The Commune (Kollektivet)

Director Thomas Vinterberg mingling with his cast

 

THE COMMUNE (Kollektivet)                     B

Denmark  Sweden  Netherlands  (111 mi)  2015  ‘Scope  d:  Thomas Vinterberg    Official site

My whole life has been a very communal experience; growing up in a house full of happy hippies, having dinner parties three days a week, and going to Christiania, I was constantly surrounded by people celebrating community.  If you look at the films I’ve done, they all share that theme.

—Thomas Vinterberg

A Scandinavian movie about living on a commune back in the 70’s?  Lukas Moodysson’s Together (Tillsammans) (2000) comes to mind, where stylistically that was more of a social realist exposé, though it was no panacea either, despite what many might suggest, as that became more of a satiric commentary on the self-centered nature of the adults who all but ignore their children, too disposed to self-absorbed thinking, with barely a thought towards the spirit of a collective.  The Germans also took a stab at it with Dominik Graf’s Don't Follow Me Around (Dreileben 2 – Komm mir nicht nach) (2012), the weakest section of the Dreileben Trilogy, a chatty, dialogue-driven film that fell flat in its attempted critique of the bourgeoisie.  Matt Ross’s portrait of the last remnants of the 60’s counterculture, Captain Fantastic (2016), won the Best Directing prize of Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2016, and while initially daring, even that sold out big time by the end.  Actually the film that best succeeds isn’t even about a commune, Fassbinder’s THE THIRD GENERATION (1979), which instead portrays the comical ineptitude of the radical left, in particular an underground movement that is like the gang that couldn’t shoot straight, people who name-drop talk of revolution, including the right books, quoting the right phrases, going to all the important meetings and demonstrations, where the middle class actually turns radical action into a convenient lifestyle choice.  What was once spirited street defiance, confronting the government and the police through mass disobedience, has turned into a comfortable bourgeois lifestyle without any real ideology except self-centered indulgence.  One senses that the farther away from the actual times themselves leads to a more inaccurate depiction, though Vinterberg, one of the co-founders of the Dogme 95 Manifesto, and director of the 1998 film THE CELEBRATION (Festen), actually grew up in a commune, described as a Danish hippie community, living there for more than a decade until the age of 19, staying even after his parents divorced and left the commune, making this more of an autobiographical recollection of his youth.  His recent films, The Hunt (Jagten) (2012) and Far From the Madding Crowd (2015), have both been excellent, though nothing like the ferocious impact of his first.  Co-written with Tobias Lindholm (their third collaboration), a director in his own right, whose recent film A War (Krigen) (2015) was among the five finalists in the Best Foreign Film category at the Oscars, while his earlier film, A Hijacking (Kapringen) (2012), might have actually been better.  Together they take another walk down memory lane with open depictions of nudity and sex, yet with most of the subjects approaching forty, tied to successful careers, what they’re really experiencing is a midlife crisis with reverberations of the 60’s, where they’re trying to emulate the memories of their youth, with mental associations of free love, plenty of pot, not to mention everyone had shaggy hair and wore bell-bottom pants.  Music was the essential ingredient back in those days, as it was the politics of the counterculture.  But all that is past, as what we have depicted is a utopian idea that is just that, an idea, like building bomb shelters in the 50’s, one that outlives its usefulness. 

