245. Swedish director Roy Andersson’s sixth feature film “Om det oändliga”(About Endlessness) (2019): Providing vignettes of modern life invoking memories, theatre, cinema, painting, religion and music to force us to look inwards and outwards, to the past, the present and the future

About Endlessness won the 2019 Best Director award at the Venice film festival and the European film award for the best visual effects supervisor. It is a film that offers value for a contemplative viewer rather than a casual one. It is not a film likely to be on the best film lists of most film reviewers. All his films are based on his own original screenplays, with a distinct style of his own.

Andersson’s films offer what a Scorsese or a Tarantino film almost never offers. He creates scenes often using a building structure to underscore ideas. In a typical Andersson film, you will have characters outside a building looking at people inside it and vice versa. His films have individuals who deliver monologues at the camera (the viewer), while others, bar a few, in earshot seem to ignore the spoken words as though they are in a tableaux. These are obvious touches of the theatre of the absurd.  Sometimes in Andersson’s films (e.g., You the Living) buildings seem to move as a moving train would!

A man exclaims "It is fantastic!" when most others don't react.
In the foreground, is a dentist,(still wearing his medical overcoat)
who can't treat his patient scared of needles.

In a bar, where all customers are nursing their drinks silently, one customer exclaims “It is fantastic!” No one responds. Then the bartender asks, “What is?”  The customer looks at the snowfall outside the bar and exclaims, “Everything!” None of the other customers nursing their drinks silently with no evident sign of happiness seem to be lifted up by the snowfall outside. The elements and moods outside and inside a building are often contrasted in an Andersson film, which makes him different and yet interesting. He seems to love provoking the mind of a lazy, laidback film viewer.

In a brilliant sequence, a well-mannered waiter in restaurant patiently waits at a table occupied by a single gentleman who seems engrossed reading a newspaper. He is aware of the patient waiter who is waiting silently to serve his wine after he has approved it.  When the gentleman finally takes his eyes off the newspaper and does approve of the wine, the waiter dutifully pours the wine but does not stop pouring it even after the glass is full and the wine spills on the spotless white tablecloth much to the surprise of the gentleman (and of the viewer). The sadness, the irony, and the inner viewpoints and the unusual behaviour of the two individuals are in stark contrast with the world’s happiest populations that reside in Scandinavia, of which Sweden is a nation that comprise it.

A surrealistic scene from the film...

..the connection to Marc Chagall's famous painting
"Over the town"

Andersson’s visuals have references within and without the film that can escape a casual viewer. In About Endlessness, there is the poster sequence of a man and woman flying (like an anti-hero version of Superman without a cape holding his lover) over a bombed city (Dresden? Cologne?).  Only art enthusiasts will pick up the connection of the visual with Marc Chagall’s famous painting “Over the town.”  Are the flying man and woman, characters from the film About Endlessness? Perhaps they are. Is the reference to bombed city connected to the vignette in About Endlessness showing Hitler in his last days in the bunker with his chosen Nazi army commanders barely in a state to acknowledge him with the mandatory “Hail Hitler/Sieg Heil”? Perhaps it is. Perhaps it is also connected to the visuals of a defeated column of soldiers marching dejectedly towards their prison camp.

One of the fascinating facets of Andersson’s script is that each individual in his films might appear unconnected to the rest of the characters. Yet they are connected (appearing in later sequences with identifiable clothes) and it is for the alert viewer to connect the dots and figure out Andersson’s cinematic crossword puzzle.

A woman, who loves champagne, seems
less interested in her lover than her drink

In About Endlessness, director/scriptwriter Andersson introduces a new element to his unique brand of cinema—a chorus-like invisible female narrator who keeps saying “I saw a man..,” “I saw a woman..,” “I saw a young man...” etc. to demarcate different characters/segments in the film

The variety of subjects relating to love in any Andersson film is staggering. There are lovers, young and old.  A woman loves champagne more than her male lover doting over her. A young woman tries to attract a young man “who had not found love.”  A father kills his daughter because she has brought dishonour to his family. A set of parents with flowers seek out their progeny’s grave.

