, of course, we are all implicated in this human drama, where absent the guiding hand of God, man has plunged off the edge and fallen into the abyss.