Originally written as a play and performed in German theater, the story follows a group of surprisingly stable adults who get the cockamamie idea in the mid 70’s in Copenhagen to live together and share expenses, opening themselves up to a new world of Nordic possibilities, where responsibly looking after one another broadens the idea of what constitutes a family unit.  What gets the ball rolling is a funeral, where an established couple, Anna and Erik (Trine Dyrholm and Ulrich Thomsen), are seen browsing the empty home of Erik’s deceased father, with intentions of immediately putting it on the market, as it could conceivably fetch a million Danish kroners (equal to about $160,000 U.S. dollars).  Anna, however, has other ideas, thinking all they need is a few friends to pitch in with the costs and the home would be an ideal place to live, situated so close to the harbor.  Anna has been the face of television news for nearly two decades, while Erik is a professor of architectural design.   Together they have an introspective 14-year old daughter Freja (Martha Sofie Wallstrøm Hansen), and as they explore the idea of residing in the same large-scaled estate where Erik grew up, there are so many more rooms than what would suit their small family.  Languishing on the side of the bed, Anna admits, “I’m bored, Erik.  I need change,” which all but seals the deal, as even Freja is intrigued by the idea.  The introduction of the roommates is hilarious, with crisp dialogue sounding like something from early Woody Allen movies, where the comical connections are obvious, as the group hits it off straightaway.  Enter Ole (Lars Ranthe), a beer-drinking leftist who mutters, “You grew up here?  No wonder you’re so aloof.”  Together they add a free-spirited couple with a young 7-year old boy Vilads (Sebastian Grønnegaard Milbrat)) with a heart condition, who’s fond of saying “I’ll be dead by nine,” along with Mona (Julie Agnete Vang), who becomes infamous for an endless stream of one-night stands, and a Middle Eastern guy who admittedly has no money, Allon (Fares Fares), who barely speaks the language, but apparently likes the company of others.  Together this eclectic group makes little sense, but everything is expressed as a joyous liberation, an army that can stop traffic in the streets or go skinny-dipping off the pier.  A neverending flow of beer and wine seems to make everything harmonious, creating a party atmosphere that never ends.  Actually, those are the recollections of Vinterberg, whose childhood was filled with parties and joyous occasions, surrounded by plenty of happy people.  Soon, however, Erik grows grumpy, especially when he can’t get a word in edgewise, and he’s no longer the center of attention.  He seems to take it out on his students, where as an aloof and authoritarian professor, his arrogance knows no bounds—until he meets his match in a 24-year old third-year student who is literally half his age, Emma (Helene Reingaard Neumann, who happens to be the director’s wife, writing the part specifically for her).  Immediately, everybody starts sleeping around, where viewers are invited to stick around, as operatic consequences ensue. 

In reality, Vinterberg left the commune to run off with the woman he eventually married, where it was a reaction against the chaos of the commune, growing calmer and more organized, exactly the opposite of what he was raised to do.  While much of this replicates the director’s own personal experiences, an unconventional childhood, the feeling of going against the grain, with slight variations, as Freja’s room is identical in every respect to Vinterberg’s own as a young teen.  Nonetheless, he does a good job of capturing the spirit of the times, recognizing the risks they were taking, much like his introduction in the mid 90’s, together with fellow Dane Lars von Trier, of the founding principles of the Dogme movement, where they were intent on doing things a different way.  With each there’s a kind of innocence about the purity of what they were trying to do, as unexplored territory is untainted and open.  That is, until people start screwing things up, which is inevitably what happens when humans get their hands on something.  The idea of couples growing tired of one another, or the need for exploring someone new, is as old as time itself, but what’s different here is how Vinterberg personalizes the descent, with Dyrholm providing a master class of emotions as the meltdown begins, feeling isolated and ignored, which is a public humiliation in a group setting, as there’s no place to hide, growing more and more distant and miserable, drinking more, filled with an anxiety syndrome and deep depression, accompanied by early onset signs of menopause.  Initially she puts on a brave face and even encourages Erik to bring Emma to their group setting, perhaps to keep an eye on her, but instead he spends all of his available time with her, leaving her utterly baffled by the experience as it all dovetails out of her control.  When there’s an initial group attempt to be understanding of the situation, thinking perhaps Emma’s arrival is only temporary, Erik has one of those tyrannical fits where he has to have his way, or else, as it’s his house, and he’ll either have his way or everyone else will be forced to move.  What’s uncomfortable is how little anyone helps or intercedes, as Emma joining the household is a constant reminder of Anna’s degradation and shame, where what’s most difficult to see is a place where youth and growing older intersect, as it leaves her powerless and disgraced, yet it goes on, with no intervention, eventually getting taken off the air, as she’s seen as too unstable.  With a humorous and rollicking ride for an introduction, all fun and games in the beginning, this veers into the melodramatic, feeling overly one-sided and blatantly unfair, where it all becomes so deviously cynical, forcing an outcome upon the viewers, much like Erik manipulating others to get his way.  In a strange way it resembles the game of strip poker, as the one most interested at the outset turns out to be the biggest loser, the first to be naked and exposed, unexpectedly uncomfortable without clothes.  With tragedy reaching epic proportions, who but Elton John provides the way with his song Elton John Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (album version) - YouTube (4:46).  Metaphors abound, as inevitably what’s lost here is innocence.  When that goes, with people wringing their hands, remaining paralyzed in fear and denial, there’s little left of that beautifully naïve thought that motivated them in the first place.  When the concept dies, they continue as if nothing happened, blind to their own defects, but with age and complacency the conservative element sets in, like an unstoppable virus.   