A priest who has lost his faith contemplates his predicament,
as his congregation waits for the Holy Communion

A man carries his allegorical cross (as Jesus did) in modern Sweden.

There are quaint, surreal situations in Andersson’s cinema. A prominent one in About Endlessness is of a priest who has lost his faith in his religion and seeks psychiatric help. But he refrains from quitting his vocation stating “...but it is my livelihood!” Much of Andersson’s films deal with financial stress. What does such a priest do? He gets drunk imbibing the wine he is supposed to serve to his religious flock as blessed wine in Holy Communion! Later in the film, the priest is shown carrying his wooden cross against his will re-enacting Jesus Christ path to crucifixion in modern Sweden, while some watch emotionless.

A grown-up man complains that his childhood classmate refuses to acknowledge him on the street. Has one man moved on in life with social contentment while the other has not and bogged down in pleasant age-old memories? An old couple stare at their Swedish city from a high point and comment about September, possibly the best part of the year.

The final sequence in each Andersson film is carefully chosen to reinforce the central idea of the entire film. In About Endlessness, a man drives his car that suddenly breaks down in the middle of nowhere. It does capture the human being’s lack of control on what happens to them and the quixotic attempts to salvage the situation. And the viewer gets to look at the man’s predicament from the sky (recall the final shot of Arthur Penn’s Night Moves). It is unfortunate that About Endlessness lost the Golden Lion award to Joker.

P.S.  About Endlessness is definitely a film that makes you think and a remarkable film of 2019 and deserving of the Venice Film Festival award bestowed on it. A very useful and informative video essay on Andersson's five films made before About Endlessness follows the trailer.

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237. Italian maestro Ermanno Olmi’s feature film “La Leggenda del Santo Bevitore” (The Legend of the Holy Drinker) (1988) (France/Italy): One of the finest examples of magic realism in film history and the importance of making the right choices of appropriate background music

Ermanno Olmi (1931-2018) is not often discussed on the same plane as Orson Welles or Andrei Tarkovsky. Yet they have certain similarities in their body of film output.  Olmi made 20 feature films and bagged over 50 international awards. His best work The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978) is as awesome as Welles’ masterpiece Citizen Kane (1941). Olmi’s film was based on his own original script, which he directed, cinematographed, edited and for which he personally picked an array of non-professional actors. For Citizen Kane, Welles had co-written an original script with Herman Mankiewicz, directed, produced, acted in the main role, and chosen his own cast of professional actors (most of them making their film debuts) and crew.  Olmi’s film won the Golden Palm at the Cannes film festival for the best feature film; Welles won a solitary Oscar for the co-written original screenplay. Olmi and Tarkovsky have common streaks, too; both are evidently theistic, Olmi a fervent Roman Catholic, Tarkovsky a resolute adherent of the Russian Orthodox Church. Both Olmi and Tarkovsky chose their music for their works with considerable deliberation, a fact missed out by many of their respective fans.

The scruffy vagrant Andreas (Rutger Hauer), living under a bridge

A stranger and benefactor (Anthony Quale) offers Andreas a "loan"

Olmi’s 12^th feature film The Legend of the Holy Drinker,made 10 years after The Tree of Wooden Clogs, won the Golden Lion award for the best feature film and another minor award at the Venice film festival.  In this film, Olmi made a couple of departures from his usual trademark style—he chose to mix professional actors (Dutch actor Rutger Hauer of Blade Runner fame, British actor Anthony Quayle of Anne of the Thousand Days fame, Dominique Pinon of Delicatessen fame) with non-professional actors (the enigmatic Sophie Segalen who plays the Polish woman Karoline, and Jean-Maurice Chanet, who plays the Polish boxer) who never returned to the world of film. Olmi made another significant departure in this film: he chose to adapt a novel written by Austrian writer Joseph Roth, instead of writing his own original script as in most of his other films. Olmi co-wrote the adapted script based on Roth’s book with Tullio Kezich (who had earlier played the role of the psychologist in Olmi’s earlier film Il Posto).

