King of Devil's Island (Kongen av Bastøy)

KING OF DEVIL’S ISLAND (Kongen av Bastøy)           A-             

Norway  Sweden  Poland  France  (120 mi)  2010  ‘Scope  d:  Marius Holst

A different side of Scandinavian films that we rarely see, one that is as brutally harsh as the bleak wintry landscape, where fortitude is built by learning how to survive in the worst circumstances, where in this part of the world surviving the elements is a continual test of character.  Based on a true story in 1915, set on the island of Bastøy on the North Sea inlet south of Oslo, they run an Alcatraz style prison for delinquent boys, where some may be orphans, some have mental health issues, others may have been caught for petty crimes, or may just be poor, but boys from 8 to 18 languish on this penal colony for years paying a kind of eternal penitence, where getting lost in the system is an understatement, as their release depends upon the discretion of the sadistic Governor in charge, Stellan Skarsgård, who firmly believes hard work and a firm stick will somehow transform these unruly boys into model citizens.  His job is to mold them into compliant citizens that obey rules and follow orders.  The truthful severity of the brutal acts against children make this kind of film off limits to American filmmakers, as this honestly exposes a kind of monstrous inhumanity within Norway’s own history that’s missing in American films.  Some of the best remembered prison films are A MAN ESCAPED (1956), THE GREAT ESCAPE (1963), COOL HAND LUKE (1967), IF… (1968), ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST (1975), SHAWHANK REDEMPTION (1994), where each one raises the question of prisoner escape, seen by the other inmates as an act of heroics, yet not so the warden who must make an example to deter similar actions, resorting to ruthless measures if caught, making one think twice about ever doing it again.  Each of these movies suggests men can only endure so much torture and relentless oppression, resorting to wit and bravery to conjure up improbable acts of escape, but not so here, as someone instead irrationally refuses to escape when the door is left wide open, where this may have you on the edge of your seat.

Unraveling as a story within a story, where a young harpooner aboard a Moby Dick style whaling ship marvels at the endurance of a whale that has been shot 3 times, yet still manages to elude them throughout most of the day, a theme turned back upon the humans, as it is their own beastly behavior that takes centerstage in this film.  With the arrival of two new inmates, a burly young sailor Erling (Benjamin Helstad) immediately disrupts the balance of power by challenging the status quo, threatening escape almost immediately, which places the other boys in jeopardy, especially Olav (Trond Nilssen), who is given responsibility over his dormitory as he’s expecting his release soon, considered a model prisoner.  What’s especially interesting is the interplay between these two, as they are polar opposites with uniquely compelling viewpoints.  They immediately test one another with a kind of LORD OF THE FLIES (1963) psychological battle of wits, while at the same time the Governor is testing the rebellious nature of Erling, continually adding harsher work details which makes his workmates miserable, but he continually takes the brunt of it, routinely given added punishments where he’s mindlessly ordered to move a pile of rocks ten feet away into another pile, only to be instructed afterwards to move them all back again.  The viewer soon discovers the island is a child labor camp, where they perform farming and forestry work details, with society getting a special bonus out of their cheap labor.  Except for the leads, most of the kids are non-professionals, where with little dialogue the director subtly weaves into the fabric a sense of community from the boys point of view, as they’re all victims of the same inhumane living conditions, where what’s missing is the capacity to look out for one another.       

What’s especially effective is the gorgeous ‘Scope camerawork from John Andreas Andersen whose sweeping panoramas and wintry landscapes look brutally cold, where winter never looked harsher and more ominous, where these are boys, after all, continually punished and brutalized in the name of some utterly fictitious social good, the Governor’s goal of making them “honorable, humble, and useful Christian boys,” as if he could beat them into submission.  While the tense build up of the inevitable rebellion may be held back too long, as there’s little doubt the floodgates at some point will open, when they do it comes with a flurry, all precipitated by extreme abuse to the weakest among them, a boy violated by the housemaster, Kristoffer Joner, in a role reminiscent of Donald Sutherland’s sick portrayal of a fascist baby killer in Bertolucci’s 1900, especially when the peasants turn on him.  So it’s not heroics but abuse of power, a cowardly cover up, where contemptible lies are met with anger and disgust, which has an initial liberating effect, but a bit like Haneke’s FUNNY GAMES (1997), the initial wave of hope is crushed with even harsher and more barbaric methods, making things seem hopeless before a sea change of communal emotion comes swiftly crashing through the gates like a raging flood, an apocalyptic response to the torrent of sins heaped upon them.  The chaos that follows is just that, a sprawling, sweeping flow of events that comes to resemble the image of that wounded whale ferociously fighting for its last gasp of freedom.  Holst is at his best in the extremely personal finale, pitch perfect and beautifully staged, thrilling to watch, where he judiciously takes his time allowing events to play out, becoming a poetic reverie of innocence lost.  Shot mostly in Estonia, the music by Johan Soderqvist is especially captivating, offering a somber lament at exactly the right moment, adding a layer of quiet intimacy to a beautifully accomplished film.

