233. Lebanese director Nadine Labaki’s third feature film “Capernaum” (a.k.a. Caphernaum; and Chaos)(2018) (Lebanon): A film that puts Lebanon on the world cinema map by presenting truth, humanism, and issues often swept under the carpet, in many parts of the globe

“Why are you attacking your parents in court?”—Lebanese judge/magistrate to Zain, a 12-year-old Lebanese, already behind bars for a crime he has committed 

“For giving me life”—Zain’s response

The year 2018 has seen the release of three interesting films from three distinct parts of the globe. Each of the three  are very interesting, have several common themes and have and will be competing against each other for major honours at different awards nights and film festivals. The three films are directors Nadine Labaki’s Capernaum (from Lebanon), Hirokazu  Kore’eda’s Shoplifters (from Japan) and Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma (from Mexico).

 

Zain (Zain al Rafaeea) pondering on ways to feed and take care of
someone younger and more helpless

All three films deal with multiple children and their families into which they are born-- for no fault of theirs.  All three films are original tales conceived and developed by the directors from their own experiences and imaginations. All three films deal with poverty, though in Roma the effect of poverty is limited to the servants and not the children of their masters who are luckily born into a world of financial security. All the three films have already won major awards either at Cannes or at Venice film festivals and are/were competing for the Golden Globes and the Oscars.  Though Capernaumis the weakest of the three in production quality, it offers much more to the viewer to reflect on and appreciate than the other two films.

Perhaps, to relegate all the production aspects of in Capernaum as less stunning than Shoplifters and Roma would be quite inaccurate.  An early aerial drone shot in Capernaum of the shantytown districts of Beirut, thanks to its cinematographer Christopher Aoun, stuns you. What you see is a mosaic of tin sheets that act as roofs of human habitation held in place by old rubber tires of all sorts of vehicles.  

A 12-year-old Zain takes care of a 1-year-old with
responsibility and love he never got from his own parents

Zain carrying Yonas around Beirut to find food and shelter

Assuming this low-cost camera shot in Capernaum is real and not a computer generated perspective, that simple astounding shot deserves more credit than the comparatively awesome beach rescue scene and the hospital delivery scene in Roma captured by the able Mexican cinematographer/director Cuaron with the relative high costs involved, the mainstay of the Mexican film Roma’s technical finesse. Now why would that one shot in Capernaum be so important? Beyond the humour and surreal perspective of Beirut that shot offers, it encapsulates the chaos implied in the title of the film. And to place that stunning shot at the start of the film is a master stroke of co-writer and director Labaki.

Capernaum is a film close to the neorealist film traditions of Vittorio de Sica (Italy) and the contemporary works of Ken Loach (UK) and the Dardenne brothers (Belgium) using non-professional actors to etch realistic tales of poverty in an engaging, intelligent manner. On the other hand, Kore’eda’s Shoplifters is a film that has used experienced actors who have appeared in films before, often in earlier works of the director.  If the viewer of Capernaum dissects each scene with the 12-year-old Zain (Zain al Rafaeea, a Syrian refugee in Lebanon  who has never acted before playing the role of a Lebanese kid) and the one-year-old Ethiopian child Yonas (Boluwatife Treasure Bankole) who is not old enough to walk but can crawl, one can glimpse the mammoth effort taken by director Labaki to capture the right emotions of the two kids and the amount of time spent  and footage the filmmakers shot to get the final edited version of Capernaum. And it looks so real!

Capernaum offers an unusual tale—a 12-year-old boy so frustrated with his miserable life on earth which led him to commit a crime out of rage that results in imprisonment with other kids of his age. From the jail, he is ingenuous enough to contact a live TV show host on a cell phone to start the process of suing his biological parents with an unusual demand that his mother abort the foetus that she is carrying. He does not want yet another child to be born into his family of illiterate and incompetent parents, who neither have money or time for their offspring but continue to breed.

Zain in court speaks to the judge with his lawyer (director and co-scriptwriter
Nadine Labaki) standing next to him

While Capernaum is a plea to parents worldwide who cannot afford to have another mouth to feed and to stop procreating further, it is equally an unsettling plea against child marriages, where a girl child (Zain’s younger sister Sahar) can be given off in marriage in exchange of five chickens to feed the family for a few days.  It is a plea by a child who has never been to school on behalf of the children of the world for a right to education and their right to the joys of childhood.  In stark contrast to the children in Shoplifters, who experience love of parents, grandparents and foster-parents, the children in Capernaum are pushed by poverty to survive from day to day employing ingenious methods of drug peddling and their incredible transmission of opioid medication routes to survive and generate income to help other kids, more fragile than themselves, live another day.

The illegal Ethiopian migrant Rahil in Lebanon
 in search of a better life for herself and her son Yonas

Capernaum prods the viewer to spread the word on the importance of sterilizing illiterate parents already burdened with kids, blind to the travails of their progeny present and future. It is a film that underscores the importance of registering the births of children in today’s global village to have their own identity and rights in their own country that will help them in their life. It is also about paperless emigrants: an Ethiopian single mother Rahil (Yordanos Shiferaw) ekes out a living in Lebanon, evidently because Lebanon offers her a better life than in Ethiopia and in a similar flip-side scenario to escape poverty the Lebanese Zain goes scrounging for his identity papers (that never existed because his parents never bothered) so that he and Yonas could be transported to Turkey and/or Europe as immigrants also seeking a better life. The film’s unspoken message is that immigration problem starts at home, with parents who are responsible for the upbringing of the family rather than curse their own financial predicament. It is thus not unusual to find brothers being more responsible for the fate of their sisters than the parents in the Middle East. The many Zains of Lebanon do manual child labor to survive each day while more privileged children head to school in small vans covered with their schoolbags.