Andreas can look somewhat distinguished when he can afford a shave
(and has a roving eye for women)

Sophie Segalen, who plays Karoline, a nonprofessional actress picked by
Olmi, who never returned to the world of film 

The tale is deceptively simple.  Andreas is an alcoholic, unemployed tramp with a Polish passport, living homeless under bridges along the river Seine in a rainy Paris. His passport bears a stamp stating that he has been expelled from France. For a vagrant, he is unusual. He wears a necktie and believes in looking respectable when he can afford a shave. His looks and demeanor indicate that he is a “gentleman” tramp, which is possibly why men and women trust him and are only eager to help him.  He is reluctant to accept money (a sum of 200 French Francs) from a stranger as a gift but agrees to take it when the generous stranger states that he could consider it as a loan. Andreas is resolute in his intent to repay the loan, when possible, not to the stranger but to the vicar of the church of St Therese of Lisieux in Paris, who the stranger had indicated will know what to do with the returned sum.

Andreas is not overtly religious—merely a gentleman tramp, with a roving eye, but always ready to help a friend in need.  As the film progresses, we learn that in school, Andreas would let his classmates, who were not as bright as he was, copy his answers in the examinations.  The film, if you examine it closely, is less about religion and more about being morally upright and being good to those less fortunate. The film propounds magic realism to underscore to the viewer that good deeds will eventually lead to amazing blessings from unexpected sources.  The film suggests in a fabulous magical sequence of epiphany involving a poor elderly couple who magically transform to Andreas’  recollection of his parents—a sublime sequence indicating that Andreas is indebted to his parents for inculcating fine traits in him that have held him in good stead. It is a sequence that has so many similarities with Tarkovsky’s Mirror where magic realism is employed to recall the role of parents and in his later work Stalker where a girl observes a glass on a table moving on its own accord, aided by external reverberations.

Repaying the loan of 200 French francs, finally as agreed

Olmi and Kezich crafted the script of The Legend of the Holy Drinker where the spoken words are minimal. The tale is communicated with visuals (read cinematography of Dante Spinotti), editing, and musical score (the last of which is lost on most viewers because the other two elements dominate).  While other directors and scriptwriters would have wasted spoken lines on the inconsequential sexual encounters of Andreas, Olmi and Kezich reduce them in one sequence to mere furtive glances and the closing of curtains, without a word spoken.  When words are spoken in The Legend of the Holy Drinker  it is to indicate the integrity of the tramp:  when a stranger offers him a drink at a bar and a job, his acceptance is sealed with another round of drinks that the gentleman tramp insists on paying for with the meager possession of coins with him. That the tramp was not religious is indirectly inferred by a cryptic statement he makes to an old friend from Poland “These last few days I have started believing in miracles.” He should. He buys a wallet, and finds money in it.  Then a policeman returns him his wallet, with more money in it. Andreas believes in returning his “loaned” money several times in the film, but is distracted near the church each time by extraneous interventions.  He wishes to return the loan, but the goodness and grace that embody every little action of his seem to prevent his fervent desire to repay the loan. One can assume the connection between gracious actions and unexpected rewards are from Roth’s book.  

The reaction of Andreas on meeting "Therese" at the
restaurant near the Church where he has to repay the loan

Olmi’s distinct contributions are the visual complements of the cinematic craft at key points in the film: the smiling “Therese” in her third appearance in the film approving the repayment of his loan shown through a door slightly ajar edited into the film—a private communication between the two, another epiphany.

Olmi chose three pieces of music written by Stravinsky—not his famous Rites of Spring. The three pieces are Divertimento, Symphony in C, and Sinfonia di Salvi per Coro—Salmo 40 or Psalm 40. The last of the three Stravinsky pieces is very significant. Psalm 40 in the Bible is King David’s song of praise “I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry.  He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire. He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand….” 