The Notebook (A Nagy Füzet)

THE NOTEBOOK (A Nagy Füzet)                 B-                   

aka:  Le Grand Cahier

Hungary  Austria  France  Germany  (110 mi)  2013  ‘Scope  d:  János Szász

János Szász studied drama and stage direction at the Academy of Theater and Film Arts, and spent four years at the National Theater of Budapest before embarking on a career as a film director, where his second film WOYZECK (1994), which won five major awards at the Hungarian Film Week in Budapest, was the first to be released internationally.  Followed by THE WITMAN BOYS (1997), Szász developed a reputation for brilliant cinematography and music, excellent acting, and ultra-bleak subject matter, often set within a historical context.  While this film took the top prize at the Karlovy Vary film festival, an atmospheric World War II thriller about two twin boys sent to the Hungarian countryside to wait out the war under the supposed safety of their cruel and embittered grandmother, it never rises to the level of his earlier works.  The film is based on the debut novel, Le Grand Cahier, (1986), the first book of a “trilogy of twins” from Hungarian émigré author Agota Kristóf, who left Hungary at the age of 21 and settled in Switzerland where she began writing in French.  Translated into 30 different languages, the book caused something of a literary scandal in France, known as the Abbeville case, where a complaint was made by parents against a high school teacher in 2000 for recommending insensitive and “pornographic” literature to his students, where the Minister of Education intervened with a letter of support, as the book was taught in many schools and is considered a classic of contemporary literature.

The 13-year old twins offer a unique vantage point of the war, as families are often divided and shattered by war and death, but these two remain inseparable, speaking with one voice, becoming an almost mythical force of unity and brotherly love.  Set in a farmhouse near an unnamed border village, the Nazi’s already occupy the surrounding region, where the military commandant (Ulrich Thomsen) takes a surprising interest in the twins, almost like a fetish, where they become his favorite pets.  Known only as one and the other, András and László Gyémánt, their grandmother (Piroska Molnár), who the townspeople call “The Witch,” has her own pet name for them, calling them “little bastards” throughout the entire film, often thinking they are up to no good, city kids that know nothing about hard work.  Initially they sit and watch her perform all the chores herself, a large and obese woman, never offering to help, so she doesn’t feed them at night, claiming you have to earn your keep around a farm.  Soon she has them doing nearly all the chores while she sits in a rocking chair and smokes, taking evening sips from a bottle of local brew, where she caresses her hidden jewelry while continually cursing the loathsome memory of her dead husband, wishing he had never been born. 