In Biblical terms, Capernaum in Galilee was where Jesus began his ministry, performing miracles, and  a town cursed by Jesus unless the people repented. In Labaki’s Capernaum, there is scope for the parents to repent after hearing Zain’s plea from behind bars and sterilize themselves or adopt other temporary birth control methods so that other Zains are not brought forth into the world.  Labaki’s Capernaummight be focusing on a small portion of Beirut—but the message of her film is universal.  One is again reminded of the iconic shot from the sky of Beirut’s shacks with tin sheet ceilings held in place with old tires.

Zain and his younger sister Sahar who will be given away in
marriage by his parents for the price of five chickens

Though Labaki’s Capernaumlacks the financial and acting prowess of Romaand Shoplifters, the strength of the film is in the message and the ability of the filmmaker to work with a 9-year-old Syrian Zain playing a 12-year-old Lebanese with the same name.  The fictional character Zain cares for those weaker than himself and, in jail, shows a maturity beyond his physical age to envisage a similar fate as his that awaits his future brothers and sisters unless he acted quickly against his parents. Director Labaki plays the role of Zain’s lawyer in the film. Step back and the viewer will realize that Labaki is the “lawyer” making an impassioned plea for a better deal for children of poor illiterate parents who disregard sterilization and beget children deprived of food, education and love and plead innocence without taking responsibility as production of children is equated with currency. 

The more economically stable film viewers of Capernaumcan scoff at the concept of a child suing his parents, but it is a viewpoint few filmmakers would have dared to address till now.

Capernaum is the film of 2018 and arguably the best film from the Middle East in a long, long while.

P.S. The lovable Zain al Rafaeea, who is the main actor, is now a legal immigrant in a Scandinavian country with his parents.  Capernaum is the winner of the Jury Prize and two other awards at the Cannes film festival; award for direction at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards; best screenplay award at the Stockholm Film Festival, audience awards at Calgary, Acadie, Ghent, Melbourne, Mill Valley, Norway, Sarajevo, St Louis, Sao Paulo, and Toronto international film festivals.  The author's ranked list of the top 20 films of 2018 includes Capernaum.

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204. Polish maestro Krzysztof Kieślowski’s film “Dekalog, Jeden” (Decalogue, One) (1989) (Poland): A fascinating debate on atheism versus faith in God/Yahweh/Allah

Frozen lake

The ten-part Dekalog is definitely one of the 10 best works of cinema ever made for this critic. Each segment of the ten-part film Dekalog is linked to the 10 Commandments given by God to Moses as believed by Christians, Jews and Muslims.

Now many who are not familiar with subtle changes introduced into various versions of the Bible over time would assume the Ten Commandments are written in stone and will have to be the same in all published versions. This, unfortunately, is not the case. One reason for the differences pertains to sources of the Commandments (The Septuagint, Philo’s Septuagint, The Samaritan Pentateuch, the Jewish Talmud, and The Holy Koran’s sura Al An’am and al Isra) and the second, the various interpreters (St Augustine, Martin Luther and John Calvin). (Ref: Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments )

When Krzysztof Kieślowski made Dekalog in collaboration with co-scriptwriter Krzysztof Piesiewicz one can guess each of the Ten Commandments, each episode refers to in broad terms.  But a detailed evaluation brings into the limelight the conflict of the tale of some episodes of Dekalog with various differences in the numbering of the Ten Commandments and the subtle differences of how each Commandment reads, depending on the particular faith of the viewer.

Now Dekalog, One refers to the First Commandment I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods before me.  The story of Dekalog, One can be deconstructed to accommodate two conflicting views about God derived from two adults in the life of a 12 year old precocious boy called Pawel.  The father, Krzysztof, is a university professor who believes in reason and scientific methods. Pawel’s mother is apparently abroad.  Pawel has an aunt Irene (Krzysztof’s sister) who deeply believes in God unlike her brother.  

Pawel and his brilliant rational professor father, Krzysztof

Young Pawel is close to his father and shows off the computer skills he has learnt from his father to his aunt Irene. He can lock the door of his apartment using remote control with the help of the computer. He can even open water faucets by a similar method. However, the clever Pawel is also a sensitive boy who is shaken by the sight of a familiar stray dog that has died near his apartment.

When Pawel asks his father “Why do people die?” his father answers: “It depends—heart failure, cancer, accidents, old age..” 

The million dollar question from a 12-year old

Pawel persists: “I mean what is death?”

His father Krzysztof explains, “The heart stops pumping blood. It does not reach the brain. Movement ceases. Everything stops. It is the end.”

Pawel continues “So what is left?”

The father answers his son: “What a person has achieved; the memory of that person.  The memory is important. “

Now the film’s character Krzysztof could easily be associated with (or an extension of) its director Krzysztof Kieslowski, who had publicly stated that he was an atheist. The third Krzysztof of the film is the co-scriptwriter Krzysztof Piesiewicz, who is publicly a Roman Catholic. This critic is convinced that Piesiewicz is possibly one of the finest scriptwriters in the history of cinema even though he is primarily a politician and a lawyer.

Pawel's aunt Irene is the optimistic theist 

In this amazing film, despite all the knowledge and scientific reasoning and calculations and a physical personal check of the ice that covers the frozen lake, the ice breaks.  There does seem to be a parameter beyond science and reason and physical reassurance that the calculations are correct.  Krzysztof, the father, calculated if his son’s weight could crack the ice and found the ice would hold. For the university professor, computers, mathematics and reason, is more trustworthy than God.  In 1989 Poland, computers and computation was the new God. As a good father, to reassure his own calculations, he himself goes on the ice to see if it could hold his adult weight.  He is reassured as the ice holds. Yet, tragedy follows.

There is sufficient evidence on the IMDB portal’s page on Piesiewicz that Dekalog, One, Two, Seven and Eight are four episodes that were originally written by Piesiewicz. These are four of the most intriguing episodes of the 10. Conversely the other six were originally written by Kieslowski, with additional inputs from Piesiewicz.

