Only Heaven Knows (Dünüyö)

 

Director Nurzhamal Karamoldoeva

actress Malika Kanatova

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Only Heaven Knows (Dünüyö)          B                                                                            Kyrgyzstan  USA  (80 mi)  2025  d: Nurzhamal Karamoldoeva  

Who knew that Chicago has the largest Kyrgyzstan community outside of Central Asia, much as it does the largest Polish community outside of Warsaw, so it’s perhaps appropriate for the director to make her first fictional film in that city.  Immersed in the Kyrgyz culture, using a cast that features non-professional actors from the Kyrgyz and Central Asian diasporas, and real locations utilized by that community, including restaurants, health clinics, beauty salons, a trucking company, and apartments where Kyrgyz compatriots live, the film was shot in just 14 days by an international team from Kyrgyzstan and the United States.  The director got her start making documentary films, with a commitment to showing reality without embellishment, and is currently a professor at the Department of Television, Cinema and Media Arts at the American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan.  Doing extensive research ahead of time, conducting dozens of interviews, the film is based on real stories of Kyrgyz migrants.  The director acknowledged being influenced by two of the best chroniclers of our times in Jia Zhang-ke, specifically 2013 Top Ten List #3 A Touch of Sin (Tian zhu ding), which was itself an homage to King Hu’s A Touch of Zen (Xia nü) (1969), and Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011), claiming specific scenes were created directly from those films.  In an interesting side note, following the world premiere of her film just the night before at the Chicago Film Festival, she and a contingency of friends working on the film all went out to dinner at a nearby Kyrgyzstan restaurant to celebrate, and when the owner discovered who they were, he comped the entire meal and drinks for everyone, which she proudly acknowledges is what she loves about the Kyrgyz culture, as they traditionally welcome and support others in the disapora. 

In what is essentially a patriarchal society, the film opens, appropriately enough, following Eric (Dauren Tashkenbaev), a married husband on a gambling spree, where the emotionally draining, toxicity of the experience is on full display until, surprisingly, he wins big, bringing home a giant wad of cash which he proudly shows off to his mother (Elmira Myrza), as if this is the embodiment of all their hopes and dreams, because finally they have enough money to make a down payment on a house, which is part of the migrant experience of assimilation and chasing the American Dream.  In many ways this follows the same trajectory as the Lorraine Hansberry play A Raisin in the Sun, also taking place in Chicago, where a black family attempts to build a better world for themselves by improving their living situation in a new and better neighborhood.  In each case, trouble ensues.  Taking his mother and his wife Mira (Malika Kanatova) on a tour of what may end up as their new neighborhood, his mother is impressed, extremely proud of her son, as like so many that came before them, that house is a reflection of their family’s success in America.  The director has something else in mind, however, offering a different perspective on this age-old experience.  “It’s a coming-of-age story, but it’s also about home and the concept of it, which is so changing.  Home is not really about the place, the country, the city.  It’s not even about the people that surround you because you can feel lonely and out of your space.  Ultimately, it’s about this feeling where you are at home with yourself.  It’s like an internal journey.”  With that in mind, things go off the rails when Eric gets in over his head and accumulates a massive gambling debt, liberally borrowing from everyone he knows, but never pays them back, some of whom run out of patience, so his day of reckoning is coming.   

