Matty

Autism in mainstream packaging, i.e. with a strong non-autistic character with whom we can identify (and serving for the development of the narrative, because Ray cannot change), with the protagonist’s disorder offset by his phenomenal memory, with carefully administered “heartwarming” humour, and with the cause of all conflicts melodramatically limited to an incurable mental illness. We can ironically ridicule Levinson’s attempt to tell, with love and understanding, a story about a man for whom deeper affection for another person is an unknown emotion. However, it would not be fair to overlook the fact that Rain Man was also very tastefully made, without exaggerated sentimentality, without trying to eliminate everything that’s only slightly “uncanny”, without an entirely happy ending (brotherly love is fine, but it’s not a substitute for an institution specialising in caring for patients like Raymond). Within the boundaries of the genre, the believable transformation of Tom Cruise’s character is paradoxically aided the most by his essentially unchanging film brother played by Dustin Hoffman, who reacts slowly and differently. Though I have never actually seen Dustin Hoffman in this film. I always see only Raymond Babbitt. 85%

It’s pleasing to see a romantic comedy whose protagonist has a reason to act as if he has been lobotomised. However, that’s about the only positive thing about Levine’s film. The self-referential potential of the fact that the film takes an inside look at the zombie subgenre is most consistently utilised during the opening credits, after which Warm Bodies just becomes a standard romcom that is only occasionally brightened by a flash of parody. Instead of being developed, the main and only novel idea is gradually crowded out as the film transitions from cynicism to pathos. Warm Bodies still could have been an entertaining lark if it hadn’t tried to appeal both to emo viewers (I’m a zombie, nobody likes me, but my soul is tormented) and nerds, for whom, however, it doesn’t provide enough pop-culture references or enough reasons to believe that it’s meant seriously. In many moments, the film is conversely serious to the point of incongruously and unreasonably demanding an emotional response from us, which is made very problematic by the fact that the guy doesn’t have a brain (or at least he behaves as if he doesn’t) and the girl has no charisma (or anything else that would distinguish her from other female protagonists in any given romantic comedy). I would like to see the same subject matter dealt with in a more daring way that doesn’t take the path of forced humanisation and that fully utilises the potential of the parallel between the behaviour of zombies and today’s mindless masses with a comparably acute lack of vigour. 50%

Withdrawn into their shells, they communicate with each other only sporadically. They listen, but they don’t understand. They begin to realise what all they have been blind to only when their separation moves from the mental to the physical level. Their sadness seems endless. Nanni Moretti puts all of the weight on the viewer and without pressure leads us to go through the experience of loss together with the protagonists. The Son’s Room is built on carefully observed details of family life. The film’s uniqueness consists in its naturalness and its interest in the ordinary, in which we can see ourselves. The central tragedy is not overstated (as the Italians are glad to do), but only carefully examined. And there is no avoidance of lighter scenes, the exclusion of which would only serve to flatten the lives of the characters. We are not prepared far in advance for the crucial event of the narrative, which simply happens as a natural part of life. The film is dramaturgically enlivened by its division into two overlapping halves. The reprise of earlier shots, but now slower and sadder (a long following shot showing the interconnectedness of Giovanni’s personal and professional lives), forces us to make comparisons, to look for differences and to “find” what is missing. In the end, Giovanni also realises that the only reliable means of filling the gaps is probably (probably, because the ending, with the characters going their separate ways, is ambiguous) not the rules of psychoanalysis, but time, which never stops flowing through all of the comings and goings of his fellow humans. 85%