If we accept the Piesiewicz contribution to Dekalog, One being more than that of Kieslowski, plot wise, the end of this episode falls into place. The devastated, emotionally broken, rational father goes to the church under construction to make peace with God.  The makeshift wooden altar breaks.  The falling lighted candles drip white wax on the iconic figure of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa, giving the impression that the Madonna was crying. (Dekalog, One opens with a shot of aunt Irene crying as she watches television breaking news on the streets.) As the emotionally broken father leaves the church, as a good Roman Catholic he dips his hand in the receptacle containing holy water. The water is partly frozen.   A former rational professor pulls out a piece of ice resembling a Host wafer from the receptacle and contritely presses it on his forehead by himself. What a wonderful symbol of accepting God above all his rational calculations. Was Kieslowski really an atheist as he claimed to be? 

P.S. Dekalog is included in the author's top 10 films. Three other episodes: Dekalog, Two; Dekalog, Five; and Dekalog, Seven have been reviewed earlier on this blog. The reviews of  Dekalog, Two and Dekalog, Seven dwell on the intriguing interpretation of the relevant Commandment.

This critic was fortunate to have met and talked with director Kieslowski in Bengaluru, India, in January 1980 when his collaboration Piesiewicz had yet to begin. Dekalog, Three Colours: Blue, White and Red, and The Double Life of Veronique were yet to be made. This critic ardently hopes to meet with Piesiewicz to ask him about those films and Kieslowski, now that Kieslowski is no longer with us.

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191. Japanese director Naomi Kawase’s “An” (Sweet Bean/Sweet Red Bean Paste) (2015): Zen and the art of making pancakes

Globally, Naomi Kawase is not as well known as are Japanese filmmakers Akira Kurosawa, Yasijiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, Masaki Kobayashi, Nagisa Oshima, Hiroshi Teshigahara and Shohei Imamura. Ms Kawase is an odd one to be included among those stalwarts. First, she is the only woman among all those men. Second, she is the only one with a non-Japanese first name, while her filmmaking is quintessentially Japanese, harking back to nature and traditions of the Japanese people. And finally her filmmaking is distinct from the rest—each feature film with strong female characters, each feature film that exudes respect for elderly folks and their accumulated wisdom, each feature film stressing on equilibrium of relationships between human beings and nature. Finally, her reflective and philosophical style of filmmaking unintentionally is very close to that of the US director Terrence Malick. She could well be considered Japan’s answer to Malick.

Lonely Sentaro makes a living making dorayaki sandwiches with "an" and
selling them his customers to pay off his debts

Like Malick and the Swedish maestro Ingmar Bergman, the majority of her eight feature films are built on her own original screenplays, mostly without the help of a co-scriptwriter.  Only two Kawase films are adapted from novels, Sweet Bean/ Sweet Red Bean Paste and Hanezu (2011).  Only one of her eight feature films—Nanayo (2008) utilizes the services of a co-scriptwriter. This fact is not trivia, if one compares it to the acclaimed body of Kurosawa’s output which is almost entirely built on ideas of novelists, short-story writers, and top-notch gifted scriptwriters. Kurosawa’s success was considerably due to the following 10 talented scriptwriters he worked with over the years:  Hideo Oguni (12 films) Ryuzo Kikushima (9 films), Shinobu Hashimoto (8 films), Eijiro Hisaita (4 films), Masato Ide (3 films), Ishira Honda (3 films),  Keinosuke Uekusa (2  films), Keiji Matsuzaki,  Senkichi Taniguchi, and Yuri Nagibin (1 film each). In contrast, Kawase’s films are by and large products of her own ideas, spoken words, and stories, captured on film.

Naomi Kawase made two major shifts from her usual pattern of filmmaking for Sweet Bean/ Sweet Red Bean Paste. First, having made only eight feature films, this is Kawase’s second attempt to adapt a novel for a movie.  And for the first time, this feature film turns out to be a commercial success as well! Second, this is her first feature film that has the entire action captured on film in the city of Tokyo, far away from the Nara prefecture in Japan which has been her favourite filming location. (One of her earlier films, Nanayo, did have some scenes filmed in Thailand.)

Wakana, Tokue and Sentaro bond as a virtual family,
listening to birds and enjoying small pleasures of nature that sorround them 

Sweet Bean/ Sweet Red Bean Paste has three unrelated individuals of three different age groups in Tokyo bonding as a family. What brings the three together is “An” the Japanese name for the sweet red bean paste, an essential ingredient for dorayaki, a popular hot pancake sandwich. One individual cooks the bean paste, one sells the dorayaki, and the third is a regular customer at the dorayaki stall. The film is a delightful tale of how the trio come together and how their lives change. The closest works of cinema to this Japanese film is the Oscar winning 1987 Danish film Babette’s Feast and the 2000 UK/US film Chocolat.  The key element that the entire Kawase's body of films have that was missing in both Babette’s Feast and Chocolat was what human beings need to observe and learn from the harmony in nature.  There is a deep message in the Japanese film beyond the story line: that a person’s worth is not to be measured by one’s career but in one’s being and that inner joy can be experienced with the help of our sensory faculties in the natural world that surrounds us. That is very close to Buddhist philosophy.

It would be too simplistic to describe the film as a mere tale of three individuals bonding over a confectionary item and finding a virtual family in unexpected circumstances. The film is drenched in philosophy and the experience of viewing the film is close to what a reader would feel after finishing the Robert M. Pirsig novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It’s a tale of people learning from each other.  

In an interaction with the media at the Cannes film festival, Kawase pointed out “No one can live alone.... I get the impression that in today's societies people create their own barriers. In a broader context, these barriers could make us rethink the idea of getting rid of 'the other'. Sometimes a person looks very angry from afar. But if we get close enough, we see that he is crying. That person may only seek attention and affection of others.” That encapsulates Kawase’s body of cinematic work, not just Sweet Red Bean Paste.