What starts out as Eric’s story merges into that of Mira, as her life is sent into turmoil after the disappearance of the down payment money and her husband, who fears for his life and flees from his creditors, having found himself in the deep abyss of an untenable situation.  Exposed and vulnerable, the situation only deteriorates when their house is ransacked by one of the men looking for the missing money, taking all the money she had saved from working at a nail salon, leaving them in a dire predicament.  Eric’s mother is completely unsympathetic, actually blaming Mira, who she never liked, believing she’s not good enough for her son, refusing to believe Eric had anything to do with this, instead directing her venom at Mira, actually throwing her out of the house, leaving her destitute and on her own.  The heightened emotions of this scene are memorable, as it’s hard to forget, painting an indelible picture of the price of gambling debts, how it destroys families and decimates any existing stability, leaving them completely untethered and on their own.  Mira is determined and resourceful as she attempts to track down her husband, discovering others are looking for him as well, finding herself in a myriad of turmoil and confusion, seeking help from those she knows, some of whom are helpful, even offering her money and a temporary place to stay, but ultimately this is a journey she must travel alone, needing to find the fortitude to survive.  Forced to navigate complex immigration appointments, impending health issues, and interpersonal conflicts that flair up, she is the picture of inner resolve.  Shot in a documentary, social realist style by Mitchell Arens, and written by Jeff Man and Guljan Toktogul, the director leaves the ending ambiguous, allowing viewers to decide for themselves what outlook they envision, with an open-ended finale that resembles a similar understated ending in Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces (1970). 

Ingrid Bergman Tribute: Casablanca

Director Michael Curtiz

Curtiz with Ingrid Bergman

Bogart and Bergman 

CASABLANCA                    A                                                                                                    USA  (102 mi)  1942  d: Michael Curtiz

You must remember this
A kiss is still a kiss
A sigh is just a sigh
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by.

—As Time Goes By, written by Herman Hupfield, 1931

Any list of the most beloved films etched into American culture must incude this one, along with Frank Capra’s IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946) and Victor Fleming’s THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939), all made before, during, or in the immediate aftermath of WWII, the epitome of the Golden Age of Hollywood, becoming synonymous with the best of who and what we are, as they all represent a piece of the American experience, where viewing these films during different stages of our lives is never less than memorable.  Listed at #3 on the American Film Institute’s list of greatest American films of all time, AFI'S 100 YEARS…100 MOVIES — 10TH ANNIVERSARY ..., and while it had an A-list of actors, it didn’t have a huge budget and was rushed out to coincide with the allied invasion of North Africa, released just eighteen days after the General Dwight D. Eisenhower-led Allied forces landed in Morocco and liberated Algiers, Oran, and Casablanca.  Arguably the most beloved Academy Award Best Picture winner ever, nominated for eight Academy Awards, winning three for Best Picture, Best Director (Michael Curtiz), and Best Screenplay (brothers Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch), the film may be most remembered for the romantic pairing of Humphrey Bogart with Ingrid Bergman, who was borrowed from David O. Selznick’s Paramount studio.  With this film, Bogart, better known for playing tough-guy gangster roles or playing a hardened detective, made the transition to becoming a romantic hero in every movie afterwards, while Ingrid Bergman was barely known in America until this film, which remains her best-known role, with both quickly becoming the darlings of the silver screen, the picture of bravery and moral conviction, showing how to fight through adversity.  The war was on, after all, and people were struggling in all facets of their lives, with this couple blazing a trail for how to survive with your freedom and dignity intact, where you can still stand for something even during the worst of times when all appears lost.  CASABLANCA is the ultimate war melodrama, a movie about political resistance, where the ongoing war is the backdrop to the film, making effective use of current historical events, transformed into a North African setting in French Morocco, where it’s important to remember that this was a film that took a heroic stand in the middle of a war, where the outcome was by no means certain, which may explain why the film resonates on so many levels, but the quotable dialogue may be the crown jewel, one of the most quoted movies of all time, where so much of it remains etched into the American consciousness, memorable enough that viewers still have much of it memorized.  Jukeboxes even incorporated the dialogue spoken over the equally memorable songs, none greater than pianist Dooley Wilson as Sam singing “As Time Goes By,” Dooley Wilson - As Time Goes By (HD) "Play it, Sam. Play As ... YouTube (1:29), voted the second best song in American film history in AFI's 100 YEARS…100 SONGS, trailing only Judy Garland’s version of “Over the Rainbow” from THE WIZARD OF OZ.  Of interest, Dooley couldn’t even play the piano, as he was a professional singing drummer, where the music, originally written for the 1931 Broadway musical comedy Everybody's Welcome, was dubbed into the scenes.  And that’s just one of the extraordinary aspects of the film, as this was Hollywood after all, makers of dreams and artificial realities.  While it's not a flawless film, with mostly one-dimensional secondary characters, some ludicrous rear projection shots in a flashback montage, while second unit director Don Siegel, the director of Clint Eastwood in DIRTY HARRY (1971), filmed the opening newsreel-style montage, yet the flaws are easily overlooked by the power of the performances and the wonderful way this film is stitched together, where it’s hard not to be lulled into the sentimental allure that includes Max Steiner’s superb musical score, as something tugs at your heartstrings throughout, drawing us into this exotic studio creation, transporting us back to a simpler life before the war tarnished everything. 

