Touch (Snerting)

 

Director Baltasar Kormákur

Kormákur on the set

Kormákur with author Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson

novelist Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TOUCH (Snerting)                 B                                                                                             Iceland  Great Britain  (121 mi)  2024  d: Baltasar Kormákur

A memory play wrapped up in an intensely realized love story that happened long ago, remaining the singlemost important event in a man’s life, yet she disappeared more than 50 years ago.  While he has vivid memories of things that happened in the past, he sometimes forgets the simplest everyday things, with a doctor informing him his memory is fading from the onset of dementia (which is likely to double over the next 20 years, according to Dementia statistics | Alzheimer's Disease International (ADI)) and that he’s running out of time, so he’s urged to settle any unfinished business and place his affairs in order.  Reminiscent of the past and present time structure of Nick Cassavetes’ THE NOTEBOOK (2004), the doctor runs a brain scan, suspecting some cognitive issues, which he ignores, instead hopping a plane to London as he goes on a wild search to rediscover his lost love, where the large majority of the film is a flashback to his recollections of their unconventional love affair, with musical composer Högni Egilsson beautifully orchestrating the physical and the metaphysical, while also assisting in selecting the songs that would be in the film.  Based on a 2022 novel by Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson, a successful Icelandic businessman, creator of Sony PlayStation, and author who helped adapt the screenplay with the director, where most of the film takes place in the mind of the protagonist, 75-year-old Kristófer, (Egill Ólafsson, an Icelandic singer, songwriter, and actor), who shuts down his successful seaside restaurant during the Covid pandemic and then pretty much ignores all the health protocols of the present as he sets out on his whirlwind adventure into the unknown, mostly realized by Pálmi Kormákur, the director’s son in a younger version of himself, an Icelandic anarchist student in the 60’s studying at the London School of Economics – cue the music of the Zombies, Zombies - Time Of The Season HD YouTube (3:33).  His mixture of peace and friendliness makes him a very sympathetic character, part of the countercultural youth revolution that rejected the status quo, where frequent demonstrations put him at odds with the school administration, angered by the treatment of teachers who spoke out against the British government, so on impulse he changes the trajectory of his life, dropping out of school and taking a lowly job as a dishwasher at a nearby Japanese restaurant, demonstrating to his student comrades that working is not beneath them.  The chef, owner, and lover of Haiku poetry, Takahashi (Masahiro Motoki, the star of Yôjirô Takita’s DEPARTURES, winner of the Best Foreign Language Film in 2009), likes what he sees in this industrious young man, especially his fishing tales, as both come from island cultures by the sea, where the fishing industry is in their blood.  Unknown to Takahashi, however, is that Kristófer has eyes on his beautiful daughter Miko (Kōki, a professional model and songwriter).  While he is shy and introspective, mostly keeping to himself, Takahashi likes his humility and curiosity, immersing himself in Japanese culture, teaching himself to speak Japanese, while also taking a personal interest in traditional Japanese food preparation.  Cutting back and forth between the past and the present, the older Kristófer is constantly interrupted by calls and text messages from his overbearing daughter urging him to return home, which he largely ignores, refusing to reveal the details, as he doesn’t really have a plan, just what appears to be a personal and private mission in the pursuit of happiness, like a last chance to get it right. 