Tokue makes the dorayakis as Sentaro, her boss, is late for work

The virtual family in the film is made up of three “misfits” in today’s society. The lead male character is Sentaro (Masatoshi Nagase), possibly in his late twenties, divorced, who after injuring someone in a drunken brawl, was imprisoned for it, and had to pay a huge sum of money to the grievously injured man. We learn his dour countenance is a reflection of the hard work he has to put in to pay back the debt. The greedy owners of the dorayaki stall where he works are an added headache. Sentaro is not a bad individual, but life is not easy for a freed jailbird with a debt and no family. The lead female character is Tokue (Kirin Kiki) a cured leprosy patient in her Seventies with disfigured hands, who by a quaint Japanese law is not supposed to exit her sanatorium. Again this character is a lovely individual who cannot interact with the rest of the world for no fault of her own and her only “family” is reduced to her compatriots at the sanatorium.  The third character of importance is Wakana (Kyara Uchida, the real life granddaughter of actress Kirin Kiki) a sensitive and curious school girl who loves to eat doroyakis and dreams of going abroad. Her only family is a mother who does not give her much attention. Durian Sukegawa’s novel and Kawase’s film bring together the trio of misfits without a family as they meld into a new virtual family.

Sweet Red Bean Paste as any Kawase film presents characters that are aware of the natural world surrounding them. Even in Tokyo, a vertical concrete city, Kawase focuses on the cherry trees in bloom between buildings  and a yellow canary chirping away on one of the branches.  This was perhaps more pronounced in her earlier works The Mourning Forest, Hanezu and Still the Water, which were less accessible to comprehend for a casual filmgoer. In Sweet Red Bean Paste, the silences, the sounds of leaves in the wind and even footsteps, are to be savoured as they hold meaning for the tale, unlike most other films. Tokue’s last message to her young “family” is not to regret the isolation in society that unfortunate events can dictate in your life. She advises the young “family” members the necessity of living life appreciating the wonders of life. In the film, Tokue says, “Everything in the world has a story to tell.” She talks to the beans that she cooks, she listens to them cook, and has tales about beans cooking to narrate.  She is grateful to Sentaro to have given her an opportunity to cook ‘an’ after all these years and watch the public savour the fruits of her labour. Sentaro in turn is grateful to Tokue for making his business boom. Wakana is grateful to Sentaro who gives away the imperfect dorayakis to her gratis. These simple actions have a larger effect and meaning in the film.

Sentaro sells his dorayaki under a cherry tree amidst nature--he has learnt
from the advice of Tokue

Two details need to be stated. Naomi Kawase was left by her own parents and brought up by her grandparents, which is probably why recurring stress on family and respect for elders underscore her films. Actress Kirin Kiki, who plays the cured leprosy patient Tokue, had battled cancer herself and got cured.

While Sweet Red Bean Paste is a major work of Naomi Kawase, a delightful work exuding positive philosophy of life, and relatively easy to comprehend, The Mourning Forest andStill the Water remain her more complex and satisfying works. Nevertheless, Naomi Kawase is one of the most important filmmakers alive and making films today.

P.S.  Sweet Red Bean Paste is on the author’s top 10 films of 2015 list. The films of Naomi Kawase The Mourning Forest, Hanezu and Still the Water mentioned in the above review—have been reviewed in detail earlier on this blog. Sweet Red Bean Paste has won awards at Sao Paulo, Cork, and Valladolid film festivals and the Best Actress award for Kirin Kiki at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Ms Kawase is also one of the author's 15 favourite active filmmakers

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172. Argentine director Damián Szifrón’s “Wild Tales” (Relatos salvajes) (2014): Black comedy that entertains while making us introspect

The "wild" characters from the six segments

Wild Tales is a gem of an entertainer made up of six stand-alone, dark, comic tales. It is a portmanteau film with a difference; all the six tales are written and directed by one man--Damián Szifrón.  He is also the co-editor of this impressive work. Surprisingly, this Argentine director is only in his late thirties and he has made a film that belies his age. Most audiences will love it because there are elements in the six tales they will easily identify with, irrespective of where they live on this planet.  Interestingly, the film was co-produced by the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, who must be delighted that he has invested his money well.

It is “wild” because it depicts extreme reactions of ordinary individuals, who are frustrated by present urban societal pressures and the outcomes are quite plausible if the frustrated individuals are left with little or no choice to correct their predicaments, created often not by themselves but by others. Damián Szifrón may be zooming in on frustrations in urban Argentina but a global viewer would easily identify the situations as universal.

"Pasternak": Wild revenge of a snubbed creative mind

The opening segment “Pasternak” is a prologue to the main film before you see the film’s credits hilarious credit sequence. The prologue is essential for the viewer to appreciate the comic elements in the illustrated animals shown in the credits.  The humans in the film Wild Tales are not far removed from the colorful wild animals in the credit sequence. The humans are ordinary people who can indeed become wild.

Without providing spoilers for those who are yet to enjoy the film, it is important to note ’’Pasternak” is a tale relating to the frustrations of a budding music composer named Pasternak, who finds his creative output is trashed by critics/professors and his life is gradually ripped apart by several people in his life. And the brilliant part of this segment is that you never get to see Mr Pasternak—you only get to see those who have ruined him.

"The Rats:" How to deal with rats in a restaurant 

The next segment “The Rats” is set in a restaurant but the rodents are human.  The human rat is a social climber who has succeeded in life by trampling down on poorer sections of society, often wrecking their lives with impunity and killing the bread winners of marginal lower middle class families who cannot survive the economic pressures.  This segment also presents the flip side view of lower middle class family members driven to prison for offences created by economic strains and eventually preferring to remain behind bars with basic food and amenities rather than succumb to “human” rodents who wreck your life outside prison.

"The Strongest": Class wars on the road

The segment “The Strongest” is all about road rage of two individuals with a difference. Director-writer Damián Szifrón adds the element of social economic disparity—one is driving a high-end car, the other a jalopy, both using the same highway.  The rich look at the slow moving jalopy refusing to give way for fast moving cars with disdain. The poor look to avenge the cocky rich. Who is stronger? The best part is the finale of the segment where the policeman makes an ironical statement. Kudos to the writer Damián Szifrón! The audience anywhere will erupt when they hear that line. (This critic is intentionally not reproducing it as it would be spoiler!)