Tarkovsky’s choice of music in Solaris—Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in F minor and The Little Organ Book: Ich ruf zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ—are conscious decisions, too, to complement the visuals in specific sequences. That the film The Legend of the Holy Drinker won the Golden Lion at Venice from a jury headed by Sergio Leone whose films used music so eloquently is possibly a nod to Olmi’s musical selection in the film that Leone could perceive.

Olmi’s films always deal with deprived sections of society.  More so Olmi’s protagonists (e.g., Il Posto, The Tree of Wooden Clogs) are far removed from the reflecting, philosophizing intellectuals we encounter in Tarkovsky’s films—here they are honest, hardworking, principled individuals, often losing out to the machinations of the rich or unprincipled folks, akin to scenarios that we encounter in the films of Ken Loach and his scriptwriter Paul Laverty.  

A painting? Cinematography of Dante Spinotti,
capturing light and shadows

Olmi chose to work with Italian cinematographer Dante Spinotti for the first time in The Legend of the Holy Drinker and later in yet another film The Secret of the Old Woods (1993). Spinotti had a similar effect on Hollywood director Michael Mann, who was so impressed with his work on Manhunter that their collaboration extended to other more impressive films: Heat, The Last of the Mohicans, The Insider, and Public Enemies.

Few cineastes might be aware that The Legend of the Holy Drinker won several national awards in Italy for direction, cinematography and editing while competing with Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso. The Olmi film is a gem that can be appreciated beyond Joseph Roth’s tale.  It is a rare example where tools of filmmaking—direction, appropriate casting, music, cinematography and editing--prove their subtle prowess.

P.S. The Legend of the Holy Drinker is one of the author’s top 100 films. It won the best Golden Lion award for the best film and the OCIC award at the 1988 Venice Film Festival. Actor Rutger Hauer won the Best Actor award for this film at the Seattle International Film Festival. Several films mentioned in the above review, the Olmi film The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978) and Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972)and Mirror (1975) have been reviewed earlier on this blog. (Click on the name of the film in this post-script for a quick access to those reviews on this blog.)

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235. US director and scriptwriter Paul Schrader’s film “First Reformed” (2017) (USA): Schrader’s best work, drawing on Bergman’s “Winter Light” and Tarkovsky’s “Sacrifice”

“Wisdom is holding two contradictory truths in our mind, simultaneously.  Hope and despair.  A life without despair is a life without hope. Holding these two ideas in our head is life itself.”  

“How easily they talk about prayer, those who have never really prayed.” 

----- thoughts written in the diary of Rev Ernest Toller, via “voice over”,  in First Reformed, scripted by Paul Schrader

Any evaluation of the film First Reformed would be considerably enhanced by some knowledge about the American Trappist monk, theologian, social activist Thomas Merton (1915-68), who had interacted with Buddhist monks, and  studied Hinduism, Jainism, Sufism, Sikhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and published his thoughts in his bestselling  autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain and other works. In the film First Reformed, the principal figure Rev Ernest Toller (Ethan Hawke) writes a diary (read by "voice over") on his thoughts just as Merton had put his thoughts on paper that eventually became a best seller. Director and original scriptwriter Paul Schrader makes the connection visually by showing us the stack of Merton’s published works in Toller’s room and at least two references to Merton verbally in the film.

Rev Toller (Ethan Hawke)  delivers his sermon in his church

The writing of the diary and the “voice-over” reading of the written lines are not just a connection to Merton’s and Tolller’s habits in Schrader’s film but an important device employed in the script that becomes critical to unravel the ending of the film.  At the end of the film, there is no voice over, there is silence.