“… about a boy who thinks about death and a girl who doesn’t think about it…” Based on a true story taken from crime reports, Truffaut wrote a fifteen-page synopsis, which was developed into a screenplay by Godard, who, in his directorial debut, bid a radical farewell to narrative cinema. Being well familiar with the existentialism of Nicholas Ray, the romanticism of Roberto Rossellini and the documentary style of Jean Rouch (three acknowledged creative pillars), Godard made a film in which nothing happens and something gets added in only occasionally. ___ In Breathless, the storyline of a gangster B-movie (a mix of Gun Crazy and They Live by Night) is  peppered with a number of unwarranted digressions and pauses. The actual narrative happens only incidentally, when the empty chatter and playing around with form starts to be exhausting for the characters (at one point Godard himself comes in to set the stalled plot in motion). The story is thus not superior to all other elements as in standard narrative films – it has roughly the same importance as the editing, sound, cinematography and mise-en-scéne. These techniques in particular are used to characterise the protagonist, who otherwise shares scene very misleading information about himself. The shots are not always causally linked to each other, there are no logical connections between them (there is continuity in the scene post-synchronously recorded dialogue more often than in the images). Standard Hollywood-style continuity is broken. ___ Michel’s positioning and movement in a given shot also do not work together. In one shot he walks off to the left, in the next he stands in the middle of the shot, only to be turned to the right with his whole body in the next one. It is difficult to guess in advance where he will appear in a shot, which forces us to be more attentive and to constantly “refocus” our view. This is connected to the nature of the protagonist – he is unpredictable and makes decisions on the fly. Thanks to the quick, discontinuous editing (which stand in opposition to the atypically long circular camera movements) and focus on the action, Michel appears to be a man of action who gets straight to the point. He is constantly doing something, never standing still for a moment. Long speeches and idle waiting are strange to him. If he does not move another part of his body, he at least uses facial expressions. He lives in the moment. The seemingly sloppy and inconsistent editing emphasises his carefree nature. ___ However, the editing in Breathless is not only spontaneous (like the whole film), but also intentionally jarring and, together with the significantly variable length of the shots, contributes to the film’s disjointed rhythm. At the same time, the editing is not imperceptible, as André Bazin had wished, but alienating in a Brechtian manner – particularly after the use of a jump cut, we realise that something was left out. Another alienating aspect of the film comprises the actors’ looks directly into the camera, whether those of Michel during the opening car ride (as if he couldn't keep silent and therefore used the camera as his closest interlocutor) or of random passers-by in the “guerrilla-style” shots from the streets of Paris. It is difficult to speak of a particular style here. The main thing was to avoid copying the style of others and to break the existing narrative rules of film. In this sense, it is to a certain extent an aesthetic manifesto for the French New Wave as a whole. ___ Godard follows his own logic and comes up with his own language while deconstructing the language of genre films. Thanks to the neglect or absence of genre mechanisms, we paradoxically become aware of their importance. Whatever the director does not consider to be essential is left out of the story and the depiction of the characters. The fragmentation of the narrative makes it impossible to precisely reconstruct who did what and why. Emphasis is placed on the experience, not on the comprehensibility of the narrative. The disjointed and even muddled nature of the dialog corresponds to the lack of continuity in the images. When a sound is heard, there is no cut in its direction, and not every question is followed by the expected answer but, for example, by a sentence that is completely outside of the given context, which is why it is necessary to always be alert. ___ Compared to Godard’s later films, a major positive of Breathless is that you don’t have to analyse it shot by shot or be familiar with the director’s theoretical writings. You can simply enjoy Belmondo’s coolness, the cuteness of Seberg’s smile, and how fresh and original the film still seems after more than sixty years. 85%

After Marley, Hachi is another dog that made me soften my stance toward a film so blatantly kitschy that even the supporting characters are touched by its story. Hallström really knows what he’s doing. He transitions from warm colours in the introduction to increasingly colder colours while doing everything necessary to prevent the film itself from feeling cold. Because the plot of the Japanese original has been shifted from the 1920s to the present, there is no reason to take historical facts into account. Its primary purpose is for the viewer to be touched by the story of an extraordinarily loyal dog. It subordinates everything else to the idea of undying interspecies friendship. So, why not eliminate the negative characters (the new homeowner who hates dogs is missing), the social issues (the stallholder and the bookseller are immune to the crisis) and the theme of intergenerational conflict (the professor, not the daughter, enjoys the dog’s company from the beginning). Besides the main protagonist, there is only one Japanese actor and Ozu-esque cinematography, which has somewhat different reasons than in the case of the master. Hachiko is a perfect adaptation of Japanese material for a Euro-American audience in ways both good and bad. 80%

Rivette’s approach to the characters in his pseudo-crime drama is indicated by the introductory quote from Charles Peguy, “Paris belongs to no one.” This statement not only contradicts the title of the film, but it also does not correspond to the opinions of most of those involved, who think that the city on the Seine belongs to them and that they have the exclusive right to set the rules of the game (didn't the self-confident cinéasts of the French New Wave think the same thing?). In order to give their petty existence greater meaning, they play the heroes of a grand (Shakespearean) tragedy, convincing themselves that they are involved in an international conspiracy. They choose the perspective from which they want to see their trivial problems. However, the film does not take a helpful approach toward them – it doesn’t artificially create dramatic tension or support the crime-thriller framing by employing genre conventions. With the exception of several “spy” shots from a bird’s-eye perspective, which indicate that the protagonists do not hold their fates in their own hands, as they believe they are just pawns in a game played by someone more powerful, probably the director (the “game” interpretation is supported by the repeated use of a chessboard motif in the mise-en-scéne). ___ Thanks to the stark rendering, the vanity of Parisian intellectuals is made clear, as they are closed off in their contrived worlds, convinced of their own great importance and untouchability. They are ridiculous in their empty debates and in the absurd constructs that they have to create in order for something dramatic to happen in their lives. I believe the overly intellectual nature of the protagonist was intended to be a means of parodying the pretentions of such people. However, this extremely uncommunicative (almost autistic) film does not offer any certainty with regard to its intentions in this or in any other respect. ___ The characters delight in mysteries, talk in riddles and take nothing seriously. With the exception of the  somewhat defenceless main female protagonist, who, though she is much more sensitive than all of the men, is all the more susceptible to the artificially evoked idea of a major conspiracy and we should thus rather not take her as a reliable guide to the narrative.  ___ Rivette’s feature-length debut is a more contemplative film than the breakthrough works of Truffaut and Godard. It doesn’t have the spontaneous flair Breathless, let alone the warmth of The 400 Blows. It dives unhurriedly into the paranoid social climate of Paris, or rather the whole of Western society, at the end of 1950s. Under the influence of Pirandello’s theatre experiments, Rivette considers the possibilities offered by the intertwining of real and possible worlds (in some scenes, the characters smoothly transition from theatrical dialogue to common speech). He utilises the atmosphere tainted by the fear of nuclear war and the Babel-like confusion of languages (a shot from Metropolis) while belittling both. ___ Paris Belongs to Us is not an entertaining film, nor is it long enough to have an impact on our perception of time (as in Rivette’s later work), nor do I think it’s directing is anything to write home about, but it at least helps to form a more complete picture of the “milieu” in which the French New Wave was born. 60%