Reading entries made into their diary, exactly as they were instructed to do by their father in the opening scenes, everything in it is objective and scientifically precise, showing no feelings whatsoever, where the extensive use of voiceovers comment upon the many graphic horrors that take place offscreen, occasionally resorting to animated imagery, but the narration is always told in a cold and dispassionate manner, which has a way of distancing everything the viewer sees onscreen.  While this effect is intentional, avoiding any hint of emotional attachment or sentimentality, it also alienates the audience, preventing any personal identification with any of the characters, and most especially the twins themselves.  But they go on studying, where the only book they possess is The Bible, often reading from it at night.  Driven by the open hostility of the grandmother, a raging inferno of bitterness and hate, she inflicts every kind of punishment on the twins, insults, beatings, hunger, and cold, but they learn to stand up to her by refusing to cry and withstanding any pain, by asking she beat them some more, as they pride themselves on enduring every inflicted misery.  In doing so, they become hardened and embittered creatures themselves, busily preparing themselves for a Darwinian survival, much like the wandering kids in Osterman’s Wolfschildren (Wolfskinder) (2013).  While there are only a few other villagers of note, including a kindly Jewish cobbler (János Derzsi) murdered before being sent off to the death camps, a tomboyish thief known as harelip (Orsolya Tóth), also a corrupt church Deacon (Péter Andorai) and his sex-starved maid (Diána Kiss), nearly all are dead by the end of the film.  Directed with a grim precision, evoking a bleakness within that matches the utter devastation surrounding them, what’s peculiarly interesting is the degree of defiance displayed by the twins, eliminating weakness from their vocabulary even as they are being brutalized, becoming a chilling portrait of two creepy and fascinating souls warped by a crushing onslaught of inconceivable trauma.

The Silence (Das letzte Schweigen)

THE SILENCE (Das letzte Schweigen)            B+  
Germany  (111 mi)  2010  ‘Scope  d:  Baran bo Odar                Official site [de]

Not to be confused with Ingmar Bergman's THE SILENCE (1963) or Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Iranian film THE SILENCE (1998), where this film may not stand with that elite company, however the Swiss director has worked as a second unit assistant director for the Maren Ade film THE FOREST FOR THE TREES (2003), an unusual German film told in a measured and meticulously distinct, realist manner with a truly provocative final sequence.  A film with no opening credits, here the opening shot surveying the gorgeous Bavarian landscape sets the scene, resembling the aerial shot in Michael Haneke’s Funny Games (1997) following a car as it makes its way down a tree-lined highway, where this homage is likely not accidental, especially considering the content of the movie.  Writing, directing, and producing his first feature-length film, it also explores the unpleasant underbelly of an otherwise orderly and mainstream German society where people on the surface at least have nothing to fear, where children are often left on their own, probably resembling the quaint life in most small towns where everybody knows everybody else. Set in the pastoral heartland of Germany in 1986 with golden, waist-deep wheatfields extending to the horizon, we watch the tail end of what may be a snuff film, or at the very least, a pedophile’s sexual fantasy, where two men, Peer, Ulrich Thomsen, a Danish actor seen in Susanne Bier’s film In a Better World (2010), and Timo (Wotan Wilke Mohring) then hop into a car on the lookout for young prey, eying an 11-year old girl Pia (Helene Doppler) riding her bicycle alone down an isolated country road, where the girl is viciously raped and murdered in the wheatfields by Peer as Timo passively watches in a state of shock and horror at the outcome, her body dumped into a lake afterwards, where the killers were never caught, as Timo mysteriously disappears afterwards in a mixture of anger and personal disgust. 