A slow and ruminative film that’s propelled by the protagonist’s psychological reflections, there’s nothing particularly unusual about the format, which is conventional, yet the emotional authenticity rings true, set squarely at the beginning of the pandemic when businesses shut down and everyone was urged to isolate and wear masks in public, where the streets are surprisingly empty.  Even when wearing a mask, Kristófer doesn’t wear it properly, as it never covers his nose, so he’s really just going through the motions, disregarding all health risks, as what lockdown represents for him is the ultimate finality.  This puts the film in a state of suspended animation, where Kristófer is an outsider wherever he goes, never providing the backstory of his life, though there are a few family flashbacks, where his wife died a few years earlier, leaving him a lonely life on his own, where loss may now define his existence as he enjoys singing in a men’s church choir, heard at the outset against the snowy landscape of Kirkjufell.  His age and social isolation are at odds with the health pandemic, as he uses this opportunity to plunge into the world at a time it would rather be shutting down, creating a few uncomfortable moments for those in the service industry, as he’s the last remaining patron of a hotel that’s trying to close, while the long sought after restaurant has turned into a tattoo parlor, but he somehow manages on his own in a journey that is subtle and quietly moving, filled with tragedy and pain, yet also the promise of hope.  When the young Kristófer first meets the quick-witted Miko she has a boyfriend, so he keeps his distance, seeing her work in the restaurant only on weekends, where the space between them slowly lingers.  But when they officially break up, he and the thoroughly modern Miko discover each other, hesitantly at first, merging into their own cross-cultural version of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, a newlywed couple heard singing Give Peace a Chance from their hotel room, Plastic Ono Band - Give Peace A Chance (1969) YouTube (5:39), part of their Bed-In honeymoon in Montreal, a non-violent protest against the Vietnam war, but their luxurious accommodations didn’t exactly speak to the common man, “I respect what they’re trying to say, but there is something off about starting the revolution in a five star hotel.”  The spontaneity and youthfulness of their affair, however, is cute and refreshing, as they both have deep respect for one another and their different cultures, yet they hide their affair from her father, who tends to sternly disapprove of her partners, though the manner in which it is realized resembles a fantasy, where the way Kristófer remembers it may be overly idealized, yet that’s precisely the point, as Miko is the love of his life that got away, that disappeared without a trace, spending most of their lives apart, so all he’s left with is his memories, which seem to grow stronger over time.  While he lived his life in Iceland and raised a family, where we see him watch his wife in the garden, or attending marriage counseling together, those earlier memories were largely suppressed, but now they’re coming alive again with a fervor, where he’s plunging headfirst into the idea of reviving them, going on a personal quest to find her again, even after all these years.    

Stories dealing with the nostalgia of past loves may recall Celine Song’s Past Lives (2023), Oscar-nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay, receiving much greater hype and recognition, but this more than holds its own, feeling just as personal, yet filmgoers tend to be afraid of the buzzword “aging,” like being a senior citizen is a dirty word in the film industry, as if that were an alien culture.  This is a strange and adventurous odyssey taking him halfway across the world, spanning three countries, Iceland, London in the UK, and Japan, shot in muted or washed out colors by cinematographer Bergsteinn Björgúlfsson, offering a subdued look, turning this into that rare Icelandic road movie that travels abroad, fueled by a series of energetic vignettes taking place when they were happily in love together.  Young Kristófer learns more about the past that brought Miko to London, as he discovers a Japanese word fraught with hidden meaning, Hibakusha, or atomic bomb survivor, often used in a derogatory connotation, suggesting they are less than human.  It turns out Miko’s mother was pregnant when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima during the war, sending the city into flames and utterly destroyed, where 80,000 were killed instantly, while another 70,000 died in the next few months from radiation poisoning, nearly half the city’s population, as survivors worried about the lethal consequences of exposure, where the intergenerational stigmatization, especially with female survivors, believing they would produce genetically mutated offspring, lingers on into the present, a theme that was similarly explored in Hamaguchi’s 2022 Top Ten List #1 Drive My Car (Oraibu mai kâ).  This discriminatory sentiment is what led Takahashi to leave Japan with his daughter, seeking a new life in Europe, as he didn’t want her to be emotionally scarred for life.  That existing social trauma is paralleled with the Covid pandemic, playing into the fear of touching and close proximity, providing barriers that inevitably need to be overcome, openly exposing prejudices in each era.  The warm emotional glow associated with the young couple offers a sharp contrast, yet even in London suspicion of their Japanese neighbors abound.  For instance, Kristófer’s landlady, Mike Leigh legend Ruth Sheen from films like HIGH HOPES  (1988), ALL OR NOTHING (2002), VERA DRAKE (2004), and Another Year (2010), advises him to “watch out” for his Japanese friend, while the behavior of his unruly classmates drinking shots of sake while shouting “kamikaze” drew the ire of the Japanese patrons.  Good films of romantic couples in their twilight years are rare, with Leo McCarey’s MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW (1937), Richard Eyre’s IRIS (2001), Ingmar Bergman’s SARABAND (2003), Sarah Polley’s Away from Her (2006), Michael Haneke’s Amour (Love) (2012), and Roger Michell’s Le Week-End (2013) coming to mind, where the overriding factor connecting them all are powerful character-driven performances that universally have the capacity to move audiences.  Like those, this is an elegantly crafted, deeply layered love story centered upon an elderly man’s search through time for his fondest memory, torn apart by unforeseen circumstances, yet reunited again with an older Miko (casting director Yôko Narahashi) in a way that is like being reborn, finally unearthing buried family secrets that permeate with emotional resonance.  The reflective tone seeks the interpersonal, imbued with romance and melancholy and even forgiveness, told in very quiet tones with an unexpected sense of tenderness, infusing the film with Lee Hazelwood’s evocative autumnal song My Autumn's Done Come YouTube (4:06), leading to a poignant, yet gentle finale that couldn’t be more classically restrained.    