Toller and Esther (Victoria Hill): Esther expresses
concern for Toller's health

Schrader’s script revolves around Rev Toller, the pastor of a historical church that once had served as a refuge for runaway slaves in USA. Toller was once married and had a son he lost in the Iraq war as a US soldier. Toller himself served in the US army as a chaplain, and had encouraged his son to enlist. The eventual death of his son wrecked his marriage.  Early in Schrader’s film there is a shot of the near empty church with one bespectacled lady, Esther (a very convincing Victoria Hill), sitting prominently in one of the nearly empty benches. Any viewer of Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light(1963) will recall Rev Tomas looking at the bespectacled Marta in that film in a similar situation. As First Reformed progresses, the viewer learns that Esther is in love with Toller with fervent hopes that he would marry her just as Marta and Tomas in the Swedish classic. Much later in the film First Reformed, Toller is introduced to a troubled environmental activist Michael who wishes to abort his wife’s foetus because he does not want his child to be born in a polluted world run on business interests. Michael’s worries are not far removed from those of Jonas’ (Max von Sydow) worries of China developing nuclear capability that he confides with Rev Tomas in Winter Light. Both films’ priests are concerned with Christianity they preach and forced to look at external realities.

After those common threads, Schrader’s script grows on its own merit—the development of the thinly attended First Reformed Church of Toller under the umbrage of the Abundant Life Church with Rev Joel Jeffers (Cedric the Entertainer a.k.a.  Cedric Kyles) who functions as a big brother senior priest towards Toller—mainly because Jeffers’s church is flushed with “abundant” money and members that include a successful businessman who own industries that pollute the countryside. The troubled Michael commits suicide, while Toller realizes that the Abundant Life Church is run by the very forces that the late Michael had hated and feared.  This Abundant Life Church in turn supports the First Reformed Church of Toller.

Toller and Mary (Amanda Seyfried): Mary wants to resist aborting her foetus,
an action her husband Michael wants her to take

Rev Toller, the viewer soon realizes, is suffering from a serious ailment (he is urinating blood) but continues to consume significant quantities of liquor in private. He is also consulting a doctor. Toller’s church member and admirer Esther too is concerned about his health but he rebukes her for it. Jeffers too is worried that Toller is spending too much time in the figurative Garden (the biblical Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prayed to God to remove the cup of suffering/wrath if He willed it).  Toller simultaneously gets psychologically and emotionally closer to the pregnant  Mary (Amanda Seyfried), the wife of the late Michael. Mary plans to leave town to be with her sister. In spite of an Andrei Tarkovsky-like levitation sequence [The Sacrifice (1986); The Mirror(1975)] there is no suggestion of a carnal relationship between the two.

Toller and Mary: at the funeral of  Michael

Schrader’s script emphasizes that First Reformed is less about Mary, Michael, Esther or Jeffers—it is more about Toller and his diary, which is essentially spiritual. Toller knows that he is about to die from a serious medical condition. Influenced by Michael’s suicide, Toller is tempted to blow up the enemy of Michael with Michael’s own devices but changes his mind when he sees Mary with her unborn child in his church. What is debatable is whether Toller is more concerned about the unborn child of Michael that he had wanted to be born into this world earlier in the film or his platonic affection for Mary suffering from depression in her recent widowhood. Perhaps, both.

Toller wears his "crown of thorns"

Where Schrader scores most is his diligent effort to weave in biblical quotations that reflect Merton’s and Toller’s views into the script. The loaded final conversation between Jeffers and Toller is punctuated with such quotes. While one wondered why Schrader showed Toller picking up the barbed wire fencing near the church’s graveyard which had killed a hare, the ultimate use of the barbed wire in the film is visually reminiscent of the crown of thorns worn by Jesus.

Schrader’s true winner is the ending which a keen viewer would not accept at face value.  There are several clues to decipher what actually happened: the replacement of the alcohol in the glass with a chemical liquid, Toller changing into a white cassock (throughout the film he wears a black one) with fresh blood stains, the embrace of Mary who does not seem to be affected by the barbed wire under the cassock, and the sudden silence. The film’s initial sequence outside the church is also silent. Toller's final action can be connected to the initial words scribbled in his diary: A life without despair is a life without hope.

First Reformed has won 55 awards already.