"Little Bomb": The expert demolisher (Ricardo Darin) demolished

Argentine actor Ricardo Darin is impressive in every role in every film that this critic recalls having seen him in and the segment “Little Bomb” in Wild Tales is no exception. Ricardo Darin plays a well-paid demolition expert, married and a father of a lovely girl. His well heeled life is slowly demolished by a private sector Buenos Aires traffic entity responsible for ensuring cars are parked only in designated places and having the authority to tow away those that do not comply to the rules.

But such entities can get high handed and citizens can get high strung, if they are convinced that they did not break any rules but have option but to pay the large fines. This segment also reveals writer Damián Szifrón’s empathy for the parking woes of car owners in Buenos Aires and how a “terrorist” can become a local hero. Damián Szifrón’s characters here and elsewhere act and react as ordinary individuals driven up against the wall by forces un-intentionally created by a well-meaning society.

The segment “The Proposal” reiterates Damián Szifrón’s interest in the class divide and how the rich try to use the poor to get out of nasty situations such as a rich family member causing a car accident leading to a death of a poor citizen.  As in the earlier segment “The Rats,” Szifrón’s script deals with corruption but in “The Proposal” that aspect is openly shown with amazing humor. The black comedy takes a U-turn when the righteous, scarred public avenges by “wildly” killing the wrong person.

"Till Death Do Us Part": The bride confirms the bridegroom's infidelity

The final segment titled “Till Death Do Us Part”—the famous wedding phrase used in Christian weddings--is about a wedding reception for the newlyweds in a hotel in Buenos Aires.  The bride stumbles on a hidden relationship the bridegroom has with one of the invited guests and what follows is best described by Shakespeare’s words “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” The resulting “wild” roller coaster events during the wedding reception constitute black comedy, sinister and yet hilarious.

While we laugh at all the six segments, there are pointers from the film to take home. Can critics destroy creative minds? Can the upwardly mobile successful citizens realize who they have trampled along the way? Can we project our road rage towards people who are indeed breaking rules without considering the consequences? Can the private and public sector perform with a heart towards society? Can public rage against corruption and the wrongdoings of the rich go sadly wrong?  Can spouses who fall deeply in love forgive each other’s weaknesses?

Wild Tales is a combination of intelligent original screenplay writing and good direction. This wild film is a social critique of Argentina today, entertaining the audiences in its stride. Intelligent comedy is not easy; Wild Tales makes it look easy. The numerous audience awards it has picked up at film festivals globally testify to its universal appeal and for Argentine cinema, rare indeed is a film that has won a staggering tally of 15 national awards. Damián Szifrón has arrived on the world cinema map.

P.S. Wild Tales  has won audience awards at the San Sebastian film festival, the Sao Paulo film festival, the Sarajevo film festival, and the Oslo Films of the South film festival. Its box office returns have already exceeded 7 times its production cost. It is one of the 5 films that made the final  list of nominees for the Best Foreign Film Oscar 2015 but did not win it. Wild Tales is one of the author's top 10 films of 2014.

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171. Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev’s film “Leviathan” (2014): A bold political film made with a superb aesthetic flourish

“During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man.” Thomas Hobbes, in his political book on statecraft called Leviathan, published in 1651

“Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook or tie down its tongue with a rope? Can you put a cord through its nose or pierce its jaw with a hook? Will it keep begging you for mercy? Will it  speak to you with gentle words? Will it make an agreement with you for you to take it as your slave for life? Can you make a pet of it like a bird or put it on a leash for the young women in your house? Will traders barter for it? Will they divide it up among the merchants? Can you fill its hide with harpoons or its head with fishing spears? If you lay a hand on it, you will remember the struggle and never do it again! Any hope of subduing it is false; the mere sight of  it is overpowering." Book of Job, Chapter 41, 1-9 in the Holy Bible (Job is referred to as Ayub in the Holy Koran) (This quotation is recalled in part by the priest in Zvyagintsev's film Leviathan)

All the four Andrei Zvyagintsev feature films—The Return, The Banishment, Elena, and Leviathan  provide an unusual amalgam of family relationships, politics, religion, philosophy, literature, psychology, sociology,  visual metaphors  and music. Each element grips the viewer when recognized in each of the films. Each element provokes inward looking questions in the minds of the viewers. Zvyagintsev is one of the best filmmakers worldwide who consistently make awesome films for those who can appreciate serious cinema—alongside directors such as Terrence Malick (USA), Carlos Reygadas (Mexico), Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey), Paolo Sorrentino (Italy), and Naomi Kawase (Japan).

Each of Zvyagintsev’s four films have deservedly won major accolades at premier film festivals (the Golden Lion at Venice for The Return; the Best Actor award at Cannes for Banishment; the Un Certain Regard section Jury prize at Cannes, Silver Peacock for Best Actress at the Indian International Film Festival in Goa,  and the Grand Prize at the Ghent International festival for Elena;  Best Screenplay award at Cannes, the Golden Peacock for Best Film and the Silver Peacock for Best Actor at the Indian International Film Festival in Goa, and the Best Film at the London Film Festival for Leviathan).

Zvyagintsev's Job is the honest Nikolai (shortened to Kolya in the film) willing
to forgive an erring wife: A Silver-Peacock-winning performance
by Alexei Serebryakov 

At a very elementary level, Leviathan is a tale of an honest man resisting the wiles of a corrupt Mayor of his coastal town to grab the land on which he and his ancestors lived. The honest man Nikolai --shortened to Kolya-- (Alexei  Serebryakov) is on the verge of losing his house when even the courts go against him.  His former friend from his Army days Dimitri—shortened to Dimi--, now a high flying lawyer practicing in Moscow, arrives with powerful connections and documents to checkmate the corrupt Mayor. The tragedy that follows is not far removed from a Biblical character called Job (or Ayub, if you are a Muslim).