Legendary film critic Pauline Kael dismissed the film as “schlocky romanticism,” while director Billy Wilder described it as “wonderful claptrap,” and like hundreds of other Hollywood studio films churned out at this time, this is a propaganda film that reinforced the nation’s support for the Allied war effort, screened by President Roosevelt in the White House, coming at a time when most Americans still preferred to remain isolationist and neutral, even after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, yet no other film captured the American psyche as well as CASABLANCA, a movie that literally lives with us and becomes part of our lives, with the iconic figure of Humphrey Bogart standing at the center of the film’s popularity, featuring some of cinema’s most romantic scenes with Ingrid Bergman, while the secondary characters, nearly entirely drawn from an international cast, have become embedded in popular culture.  Actress Emma Stone’s character in Damien Chazelle’s film 2016 Top Ten List #10 La La Land is obsessed with the film, working in a Warner Bros. backlot coffee shop in Burbank opposite the CASABLANCA set, while sleeping underneath a giant poster of Ingrid Bergman in her bedroom, while opposite her Ryan Gosling’s Sebastian character opens his own jazz club named Seb’s, inspired by Bogart’s bar Rick’s, right down to the neon-lit signage.  Michael Curtiz was not the original choice of director, as that would be William Wyler, but he was busy with other projects, while Hedy Lamarr was the producer’s preference over Ingrid Bergman, and Bogart, curiously enough, was also not the original choice according to a Warner Bros. press release in 1942, claiming it was Ronald Reagan, but that was only a publicity stunt trying to build publicity for another one of the studio’s films starring Reagan, KING’S ROW (1942).  Adapted from Murray Burnett and Joan Allison’s unproduced play, Everybody Comes to Rick’s, a stage play allegedly inspired by Burnett’s trip across Europe in 1938, where he and his wife were surprised by the vehemence of the anti-Semitism in Austria after its 1938 annexation by Nazi Germany, a period characterized by the immediate implementation of Nazi racial laws, the violent persecution and forced emigration of its Jewish population, and the systematic destruction of Jewish property, while a visit to a nightclub in southern France, La Belle Aurore, transformed into the idea of Bogart’s character, the owner of Rick’s Café Américain, a nightclub that was the place to be in Casablanca.  While there are noirish elements to the film, including a cynical, existentialist anti-hero in a trench coat, a dangerous and corrupt environment, snappy dialogue, and the prominent use of low-key lighting, this would never be described as a film noir, largely due to the patriotic and propagandistic messages as well as an optimistic and upbeat ending.  Filmed during the war while history is still being shaped, a time when the Nazi’s are invading Europe, and the Europeans want to get out of their path as quickly as possible, where many in the cast were themselves refugees, it’s important to note that from 1939 to June 1942, nearly 20 million people moved from one part of Europe to safer terrain.  A native Hungarian, Curtiz, who himself was in the process of smuggling family members out of Hungary, was known for making concise films, with no wasted footage, where his lightning-fast pacing was the fastest on the studio lot, having a penchant for German Expressionistic lighting and using dark areas of shadows to create atmosphere, while also using high crane shots and unusual camera angles.  If this film has anything, it is drenched in stylish atmosphere, which may explain why it has passed the test of time, yet actress Ingrid Bergman initially found the plot confusing, thinking the film would do nothing for her career, believing the part wasn’t very demanding, yet Bogart, who would play opposite her, was on the verge of becoming a big star, and the studio insisted she would be dressed immaculately, while the extra dimension she provides is her luminous onscreen vulnerability, where she never looked more beautiful, luminously shot in soft focus for close-ups, making her appearance around the 30-minute mark, instantly turning her into a major international star.    

Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) is introduced as the owner of a bustling nightclub and gambling den operating in the German-occupied territory of Casablanca, defined by a seedy underworld and questionable morals, a place where espionage, war, and love exist simultaneously, where there’s a huge bottleneck for transits trying to get out of the country, stuck in limbo, waiting interminably in a desperate hope to escape the Nazis and reach neutral territory in Portugal.  Almost immediately we hear Rick is a cynical man who borders on selfishness, whose motto seems to be “I stick my neck out for nobody,” an American ex-pat with a mysterious, checkered past, like a man without a country who can never go home again, escaping to an exotic locale to reclaim a lost identity, yet it’s his cool demeanor that stands out, looking smart in a white dinner jacket, professing to be independently neutral in all matters, though we learn he ran guns for Ethiopia in 1935 and fought for the anti-fascist Republican side of the Spanish Civil War.  Newspaper reports two German couriers were murdered while carrying letters of transit, allowing the bearers free passage out of the country, documents that would be worth plenty of money, as everything in Casablanca is for sale, with Heinrich Strasser (Conrad Veidt), a German major, sent to Casablanca to investigate the killing of the two couriers.  Emblematic of that dark underside, Ugarte (Peter Lorre) hands off the letters to Rick for safe keeping, knowing the Germans will want him for questioning, Casablanca (1942) -- (Movie Clip) Letters Of Transit YouTube (3:51), while Signor Ferrari (Sydney Greenstreet), an underground figure, has cornered the black market, which he runs out of his Blue Parrot Café.  But Rick’s best friend and charming partner in crime is none other than Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains in his most iconic role, where there’s even a tribute song written about him from a New Zealand musical duo, The Front Lawn - Claude Rains), the equally cynical yet thoroughly corrupt French Prefect of Police under the Vichy government, as they seem to have a secret code of understanding, where the beauty is as much about what’s left unsaid as what’s spoken aloud, much of which is pure poetry.  Rains is given some of the best lines, a wry observer of the absurdities of the time, always the opportunist, making the best of a tragic situation.  As he rounds up “all the usual suspects,” a show of force largely to impress the Germans, he’s also the one to arrest Ugarte, who is shot trying to escape, leaving the question of the undiscovered letters of transit a big mystery.  Then, in perhaps the biggest mystery of all, Rick’s former Norwegian lover Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), enters the establishment accompanied by her husband Victor Laszlo (the uncharismatic yet super dignified Paul Henried), a renowned fugitive Czechoslovak Resistance leader.  When she asks a reluctant Sam to play “As Time Goes By,” it finally brings the two protagonists together in a moment of stunned surprise, where the two obviously have a history together that remains embedded in the unspoken drama.  While we learn Laszlo has broken out of a German concentration camp, his legendary reputation as a freedom fighter is well known and respected, making him an emphatically appealing character, providing much of the moral heft of the picture, as he’s a stark contrast to the Nazis.  Later that night Rick drinks his sorrows away, absolutely certain Ilsa will show up, eloquently summoning up what’s eating at him, “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine,” which leads to a brilliant flashback sequence, Casablanca 4K Ultra HD - "All the gin joints in all the towns in ... YouTube (4:05).  When Ilsa does finally visit Rick later that night, we learn she is the biggest reason for his deep cynicism, having inexplicably disappeared from Rick’s life in Paris on the eve of the German occupation, leaving him emotionally devastated afterwards, having never forgotten or forgiven her, drowning himself in liquor and self-loathing, Casablanca (3/6) Movie CLIP - I Don't Know the Finish (1942 ... YouTube (2:42).