P.S. Thomas Merton was in Darjeeling in the late 60s and early 70s interacting with Buddhist monks and Jesuits, the very years this author was a student there in a Jesuit high school. What a coincidence!  Could we have passed each other on some street or corridor? Bergman’s Winter Lightis one of the author’s top 10 films ever made and has been reviewed on this blog. Tarkovsky’s The Mirror has also been reviewed in detail on this blog. (Click on the names of the films in this postscript to access the reviews)

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226. Italian/US director Andrea Pallaoro’s film “Hannah” (2017) (Italy/France/Belgium): A film with minimal spoken words and yet providing a subtle, complex and visually informative narrative, aided by an award-winning performance, intelligently captured by the camera

Hannah is the second film of Italian director Andrea Pallaoro—and, according to him, it is the second film of a trilogy of films he is making which appear to be having a common  thread of  a woman  internally reassessing her relationship to her family members over time.  One would often expect a female director to grapple with such subjects but here is a male director getting inside the female mind.  All three films in the trilogy are original scripts, all co-scripted  by him and his friend Orlando Tirado, a team that has worked not only on the trilogy but also on an early short film called Wunderkammer (2008) again on that very theme.

His debut film and the first of the trilogy was Medeas (2013) which won him awards at Venice, Tbilisi, Marrakesh, Nashville, and Palm Spring international film festivals.  His cinematographer Canadian/American Chayse Irvin won the prestigious Cameraimage cinematography prize and a Special Jury prize at the Nashville film festival for his contribution in Medeas. Pallaoro’s direction of Colombian actress Catalina Sandino Moreno won her an acting award at Nashville. The third film has the title Monica and is under production.

Hannah (Rampling) alone and sad riding a public bus,
reflecting on her predicament

With an interesting recognition of his debut feature film Medeas, it is not surprising that Pallaoro’s second feature film Hannah almost replicates some of the remarkable achievements of his debut film.  Hannah’s lead actress Charlotte Rampling won the deserving Best Actress Award at the Venice film festival. Once again, cinematographer Canadian/American Chayse Irvin won an award for his work in another Pallaoro film, this time a Silver Hugo for Hannah from the Chicago film festival.  The citation for that honor is very appropriate and insightful and reads as follows:

"Hannah tells the story of a very guarded woman and is itself a guarded film, refusing to spell out the motives or contexts behind a lonely woman's behavior. The images, then, must convey feelings and ideas that the screenplay and character will not. Through meticulous composition, unexpected framing, and a finely calibrated color palette, they do just that."

The color captured by cinematographer Irvin,
for a shot where Hannah is briefly recalling her good times

Bleak, muted colours for an important sequence as Hannah walks to throw
an important incriminating item in the garbage, when apartments
appear to suggest prison cells 

The team of Andrea Pallaoro, Orlando Tirado and Chayse Irvin obviously constitute a talented trio and they are getting well-deserved international recognition. (That Hannah has got a low IMDB user rating is arguably not a fair indicator of its innate quality as good cinema.)

Hannah views a beached whale,
a metaphor of her own life at this juncture

The worth of Hannah as a mature work of cinema is apparent in its ability to unspool its tale by leaving bits and pieces of visuals (sometimes as understated reflected images) and few spoken words (sometimes of people you never see but only hear) peppered across the film. An aging husband is preparing to be incarcerated in a prison for unstated crimes, leaving behind a devoted and elderly wife, in an apartment where their only other companion is a pet dog.

The obvious questions for many viewers would be what was the crime that led to the prison sentence of an old and seemingly affable man?  Why are the director/ scriptwriters not revealing it up-front for the viewers? Don’t the old couple have any progeny? When they do not speak much or show emotions, what are they thinking?

Pallaoro’s style is very close to Ingmar Bergman’s, with one major difference.  While Bergman would have tended to give considerable emphasis on spoken words in the screenplay, Pallaoro’s and Tirado’s style uses minimal spoken words and emphasizes communication through body language, visual clues, reaction of the title character to strangers and children (such as  Hannah’s sudden decision to stop swimming when children enter the public pool). Both directors use theatre as a secondary element in their film. Theatre rehearsals and mime are important in Pallaoro’s film as well as it is in many Bergman films.