Neither film nor theatre. A stiff pseudo-filmic opera that doesn’t give the ears a rest. Nor does it offer the eyes much to look at (with the exception of the ugly digital background). I suffered as much as Mimi. 40%

The Lovers is a film that bridges the eras of classic and modern cinema. Malle adopts the genre (Renoir-esque acerbic comedy of morals) and elegant style of the former. The geometrically sophisticated placement of the characters in the mis-en-scéne, the use of great depth of field and the well-thought-out, extraordinarily long shots (28-second ASL!), which capture not only the phase, but the entire process of changes in mood and relationships, and reveal the inspiration taken from Renoir, Welles and Tati  (to whom a wonderful gag set in a car-repair shop, where a character becomes an indistinguishable part of the setting, is dedicated). ___ In the context of the New Wave, The Lovers is heretical in its heroine’s sexual liberalisation, which is not condemned in the film. Unlike in classic works (such as Anna Karenina), infidelity does not have tragic consequences, but rather represents a new beginning. The end of the woman’s objectification brings forth a change from passivity to actively moving – however uncertainly – into the future. ___ In the final thirty minutes, a peculiar stylistic twist occurs, involving the change of the realistic portrait of the upper class into a romantic poem. It almost seems that Jeanne has taken control not only over her own life, but also over the film itself. The line between the character and the narrator is definitively erased, as the narration had up to this point been handled by means of multi-voiced commentary (immediate commenting on feelings in some places, commentary delivered at a greater temporal distance in other places). The previously aloof, observational camera, which had essentially avoided point-of-view shots, suddenly gets much closer to the characters and the high-contrast black-and-white picture is replaced with dream-like soft-focus. Social pretence is crushed by an onslaught of sensuality. That which has been repressed rises to the surface. ___ The aspects of The Lovers that were considered obscene at the time of the film’s release (and led to a case heard before the United States Supreme Court) today come across as courageous honesty, because why not just acknowledge that few things can inspire a materially secure lady to abandon her rigid social role as reliably as properly performed cunnilingus? 75%

3-in-1. The actors who played the infantrymen and were novices at their craft when The Big Red One was made reminisce in 2005 about what it was like to shoot a film with two uncompromising war veterans (Lee Marvin and Samuel Fuller). Their stories from filming, recalling the light version of military service, are interspersed with more valuable items of information about the director recorded by Schickel in 1990 (that interview comprises the foundation of the documentary The Men Who Made the Movies: Samuel Fuller). The second, more technical half is focused on the reconstruction of The Big Red One (as Schickel concedes, the result is something between the director’s cut and Schickel’s cut). The search for shots considered to have been lost, the cleaning-up of the picture, improvement of the soundtrack. Those who are interested in the restoration of films should not miss this. In the space of one standard film about a film, you will get an extraordinary amount of information provided from the proper perspectives and from a different distance in time.

I have a small problem with the adjective “political” as it is automatically applied to films that are clearly defined in ideological terms and which either condemn or celebrate a particular political view. In contrast to that, Game Change skilfully avoids taking an obvious political stance (even though it could be classified among the films of the post-Obama comedown) and transforms the 2008 election into a rise-to-stardom story of an orthodox woman from Alaska. The filmmakers likably go beyond just presenting Palin behind the scenes (i.e. as the victim of a game played by people more powerful than her) and show us that even a modest girl from the mountains, as the then-governor was, can have an impact on politics. This transformation, portrayed superbly by Julianne Moore, drives the narrative, whose dynamism is also aided by the budding conflict with one of McCain’s campaign advisors (Woody Harrelson). Like Clooney’s more sophisticated The Ides of March, Roach’s film does not engage in a specific ideology (rather fittingly for today’s post-ideological society), but with the mechanism of power itself, which is a shame, because by drawing from an actual historic basis and having its premiere broadcast in the year of the following presidential election, it could have prodded viewers in a certain direction. Only then would this drama have excelled not only due to its cast, but also due to a certain degree of provocativeness, which brings me back to the first sentence of this review, because I consider the ability to encourage civic engagement in the audience to be one of the essential attributes of a political film. But of course there are political films and “political” films. 75%