The letters of transit everyone needs to get out of Casablanca are a kind of Hitchcockian MacGuffin, as in real life they never actually existed.  Yet everybody wants them, but nobody knows quite what they are, only that they are highly desirable.  No one is troubled by their irrational nature.  This is part of the cinematic magic that has drawn audiences into the film’s unreal ambience since 1942.  A perfect example is how easily the black market uses and exploits people, literally spitting them out on a daily basis, like a merry-go-round of refugees, as the entire story revolves around these letters, allowing anyone to escape from the hell of Nazi occupation, like a fictitious open door to freedom, leaving desperate people in a permanent state of anxiety and unease trying to get them, Casablanca (1942) -- (Movie Clip) You're A Fat Hypocrite YouTube (3:31), yet the underlying message is being oppressed against one’s will, which is always the flipside of war, where there are winners and losers, because in the real world, the good guys don’t always come out on top.  Imagine, for instance, if the losers actually won the war, and what a substantially different world this would be.  Both Laszlo and Ilsa want to get their hands on these letters of transit, believing it’s their only way out, yet going through Rick seems to be the only way, suspecting he knows where they are, making him a unique person of interest, elevating his level of importance in this story, where no one knows how it will end.  Will Rick or Laszlo get the girl?  That’s the open question in this love triangle, where even the writers were unsure, which kept the actors in the dark as well, especially Bergman who was openly frustrated and confused over the fact that no one would tell her who she was really supposed to be in love with.  That’s all part of the fun of this film, as it could have any number of multiple endings.  The film quickly pivots from Rick’s self-absorbed self-pity to rousing patriotism, where the patrons of Rick’s establishment are forced to hear Nazi officers sing their rendition of Die Wacht am Rhein, only to be countered by Laszlo, joined by Corinna Mura, the uncredited café singer and guitar player, and Madeleine Lebeau as Yvonne, a real-life 19-year old French refugee, who can be seen with tears in her eyes as they all collectively sing a spirited rendition of the French national anthem, La Marseillaise (still the greatest national anthem ever written), that drowns out the Nazis, an emphatic punctuation of the film’s moral high ground, Victor Laszlo Gets a Crowd To Sing "La Marseillaise" (Clip ... YouTube (3:02), shifting the film into a morality play with a fierce antifascist message.  As if to emphasize that intoxicating allure of freedom, Ilsa reveals just how desparate they are to get out of Casablanca, and begs Rick for the letters, adding love and romance to the mysterious ingredients of the story, all fueled by the radiant presence of Ingrid Bergman, who could make you believe just about anything, Casablanca (4/6) Movie CLIP - I Still Love You (1942) HD YouTube (2:36).  One of the best things though about Rick's character is that as the film progresses, we watch him do his best to overcome the cynical side of his personality, and actually help others when they need it.  As if on cue, Rick agrees to help Laszlo escape to Lisbon, gaining Captain Renault’s cooperation by telling him that he and Ilsa plan to leave, and promising Laszlo’s arrest at the airport.  Suspecting Laszlo, not Rick, will board the plane at the last moment, Renault phones Strasser, who rushes to the airport.  It all comes to a maddening conclusion, with a melodramatic whirlwind rush of sentiment that envelops the screen like the low-lying fog, with the director never informing Bergman who she would leave with until the day of the shooting, as Strasser is shot and killed by Rick when he attempts to stop the flight, and Ilsa and Victor escape together, with Rick sacrificing love for a higher purpose.  When the police arrive, rather than point out the man responsible, Renault tells them to “round up the usual suspects,” which leads to a fitting epitaph, with Rick eloquently remarking “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” Humphrey Bogart Parts Ways With Ingrid Bergman ... YouTube (6:33).  The film made both Bogart and Bergman into living legends afterwards, with CASABLANCA added to the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 1989, one of the first 25 films added in the Registry’s inaugural year.

Carrotblanca (1995) Looney Tunes take on Casablanca, YouTube (8:59)