Dick Johnson Is Dead

 

Director Kirsten Johnson

DICK JOHNSON IS DEAD         B                                                                                              USA  (89 mi)  2020  d:  Kirsten Johnson

Because I could not stop for Death,                                                                                                He kindly stopped for me.

—The Chariot, by Emily Dickinson from Poems: Series 1, 1890

In the spirit of Chantal Akerman’s No Home Movie (2015), yet defiantly different, sometimes film crosses the line into bad taste, and many may find this film overly indulgent, a kind of home movie that takes plenty of wrong turns, all designed to familiarize viewers with the idea of death before it happens.  Documentarian Kirsten Johnson, maker of Cameraperson (2016), lost her mother to Alzheimer’s disease in 2007, where dementia plagued the last few years of her life, unable to recognize her own family members.  Unfortunately, the same fate awaits her 86-year old father, Dick Johnson, a successful psychiatrist working in Seattle, developing concerning memory symptoms, where it’s only a matter of time before dementia kicks in as well.  Sensing the inevitable, she asks her father if he wouldn’t mind filming that last years of his life, using several pranks to create death scenarios before they happen, allowing her father to participate in his own death while he can still remember, where there’s a rather ghoulish parade of deaths reminiscent of Hal Ashby’s HAROLD AND MAUDE (1971), but it’s all make believe, with the filmmaker killing off her father in multiple scenarios, but he’s always brought back to life, usually celebrating with a delicious piece of chocolate cake, as the man has a thing for chocolate, even though his most unpleasant memory was a heart attack brought on by over-indulging after eating an entire chocolate layer cake.  Many involve violent accidents and the use of stunt men, such as getting hit by a falling air-conditioner, falling down a flight of stairs, or being struck in the neck by a wooden board near a construction site and bleeding out, but none are more elaborate than simulating his own funeral at his lifelong 7^th Day Adventist church, surrounded by friends and parishioners, with an immobile body double in an open casket, hearing the tributes and tearful farewells, and then walking down the aisle saluting all who came to celebrate his life.  While poignant and moving, it’s also a bit much, where at least one member, his best friend Ray, is having a hard time playing along, lost in a death spell, perhaps unable to separate fiction from reality.  In addition to mock deaths, there are also highly stylized heavenly creations, like recreating a surrealist Last Supper in the company of friends one might choose from history, like Frederick Douglass, Sigmund Freud, Buster Keaton, Frida Kahlo, and Bruce Lee, meeting in a personal setting, creating an everlasting memory while he’s still alive.  While these are meant to be light-hearted tributes, engaging in a bit of sardonic fun, the exaggerated garish artifice may also be off-putting for some, as they’re sensationalizing death, poking fun at it while you’re still alive, which can be challenging, to say the least.  While much of this is meant to be therapeutic, but nothing hides the encompassing fear of losing one’s memory, and with it all identification of one’s self.  The agonizing process of watching someone you love slowly disappear before your eyes is utterly devastating.