Pina in 3D

PINA IN 3D                            B+                  

Germany  France  Great Britain  (106 mi)  2011  d:  Wim Wenders 

There are situations that leave you utterly speechless. All you can do is hint at things.      

—Pina Bausch

While well-intentioned, to be sure, the idea of extending the use of 3D technology into the art film is getting ridiculous (see the photos of German Chancellor Angela Merkel adjusting her 3D glasses at the Berlin Festival premiere), as the fact remains very few films are the better for it, as the merit of a film continues to rise or fall based on the overall quality and essence of the film itself, not the use of technology, and this film is no different.  Wenders was intending a collaborative effort with internationally acclaimed dance choreographer Pina Bausch, the longtime director of the Tanztheater Wuppertal (since 1973), but she died just days after being diagnosed with cancer in 2009.  The film is very much a reverent eulogy to her memory, where one by one throughout the film members of the dance troupe are singled out, many offering a reflection on a particular moment they shared together, perhaps the moment they truly felt accepted, while others simply stare at the camera in silence.  One prominent theme advanced by many is the idea that language alone is limited, that dance, and art overall, is an extension of our capacity to understand and better appreciate human expression, that beginning with the dancers themselves, each is responsible for discovering that unique voice within themselves, captured through constant tinkering and experimentation with movement, so that each personality continually radiates their own personal vision while working within a larger dance ensemble.  This mix of individuality within a community of diverse dancers perhaps best expresses Bausch’s artistic vision, combining theatricality with dance, conveying universal expressions of loneliness and alienation with the need for intimacy, mixing sorrow with exhilaration and joy, often comically absurd but always intensely engaging.  Not so much interested in the movement, more so the idea and motivating force behind the movement, Bausch remains a visionary force with a demand for autobiographical truth and authenticity.   

Unlike Frederic Wiseman, Wenders never shoots an entire work uninterrupted from start to finish, but instead interweaves excerpts from four major works, never identifying them by name or the accompanying music, but they include Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Café Müller, Kontakthof, and Vollmond (Full Moon), often mixing various stage works with what looks like variations on a theme using improvisational outdoor settings, where Wenders takes full advantage of the streets outside with the overhead tram passing by, including scenes from inside the tram car itself, or a countryside rock quarry, a public swimming pool, an empty, museum like all-window room with the view of a forest outside, a beautiful city park, a meditative lakeside shoreline, or various architectural settings, where the surprise element of dance being performed in a natural environment has a special appeal all its own.  What the outdoors also brings is extra light, making this much brighter than the usually darkened 3D experience.  While the music is consistently outstanding, Wenders blends various theatrical pieces, moving from indoors to outdoors, where there’s always a smooth transitional feel, constantly changing the dancers, the costumes, and the stage, where the focus keeps evolving, as if we’re part of a continuing drama that is playing out in human form.  In one of the more quietly intriguing pieces, featuring phenomenal physical dexterity, a woman crawls through a wooden chair on the floor as a man adds another chair on top of that one, which she steps through, continually adding chairs on top of that which she and another dancer safely climb through as the tower of chairs grows ridiculously high, needing a chair to stand on in order to place yet another chair high atop.  Whatever issues one may have with the tame or rather conventional manner of the filmmaking itself, leaving much unexplained and unfathomable, it is a joy from start to finish, as the dance onscreen is simply extraordinary and has rarely been presented with this degree of love and artistic beauty.  

We grow familiar with many of the dancers after awhile, probably picking out several favorites, where the diverse cultural background, as many as 17 different nationalities, includes European and Asian, also Central and South American, including indigenous natives, where many are naturally shy and weren’t sure what to expect from Bausch, who was a constant presence but rarely spoke to them, where one mentioned she uttered a single phrase to her in twenty years.  There’s an interesting mixture of young and old, as one dancer is the child of two original dancers, while Kontakthof has young dancers suddenly morph into another version of themselves as older people, still doing the same dance routine.  Café Müller, the dance of a blind woman in a room full of chairs, is beautifully featured, along with Bausch’s Masurca Fogo, in Almodóvar’s TALK TO HER (2002), a dance Bausch used to perform herself in the early 70’s (seen briefly), and receives an extended treatment here, something of a heartfelt homage to the man seen frantically removing the chairs who has now died as well.  The two pieces given the fullest expression are the opening and closing pieces, the violent, ritualistic battle of the sexes in Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, performed on several tons of dirt hauled onstage, an enthralling piece making use of a red scarf where a woman is sacrificed to a group of threatening men for the supposed good of the community, a precisely choreographed gang rape scene where you can hear the dancers panting audibly.  The closer is Vollmond (Full Moon), a jubilant work featuring a dozen or more different musical selections, given a modernistic twist, where a gigantic monolith style rock sits off to the side while the stage is beset by falling rain, where at first dancers playfully speed through the water with rowing sticks, eventually bellyflopping on their stomachs doing the breastroke, but eventually the dancers grab buckets of water to splash against the rock, where the spray comes flying off in a near waterfall effect, leaving everyone sopping wet.  Wenders has created a delightful if loosely structured piece that can be hypnotic at times, something of a dance mosaic weaving in and out of meticulous formations that is most fun when the dancers can simply let loose and inhabit new worlds.     