The film jumps ahead 23 years, introducing an entirely new set of characters, including another young girl, 13-year old Sinikka (Anna Lena Klenke) who storms out of her parent’s house in a furious rage after a perceived invasion of her privacy, never to be seen or heard from again, as she becomes the victim of a copycat killing at the exact same location, where the police are again without a suspect for the crime.  The community is in an uproar, where the police have no answers for a seethingly angry public, but we also see the stunned reactions of the parents, including Elena (Katrin Saß) the mother of the first girl, Pia, who lives only a few hundred yards away from the murder site and has to undergo the experience all over again, where people are dumfounded and shocked at the gruesome similarities.  While only the audience sees the original perpetrators, everyone remains clueless about both crimes, where the community is aghast at having to re-live through this same horrible ordeal again.  Adapted by the director from the second of three Jan Costin Wagner novels, Das Schweigen (2007), all of which take place in Finland featuring the same lead character, Detective Kimmo Joentaa, a rather frumpy and hapless looking detective who in the movie becomes David Jahn (Sebastian Blomberg), a damaged soul still mourning the death of his wife from cancer, which happens in the first novel, Ice Moon (2003).  Perhaps because of his own personal experience, Detective Jahn, along with the steadfast help of his devoted partner, Jule Böwe as the pregnant detective Jana Gläser, they are the only ones in law enforcement who see this as more than a case to dispose of to make the public get off their backs, as there are larger implications that are routinely being ignored.  What is truly exceptional here is rather than invest energy attempting to solve the crime, the director is more interested in examining a cross section of people affected by the crime, where their response becomes the dramatic focus of the picture.  

The director doesn’t forget Peer and Timo, much older now and barely recognizable, where Peer remains at the same apartment complex working as the maintenance worker, where the audience immediately senses the obvious, the presence of a pedophile literally surrounded by unsuspecting children playing in the yard area that he maintains.  Timo on the other hand has moved to another city and is married with two children, where his wife Julia (Claudia Michelson) believes he’s an architect away from home for a few days inspecting a site location, while in fact he’s gone to visit Peer after the second murder, suspecting from the similarities that he’s involved.  Timo remains conflicted about the visit, still feeling guilty about the original incident that Peer has long since forgotten, yet their meeting together is the Macbethian stain from which all tragedy occurs, where countless more characters are still having to deal with the ugly ramifications of their actions.  The film is reminiscent of Tony Hillerman detective stories, where the overwhelming prominence of the natural environment affects each and every one of the characters, where the beautiful and tranquil landscape shots here are a stark contrast to the mental anguish and torment felt by entire community, much like the overriding grief felt throughout David Lynch’s Twin Peaks (1990 – 91), where the small town police work is really more of an excuse to reconnect several of the characters, alternately shifting various points of view, keeping the audience off balance while brilliantly interweaving the piano and violin in the stylishly original music of Michael Kamm and Kris Steininger as Pas de Deux.  While Wagner’s book is more like INSOMNIA (1997), a Nordic noir murder mystery that takes place in the Scandinavian summer heat under the perpetual midnight sun, introducing a dreamy, almost unreal quality to it, this movie is more interested in exploring and exposing the depths of human anguish, reconnecting people’s lives to deep seeded feelings that were long thought dormant, becoming a sad and sorrowful elegy for the dead.  Like Egoyan’s THE SWEET HEREAFTER (1997), the film is an accomplished expression of community despair, somewhat disguised as a detective whodunit story, but instead becomes a complex study of grief, remorse, obsession, and the persistence of long pent-up guilt.   

In a Better World

IN A BETTER WORLD (Hævnen)                  B+                  

aka:  The Revenge 

Denmark  Sweden  (119 mi)  2010  ‘Scope  d:  Susanne Bier

This is a film not just with a moral objective, but a moral imperative, which may drive some people away in disgust with its broad, near epic sweep, finding it too obvious and overly preachy, as if you’re being lectured to.  On the other hand, this is an extremely somber and reflective work that at its best is wonderfully quiet and observant, that reveals at an early age of childhood how ignorance and bullying are handed down from ill equipped parents, along with their prejudices and other narrow views.  But not so fast, as the same problems occur in some of the most economically advantageous and educated households as well, especially when there are separation factors involved where children may be desperately seeking their own form of expression.  While it is true that this film wraps things up a bit too neat and tidy, as there are certainly multiple possibilities of even greater horror than what is suggested, there is a wonderful poignancy underneath each of the carefully drawn characters in the film, where by the end they suddenly matter in our lives, even if we’ve found their behavior questionable throughout the film.  Now there isn’t some kind of epiphany moment where somehow all is revealed, instead there is a slow, steady build up of character, where eventually they are intensely exposed, including much of what they’re carefully hiding from one another.  People are rarely completely honest with one another, instead hiding bits and pieces that are fraught with an unbearable pain which is rarely if ever revealed.  This under-the-surface emotional iceberg is the real pleasure of this film, as it resembles the world around us where people are carefully guarded, even within stable and long-term relationships, where there are simply things no one ever discusses, as if they are the painful secrets of our existence. 