When critics like me discover and point out elements of politics and theology in Zvyagitsev’s entire oeuvvre, readers are sceptical if too much is ascribed to a film beyond the obvious narrative tale. In the earlier films of Zvyagintsev, politics and theology were partly hidden behind visual and aural symbols. Many viewers of the first three Zvyagintsev films would have discounted the theological elements unless they were well read in the scriptures and acquainted with the cinema of Andrei Tarkovksy. Both the late Russian maestro Andrei Tarkovsky and  Andrei Zvyagintsev (the latter is in his early fifties)  are intellectuals who have good knowledge of Christian scriptures and use them to enhance the depth of their cinema.  

The title of the film Leviathan comes from two interlinked sources:  the Biblical Book of Job (Chapter 41) and Thomas Hobbes’ political book Leviathan  (published in 1651) on statecraft linking politics and religion. Unlike Zvyagintsev’s preceding three films, where religion and politics remained partly hidden, in Leviathan Zvyagintsev openly discusses both elements. There is a scene in Leviathan where wall portraits of past Russian leaders Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, and Gorbachev are consciously used as targets for rifle shooting during a picnic and even Yeltsin is disparagingly referred in the dialogue.  (Putin is not included here, but a photograph of Putin is discretely on the wall in the Mayor's office, just as Tarkovsky added Trotsky’s photograph on the wall in a brief scene in Mirror.) Religion, too, comes to the fore in Leviathan, as the Book of Job passage is quoted by a priest in the film and the penultimate ironical sequence is a church sermon by a bishop with the villainous mayor and his family listening to it with piety.  Tarkovsky, who could never be bold to openly criticize the Russian politics, would have been delighted to see what Zvyagintsev has achieved in Leviathan. One guesses that Zvyagintsev realized that his political and religious statements through symbols used in his earlier works did not reach out to a wide audience and he had to be more explicit in Leviathan. Even the TV program shown briefly in Leviathan is discussing the Pussy Riot case. Ironically, Leviathan is Russia’s official entry to the 2015 Oscars.

It is therefore relevant to reproduce below  the director Andrei Zvyagintsev’s statement provided at the Cannes film festival for the media on his film Leviathan: 

“When a man feels the tight grip of anxiety in the face of need and uncertainty, when he gets overwhelmed with hazy images of the future, scared for his loved ones, and fearful of death on the prowl, what can he do except give up his freedom and free will, and hand these treasures over willingly to a trustworthy person in exchange for deceptive guarantees of security, social protection, or even of an illusory community?”

 “Thomas Hobbes’ outlook on the state is that of a philosopher on man’s deal with the devil: he sees it as a monster created by man to prevent ‘the war of all against all’, and by the understandable will to achieve security in exchange for freedom, man’s sole true possession.”

 “Just like we are all, from birth, marked by the original sin, we are all born in a ‘state’. The spiritual power of the state over man knows no limit.”

“The arduous alliance between man and the state has been a theme of life in Russia for quite a long time. But if my film is rooted in the Russian land, it is only because I feel no kinship, no genetic link with anything else. Yet I am deeply convinced that, whatever society each and everyone of us lives in, from the most developed to the most archaic, we will all be faced one day with the following alternative: either live as a slave or live as a free man. And if we naively think that there must be a kind of state power that can free us from that choice, we are seriously  mistaken. In the life of every man, there comes a time when one is faced with the system, with the “world”, and must stand up for his sense of justice, his sense of God on Earth.”

“It is still possible today to ask these questions to the audience and to find a tragic hero in our land, a ‘son of God’, a character who has been tragic from time immemorial, and this is precisely the reason why my homeland isn’t lost yet to me, or to those who have made this film.”

The predicament of the character Job of the Bible is not far removed from the pile of misfortunes heaped on a good man Nikolai or Kolya in Leviathan. Zvyagintsev, like Tarkovsky, is very familiar with the Bible and weave elements from it into his films.  Nikolai in Leviathan represents the average good Russian.  

The good working class Kolya is broken like Job in the Bible from all sides
as misfortunes pile up: yet he forgives his erring wife

Co-scriptwriter Oleg Negin worked on the last three Zvyagintsev films including Leviathan. Zvyagintsev and Negin weave in politics and religion with a rare felicity; they bring to mind the collaboration of the Polish Kieslowski and his co-scriptwriter Piesiewicz. However, Zvyagintsev’s collaboration with music composer Philip Glass is limited to Elenaand Leviathan. Philip Glass’ music used in the film was Glass’ composition Akhnaten, the Pharaoh, who practiced monotheism in ancient Egypt. That operatic musical composition  also deals with power and religion, not far removed from the subject of Leviathan. The use of Glass’ music in the two Zvyagintsev films could serve as a master-class for some of the Hollywood’s currently feted directors because Zvyagintsev uses music only when it is essential and relevant and adjusts the volume with care. The rest is diagetic sound on his film soundtracks.  The third major Zvyagintsev collaborator is his cinematographer Mikhail Krichman, who continues to contribute richly to the visual canvas in all the four Zvyagintsev films. While most viewers will recall the fossilized bones of a blue whale in Leviathan, the most enigmatic shot in the film is the shot of a live whale in the distance at a key points\ in the film—the last scene of Kolya’s wife alive in the film as she contemplates the sea and her predicament. What Zvyagintsev and Krichman achieved in Leviathan in the final snowbound sequence was ironically close to the final shots of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Winter Sleep, the Turkish film that competed with Leviathan and won the top prize at the 2014 Cannes film festival. Though both are amazing films, Leviathan, for this critic had more plus points when comparing both. Most importantly, Leviathan was more original in content than the Golden Palm winning Winter Sleep, which was anchored to a Chekov story. Most of all, Zvyagintsev's Leviathan, though referring to Hobbes and the Bible, is extraordinarily brave in showcasing the corruption in contemporary non-Communist Russia. And like Ceylan's Winter Sleep, Leviathan also underscores the plight of the poor when the rich and powerful people, crush their lives. Even the motives behind an apparent good deed to adopt a friend's teenage son is questioned in the film.