The Trial of Joan of Arc (Procès de Jeanne d'Arc)

THE TRIAL OF JOAN OF ARC (Procès de Jeanne d'Arc)                 B                     

France  (65 mi)  1961  d:  Robert Bresson

Bresson, like Carl Dreyer before him, had notorious difficulties obtaining financing for films, according to film critic Andrew Sarris.  It has been said that “such intransigent individualists as Buñuel and Stroheim seem like Dale Carnegies by comparison.  At least Buñuel and Stroheim could promise the titillation of shock and sacrilege; Dreyer, like Bresson, could offer nothing but austerity and eternity.”  By paring away the irrelevant, “flash and fluff” that pads most movies, they hope to lay bare the human essence of the story, or as Bresson himself once wrote:  “You have to drain the pond to catch the fish.”  Certainly this rarely seen film is one of the most extreme examples of Bresson’s spiritual realism, his de-dramatizing technique that attempts to capture the actual tone and form of the original event, Joan of Arc's 1431 trial by the English for heresy at Rouen, the seat of the English occupation government in France, and her subsequent execution, using as a basis the actual historical trial records.  That being said, this a most peculiar film, largely due to the complete impassivity of the actors on the screen.  It is startling just how undramatic, unemotional, and uninvolved they are, just the antithesis of Dreyer’s 1928 silent film, perhaps one of the greatest films of all time, THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC, which features extreme close ups revealing extraordinary passion and human emotion.  So while that was probably one of the motivations to differentiate this film, it may not work for everyone and some may call it a failed experiment, while others may call it visionary.

Bresson makes excellent use of the thundering sound of the military tympany drum, which is meant to be intimidating when heard, used exquisitely here at both the beginning and end of the film, almost as if it is a clear reflection of the unspoken voice of God.  While the austerity of the film is severe, continually showing Joan subject to harsh treatment and condemnation, with cries of “Burn the witch” heard offscreen throughout, what’s perhaps forgotten is Joan was a simple farm girl, only 19 and illiterate, who couldn’t even sign her name, using a cross instead, yet she was resolute and unwavering, holding her own without the aid of counsel against the finest educated judges and lawyers from England, demonstrating a remarkable intellect.  Her judges couldn’t fathom that she could realize the divine by avoiding the church’s aid and instruction, feeling compelled to lecture her about religious faith, testing her mettle under dire circumstances, forcing her to show them her divinity.  Despite using actual transcripts, what the film doesn’t show is the duration of the trial, how the many months of relentless personal assault both in court followed by more interrogation sessions inside her prison cell, where she was continually spied upon by her captors, eventually took its toll and physically wore her down.  Of interest, Florence Delay, the university student that played Joan went on the write novels and narrate Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil (1983), eventually elected to the Académie Française in 2000. 

Bresson’s film is a perfect example of Brechtian theater, which, of interest, was a rebellion against the German emotional expressionist theater of the 20’s by attempting to destroy any dramatic illusion of reality, making it apparent to the audience that they were not witnessing real events happening before their eyes at that very moment, but were instead sitting in a theater listening to an account of things that happened in the past in a certain time in a certain place.  Brecht’s epic theater was strictly historical, reminding the audience that they were getting a report of past events, very much in a documentary manner.  So Brecht eliminated stage decor, suspense leading to a dramatic climax, and any audience identification with the characters on stage, allowing no emotional connection, creating a distance between them, enabling the audience to view the action with a detached and critical spirit, to see familiar things in a different light.  This is theater of reason, not theater of emotion, or unreason.  While this may work in theory, it all remains pretty grim, and by the end Joan is engulfed in smoke and fire, while a dove lands and then flies away.  The final image reveals a burnt stake with chains on the ground, smoke rises, and there is a final abrupt strike of the drum.  Dreyer’s last shot showed Joan burning, where off in the corner one can see a cross, while Bresson’s last shot is a still shot of the stake, smoldering.  The film won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1962.