Winner of a Special Jury Award for Innovation in Nonfiction Storytelling at Sundance in the Documentary Competition, one thing is certain.  Dick Johnson is a pleasant soul who cares deeply for his patients and his family, always willing to lend a helping hand, where he’s simply a nice guy, extremely sympathetic before the camera, but it’s also clear he’s being used by the camera, like when we see him left alone on a street corner of a busy street, huddled against a street lamp, complaining he’s cold and wet from the fake blood, where at times it seems his daughter has taken things a bit too far.  Over time, he seems more lost and distant, completely aloof, where he’s used to sleeping more.  Among the hardest adjustments was moving him from his Seattle home to his daughter’s one bedroom apartment in New York City, which happens to be adjacent to an apartment with her two kids and their two fathers (filmmaker Ira Sachs and his husband painter Boris Torres).  This little arrangement is much tougher than it seems, and it takes a toll on her father, as his beautiful home offered peace and serenity.  Selling his car is equally heartbreaking, knowing he may never drive again.  Giving these things up to be with her is a major sacrifice, as it removes the tranquil meditative aspects of his life, replaced by the jarring noise of a big city where traffic and new construction is a constant.  We never really see him in a bed, as he spends all his time on a living room couch or sitting on his favorite recliner.  It’s clear he’s completely dependent on his daughter for food and shelter, having given up anything that resembles his own life, now in a completely unfamiliar environment.  While he constantly says the right thing, saying he would never trade these precious moments with family, clearly it also weighs on him, as there’s literally nothing for him to do, bogged down by guilt, where the last thing his wants is to feel like he’s a burden, but that’s exactly what he’s become, as he’s sacrificed his independence.  This change of scenery is exactly what happens to so many families when a parent ages, and it’s never easy, as the role of the parent completely reverses, no longer the authoritative force they once were, now completely reliant upon their children, eventually requiring full-time care.  We meet a nurse who’s been brought in to assist, where among her credentials is the fact she’s accompanied nearly a dozen others to their deaths, developing a uniquely intimate experience with the families, a no-nonsense caregiver who’s been brought in to do much of the dirty work the family is unable to provide, still working, kids going to school, leading active and productive lives, which includes travel to various places around the world, leaving him alone where he has to make the best of it.

Despite all the attempts to celebrate his life with phantasmagoric production numbers, each more wildly decorative and absurdly ridiculous, the most haunting aspect of the film is just how far removed and separated her father becomes from his own life, having left it all behind in Seattle, now subject to more doctor visits and memory tests, where he’s treated more like a patient than a human being capable of deciding things for himself.  That aspect of his life is simply gone, with very little spoken about it, with viewers obviously pained by his decreasing mobility and independence, as he really can’t share in the events of his family’s life.  When she takes her kids trick or treating for Halloween, she leaves her father in the home of a friend watching TV, a place he’s unfamiliar with and doesn’t recognize.  This turns into a Halloween sketch that’s scarier than it looks, as we realize the extreme degree of fright this causes him, as he has no recourse but to wait to be rescued, lost and alone in a no man’s land, like a place of purgatory before he dies, as he views it as a waiting place.  In one room he sees his future if he were placed in a home, like his wife, where nothing is recognizable, all left to the soothing sounds of elevator music that has no distinct meaning, but may instead reflect the loss of all meaning.  In another he sees the ghost of his dead wife, wearing a recognizable photograph for a face, while he has his own photograph for a face, and the two are animated bodies happily dancing, but her body becomes a contortionist, able to move in ways that aren’t possible, becoming more and more inhumane, losing all contact with reality.  Stuck in this strange house with these strange and mysterious rooms, he’s simply afraid, lost in the unknown, not really knowing what to do, shivering in fear.  When they finally come and rescue him, it’s as if he’s been transformed into a different identity, no longer recognizable to himself.  With his daughter narrating much of the film in a purely objective manner, there’s some question how much of this is sinking in with her, as she remains largely offscreen, a distant presence.  While this is an exercise of love, pure and unconditional, it also takes us into the sunken places hidden away that few are capable of ever recovering from, as we’re literally knocking on death’s door from the outset.  The film includes heartbreaking footage of her mother, made sometime after her initial diagnosis, already having difficulty with speech, or remembering those around her, including her own daughter.  The feeling may best be described by the beliefs of the 7^th Day Adventist church, where the souls of the chosen are waiting for the return of Christ to be elevated and ascended into Heaven for eternity, but the unasked question is what about the ones not chosen who are left behind?  What kind of loneliness must they endure?  It feels indescribable and eerily unimaginable, to be separated from loved ones for all of eternity.