Zvyagintsev’s cinema is not the run-of-the-mill cinema. Many crucial scenes of the tale are never shown on screen—he prefers to show the aftermath. The viewer is forced to imagine what could have happened. The fight between Nikolai and Dimitri is never shown; we only see Dimitri’s injured face. The death of Kolya’s wife is never shown; only her dead body is shown.  The evil antagonist forces are described in a reverse quixotic detail when the corrupt Mayor asks Dimitri, the lawyer, if he was baptized, when Dimitri confronts the Mayor with the evidence of his "sins." What a loaded question, and the irony is, who is asking! The Orthodox Bishop asks the corrupt Mayor "We are in God's house. Did you take communion?" and reminds him that both are doing God's work.  One of the final scenes is of the corrupt Mayor’s child looking up at the church’s ceiling after the sermon which includes the statement of the Bishop "Love dwells not in strength but in love". Nothing in Zvyagintsev’s cinema is without considered thought. An intelligent viewer has to pick up the details. And as in Elena, Leviathan too ends with squawking of a crow on the soundtrack, before the colorful and deep music of Philip Glass takes over for the finale.

Kolya's teenaged son Roma mopes over his stepmother's unethical actions: Zvyagintsev's
imagery of  a fossilized "Leviathan" is brought into perspective

Children and boys in particular played major roles in all the four Zvyagintsev feature films. In Elenaand Leviathan, the young boys find alternate entertainment with their friends far away from home.  In Elena,the youngsters fight among themselves; in Leviathan, the youngsters are less boisterous and appear drugged/drunk, no longer fighting among themselves to achieve something. The boys gather in a broken-down unused church.  Zvyagintsev is evidently making a time-based sociological statement on Russian youth and the Russian Orthodox Church.  Young-boys-revolting-against-their-parents is a recurring theme for Zvyagintsev. InLeviathan, the son Roma is born from a first marriage of Kolya and his anger against his stepmother is understandable. When Dimitri is beaten up and threatened to be shot to death by the Mayor, Dimitri is asked if he has any thoughts for his daughter we never see. What Zvyagintsev shows us instead is a little girl on the train Dimitri is taking back to Moscow, possibly reminding Dimitri of his own.

In Leviathan, the wife is ambiguous embodying both the good and the evil, whom the
good Kolya forgives 

Wives in all Zvyagintsev’s films are interesting to study: some good, some evil, and some ambiguous in their actions. In Leviathan, the wife is ambiguous—we can only guess why she acted the way she did. She strays from the path of a good wife but chooses to return to her husband. In The Return, the viewer is never told why the father was absent for years. Zvyagintsev apparently believes that the jigsaw puzzles (a motif used in The Banishment) he presents in his films in varied ways can be completed by an intelligent viewer. He does not believe in spoon feeding his audience. Lilya, thw wife in Leviathan, asks her lover Dimitri "Do you believe in God?" Evidently she does.

To end this review, it might be more than relevant to again quote from Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan:  “He that is taken and put into prison or chains is not conquered, though overcome; for he is still an enemy.” The enigmatic shot of the live whale in the distance towards the final minutes of the film exemplifies this last Hobbes quote.


P.S. All the three preceding Zvyagintsev films--The Return, The Banishment, and Elena--have been reviewed in detail earlier on this blog. Leviathan is the best of the 10 top films of 2014 for the author and is one of top 15 films of the 21st Century for him. It has subsequently won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film. Mr Zvyagintsev is also one of the author's 15 favourite active filmmakers.

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170. The late Chilean maestro Raúl Ruiz' Portuguese film “Mistérios de Lisboa” (Mysteries of Lisbon) (2010): A brilliant cinematic treatise on memories

  

     “My films are not fiction films but about fiction”---Raúl Ruiz

     “In today’s cinema there is too much light, it is time to return to the shadows”--- Raúl Ruiz in his book ‘Poetics of Cinema’

      “I chose to take refuge in the dramaturgy of dreams” ---Raúl Ruiz

These three quotations of Raúl Ruiz are important starting points for analyzing the penultimate cinematic work of the talented Raúl Ruiz-- Mysteries of Lisbon. Ruiz had already made over a hundred movies and he made Mysteries of Lisbon knowing well that his days were numbered after being diagnosed with a life threatening liver tumour.  He completed the film while recovering from a successful liver transplant, only to die soon after, ironically from a lung infection.  While one can sense the brilliance of this cinematic work, it is difficult to distinguish what credit ought to be attributed  to the Portuguese novelist Camilo Castillo Branco, who wrote the book in 1854, without having read the work (the English translation of the book is not easily available), and what needs to be actually credited to director Ruiz.  Despite that conundrum, there are obvious pointers to what was definitely the contribution of Ruiz. The following analysis pertains to those aspects of the movie that are predominantly attributable to Ruiz alone.

Young Joao looks at his 'mother' in the company of Father Dinis

Father Dinis and Joao's "mother" (Maria Joao Bastos) after she becomes a nun

Mysteries of Lisbonis a 272 minute film unfolding a convoluted and yet interesting tale narrated by a tormented epileptic orphan Joao under the care of a priest named Father Dinis and some nuns. The tale is mostly set in the early 19^thcentury Portugal. Priests and nuns there often have led colourful lives, preceding their final vocation. For author Branco, who was by all accounts a religious person, the Church in Portugal at that time provided sanctuary for orphans, widows, and those in trouble. Either Branco or Ruiz, or both together, use the puppet paper theatre as a prop and as a narrative punctuation device for the epileptic Joao to imagine vivid tales of grown-ups in aristocratic Portugal, who are all somehow connected to Father Dinis (Adriano Luz) and a lady who claims to be his mother, who has gifted him the puppet paper theatre while recovering from an epileptic attack. It is thus not surprising that characters in Joao ‘s world are closely interrelated.  (For example, Joao’s “mother’s“  husband’s mistress turns up later in the tale as the wife of Albert de Magalhaes, another important person in Joao’s life story.) In that process, Branco examines the social importance Portuguese gave to the firstborn in a family, how paternal titles made or unmade individuals, how fathers wreck the love lives of their daughters for personal benefit only to rue their actions much later in life and the lack of fidelity of abusive husbands.