Most compelling is the relationship between two ten-year old boys, Christian, powerfully played by William Jøhnk Nielsen, and Elias (Markus Rygaard), where Christian solves the crisis of bullying with a swift act of revenge, protecting the meeker Elias who has seemingly succumbed to this endless behavior of being picked on and is forever indebted for his savior-like actions.  They quickly become friends, but it’s clear Christian is the dominant party, emboldened by a sour sense of bitterness in the world around him, angry that his mother recently died of cancer, and angry at his father for being unable to stop it, feeling especially cheated after they were told her prognosis was excellent.  Christian really carries the film and couldn’t be more intriguing, as he’s an especially smart kid holding his emotions in check, where there’s always an underlying sense of provocation, as if he could strike out anytime and anywhere.  Despite his somewhat short stature, he stands up to the larger hoodlums in school without actually becoming one of them.  Elias, on the other hand, follows him around like a lost puppy and wouldn’t dare cross his new friend.  But there is also the simultaneous story of their parents, where Christian’s father Claus (Ulrich Thomsen) is loaded financially, taking him to live at his grandmother’s gargantuan estate, but remains impotent and emotionally repressed, unable to connect with his son who operates entirely on his own, cut off from the rest of his family.  Elias’s father Anton (Mikael Persbrandt) works periodically as the lone physician at an African refugee camp, where lone women, their husband’s already murdered, are being savagely brutalized, their wombs sliced open in a vicious game by the military junta to reveal the sex of the unborn child.  When Anton returns home to their own immense estate by the sea, his marriage is split apart, living separately from his wife Marianne (Trine Dyrholm) who has her own home by the sea, unforgiving of her husband’s previous philandering.   

      

The real story surrounds the emotional impotence of having to stand up to bigger and stronger forces that continually threaten violence, both at the children’s level and in the world of adults, where the brutality reduces humans to shadows of their former selves.  Against all parental advice, Christian strikes first, thinking the best defense is a good offense, believing no one will touch him if the first blow is convincingly strong enough.  But of course, this viewpoint is shredded to bits if the follow up course of action is full annihilation, which is what we witness in gang infested neighborhoods, as kids are routinely killing other kids for the simple offense of an insulting comment.  But this film isn’t social realism, and the society being depicted is the Danish upper class, one that has a distinct prejudice against foreigners and anything Swedish.  But the schoolyard bullying is no different than anywhere else in the world, while the viciousness of mutilations in Africa is like no place else on earth.  The film follows the path of choices made, each leading to subsequent consequences, where other choices are made, all of which lead to a sense of finality, and eventual futility, where there is no foolproof option that is guaranteed to succeed, yet the film is quite clear about how it depicts a certain option that is doomed to fail.  Again, the film is searching for a moral imperative.  Many of the transitional shots by Morten Søborg between sequences are quite stunning, particularly in their silence, though some may think these are pretentious artistic devices designed to reflect the typical vernacular of an art film.  Actually, this view reflects the harmony of nature unspoiled by the damage of human intervention, where man’s initial impulse seems to be to destroy whatever it touches.  Human violence is like no other destruction on earth, which ultimately leads to tragically bleak consequences, so by the finale, the film ends with the quiet urgency of a fervent prayer.