Une Femme Douce

UNE FEMME DOUCE           B+                  

aka:  A Gentle Woman

France  (88 mi)  1969  d:  Robert Bresson

A film of transience, illustrated by the everpresent sound of street traffic heard throughout the film, where the moment one steps outside the Parisian streets are jammed with flowing traffic, seeing cars, buses, and even trains as they move from one station to the next, where life has a similar transitory theme where our time is fleeting.  The first Bresson film in color, also featuring the only one of his typically non-professional actors (Dominique Sanda in her first film) to ever become an international star, which she did shortly afterwards in her next film, Bertolucci’s The Conformist (Il Conformista)  (1970), which remains one of the greatest films ever made, so this is not your typical Bresson, though it retains his uncompromising nature featuring a spare and emotionally detached performance, but Sanda (as Elle) is unimaginably gorgeous.  Adapting the Dostoevsky short story A Gentle Creature, it opens with a suicide where Elle flings herself off a balcony onto the street below, where we only see the curtains fluttering in the breeze and a white scarf floating in air as the sound of traffic comes to a screeching halt, where the film is a flashback recalled in a narration by her husband Luc (Guy Frangin), a local pawnbroker, to his maid (Jeanne Lobre) as they stand next to the body which they’ve moved to a bed inside, where in a unique twist the entire film is really taking place inside his head.  At first, he barely pays any attention to her when she brings in various items for money, mixing her with others who come streaming in, but soon he keeps awaiting her return, singling her out, paying more than her items are worth, until all she has to offer is a crucifix, where he strips the Jesus from the gold backing, a sign of his spiritual void, though he eventually offers to help her out of debt through marriage.  Without any backstory to her situation, or a date, or any romantic inclinations, they marry. 

Bresson fills the screen with fleeting moments, as they are continually moving up and down the stairs, coming in and out of the apartment, moving in and out of rooms, where rarely do they actually spend any real time together.  It’s apparent Luc filters everything through himself, rarely expressing any interest in her life, using love as a means of possession, as a way to keep her all to himself, where she remains affectionate and sexually submissive as a wife, but unfulfilled.  Luc is such a self-centered and insecure guy that it’s difficult to listen to him ramble endlessly about himself, while she remains a quiet mystery, never one to reveal herself, yet luxuriously beautiful in her passivity, rendered almost as a saint by Bresson for her enduring patience and state of grace.  Luc, on the other hand, grows more distrustful and anxious by her silence and occasional absences, which he treats as a game, trying to outlast her indifference as if she is testing him, also becoming instantly jealous, always thinking the worst, and occasionally follows her surreptitiously on the street.  While in the apartment, there’s an interesting use of television, as neither actually sits and watches, but initially motor racing serves is a prelude to intimacy, much like Fassbinder uses World Cup Soccer in THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN (1979), while later historical scenes of the Royal Air Force (RAF) battling the Nazi Luftwaffe in the air during the prolonged Battle of Britain sets the tone for their marital disintegration.  There’s an accompanying theme of being a bird locked in a cage, as Elle reads aloud from a book that suggests each bird has a unique call that they’re born with, a distinct sound that forever becomes synonymous with their identity.   

Perhaps the most unusual Bressonian device in this film is the play within the play, as they both see a live theatrical performance of Shakespeare’s Hamlet where the finale, featuring swordplay and a poisoned cup, plays out in real time where all the central characters drop dead within a few short minutes.  Shortly afterwards, Elle falls into an inexplicable illness of lengthy duration where Luc promises steadfast devotion and love, which feels almost comically absurd to her, as she seems to understand the deeper motive, where she’s never felt more stifling oppression and where she can’t bear the thought of spending another day in his suffocating presence.  The picture of him hovering over her declaring his love holds little meaning, as he’s a man that doesn’t know the first thing about love, and yet somehow the two are eternally linked together.  What’s peculiar about this couple is their inability to communicate, where Elle offers few clues as to how she feels, where she sings to herself when he’s not around, or listens to music, but shuts it all down when he arrives, returning to a web of gloomy silence that is impenetrable.  Without ever expressing what’s wrong, both remain stuck in perpetual restraint, immobile, paralyzed by their own indecisiveness.  It’s a relationship that remains polite and civil but feels doomed, especially narrated by the rather heartless and shortsighted Luc, as even by the end of the film when he’s nailing the screws into her coffin, he’s no nearer to understanding what went wrong or why any of this happened.  It’s an extremely fragile expression of the tenuousness of life, showing how easily life can suddenly and mysteriously disappear, often without any good reason or explanation, simply by illness or accident.  Death becomes more pronounced in Bresson’s later films, as does suicide, where this feels like a prelude to the dance.