Any approach to appreciate Ruiz’ cinema cannot dissociate it from  Ruiz’ life--a Chilean director who chose self-exile in the early Seventies following the US-supported coup that removed the democratically elected Salvador Allende while installing the Chilean armed forces Commander Augusto Pinochet in power instead.  Today, the world knows the late Pinochet was implicated on over 300 charges of human rights violations. The multi-talented Ruiz fled from Chile under Pinochet hopping from one European country to another, frenetically writing plays and books and making over a 100 films. Each of these works reflected his distaste for the armed forces that took power in Chile and his wistful love of Chile, a country he could not return to work as before.  Even though Mysteries of Lisbon is predominantly set in Portugal and France, there is a sequence where the ‘orphan’ Joao ‘appears’ to end his last days in Brazil, not far from Ruiz’ homeland Chile. Ruiz forever dreamt of returning to Chile. As per his wishes, Ruiz was buried in Chile. Such indirect references abound in each work of Ruiz. While Mysteries of Lisbon is essentially about dreams, the final sequence reiterates the importance of dreams.  At the end, the colours of the screen fade to merge with empty white light. The film of shadows comes to a close. Ruiz transcends Branco’s words using cinematic effects.

Shadows and perspectives: Ruiz upstaging Branco
(the shadow is of  Father Dinis) 

A casual viewer of Mysteries of Lisbon would not associate the work with surrealism and magic realism more obvious in Ruiz’ works, such as, That Day (Ce jour-la) (2003) and Three Crowns of the Sailor (1983). Early into Mysteries of Lisbon, there is a short sequence where another kid of Joao’s age leads Joao to a spot behind the hedges of the orphanage where some men have been hanged in public view. The kid claims that one of the hanged men is a thief and his father. The viewer can see the hanged individuals. Joao is crestfallen as he has been accused of being the son of a thief and confused but does not respond as one would expect.  Father Dinis, who accompanies young Joao and the kid who is showing Joao the hanging, is merely studying Joao’s face  rather than the hanged persons, and he leads Joao back impassively after Joao has taken in the scene of  the hanged individuals. Where is the surrealism or magic realism?  Could this be a real hanging, so close to the orphanage? If it was real, why is Father Dinis not appearing to be concerned with the hanging? Why is he only concerned about Joao? Why do doors open and close by themselves in the film? Why do certain paintings come alive for Joao? Why does an important transaction between two friends take place in a room with two massive religious frescoes on the walls and just two chairs, devoid of any other furniture? Why does Ruiz employ two Joaos during the duel scene, one committing suicide after pensively walking in the background, and another active Joao who partook in the duel going on to live another day with honour? The answers to each of those questions are “mysteries” that contribute to the richness of the film and help the viewer to unravel Ruiz’ complex movie Mysteries of Lisbon with its unusual ending.

Towards the end of Ruiz’ Mysteries of Lisbon, the grown up Joao encounters Elisa de Montfort (Clotilde Hesme). She pauses in her walk and comes to Joao to state, “You lacked courage, my dear.”  This is a sequence which could have been typical of Ruiz’ cinema referring to Ruiz’ political courage or it could also have been Branco’s idea. While the lack of identity is a problem for Joao the orphan, the lack of citizenship of Ruiz is perhaps one reason for the director to choose to make this film, which mirrors his own life.

Riches to rags: The teenaged Joao encountering a once proud Marquis
reduced to beggary searching for the 'mausoleum' of his daughter

Throughout Mysteries of Lisbon, the peripheral non-aristocratic characters listen to conversations of the aristocrats and seniors openly. Servants not just bring in chairs and messages for their masters, but serve as silent and sometimes expressive external commentators within the film.  Even in an abbey, junior priests eavesdrop on the colourful tales of senior priests. Money transforms people of lesser social stature into aristocrats in Mysteries of Lisbon and a proud Marquise is transformed into a blind beggar in the course of the tale.

Torn shreds of an unread letter captured by the camera
placed below the resting pieces

The cinematography (André Szankowski ) of the film is stunning. The camera teases the viewer. The camera goes under a glass table to capture the torn pieces of a letter that is never read. Stories within a story deliberately show individuals with unreal beards and make-up, while the main story in contrast never compromises on quality. Dreams within dreams are treated differently by Ruiz.

Using the paper puppet theater to punctuate Acts

Mysteries of Lisbon is essentially a brilliant treatise on memories. At the end of the movie the viewer is shown a tired and graying Joao who needs a walking stick, but no taller than a teenager, narrating his tale to a scribe. He says “I was 15 years old and I didn’t know who I was. I went on no outings or holidays. I received no presents. I don’t know how long it has been since I lost consciousness. And the moment I opened my eyes. I thought I dreamt it all“, while lying down on a cot broad enough for a kid. Doors close by themselves and the screen brightens gradually to be covered by pure white light.

This film won the San Sebastian Festival Silver Seashell for Best Director and the Sao Paulo Festival Critics award for best film. The film was carved out by Ruiz from several episodes he made for the Portuguese TV.

P.S. Mysteries of Lisbon is the first film of Ruiz to be included in the author’s top 100 films. It was also one of the top 10 films of 2011 for the author and one of the 15 top films of the 21st Century for the author.  Ruiz’ earlier work, That Day (Ce jour-la) (2003) was reviewed earlier on this blog. Ruiz’ last film that he completed before his death, La Noche de Efrente (Night Across the Street) (2012), was one of the top 10 films of 2012 for the author.

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