Hannah (Rampling) breaks down in the closet toilet reprising
Bibi Andersson in Bergman's The Touch (1971) 

Hannah is like a mystery film, say an Agatha Christie detective tale, where clues are subtly revealed to the viewer without much dialogue. The viewer is forced to become the detective connecting the dots—mostly visual and a few spoken lines, often by characters that occupy only  fragments of screen time.  An astute viewer will be able to figure out the crime of Hannah’s husband without it being spoken. The viewer learns the aged couple do have a son and grandson.  The grandson wants to meet his grandmother but the son forbids that. The viewer has to figure out the reason by picking up the clues provided in the film. The viewer has to figure out why Hannah does not have any friends or why the film begins with a scream. There have been major films that ended with an anguished scream (Skolimowski’s 1978 film The Shout and Lumet’s 1964 film The Pawnbroker) but Hannah reverses the effect, introducing the viewer to the scream followed a rather quiet film in contrast to it. The scream, of course, is pivotal to understanding the film as is the long purposeful walk towards the end recalling the walk of Eddie Constantine in Godard’s Alphaville. The walk and the end of the walk state more than what Bergman would have achieved with long conversations. That’s the power of Hannah, the film.

On trains and buses, Hannah witnesses cameos of couples who are breaking up:
in one, the female openly accuses the male of only having interest in sex;
a reflection of what Hannah could have been in the past

If there is one film that Hannah could remind you of, it would be the 1971 French film director Pierre Granier-Deferre’s The Chat, another film about an elderly couple (played by Simone Signoret and Jean Gabin) where they hardly speak to each other in their small apartment they share with their cat. (In Hannah, by contrast it’s a dog,)

Hannah's only friend her pet dog--which she gives away to new owners.
Human friendship has been lost, possibly because of her past inactions

When the actors don’t speak much, the acting capabilities are naturally pronounced to the eye. In Hannah, Charlotte Rampling is awesome from the seminal scream captured in close-up to the final silent shot in the metro taken appropriately in a long shot. Her body language speaks a thousand words. Ms Rampling’s works on screen are varied but always stunning. Cavani’s The Night Porter, Visconti’s The Damned, Ozon’s The Swimming Pool, Andrew Haigh’s 45 years are unforgettable films considerably due to her contributions. Age certainly does not wither her, picking up best actress awards from Berlin and Venice within a couple of years, touching the grand age of 70. The scream in Hannah would have won her an award in most festivals.

Hannah is very European in style. While the film is likely to be remembered for Ms Rampling’s performance, the film belongs to the trio of Pallaoro, Tirado and Irvin. Watch out for them; they are indeed talented.

P.S. Pierre Granier-Deferre’s French film The Cat  (1971) discussed in the above review has been reviewed in detail earlier on this blog. That film won the Best Actor and Best Actress awards at the Berlin Film Festival, just as Rampling won for Hannah at the Venice film festival.

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206. Russian director Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky’s film “Belye nochi pochtalona Alekseya Triyapitsyna ” (The Postman’s White Nights)(2014) (Russia): An amazing, profound elegy reconciling one to the fact that good and evil coexist in Russia, then and now

“Where does this music come from? From the heavens or from the ground? Now it’s stopped.”

--- A quote from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, used as the end quote for The Postman’s White Nights

Any serious Konchalovsky film viewer will recall that the end-quotes of his films, when used, are very important to put the tale one just viewed in its intended perspective.  He did use it with aplomb in Runaway Train (a quote from Shakespeare’s Richard III) and Shy People (a quote from Revelations in the Bible). What is the music he is referring to? It would be too simplistic to consider it to be the music of the film’s composer Eduard Artemev, the talented composer of Tarkovsky’s three monumental works—Solaris, Stalker and Mirror, and the important Russian sci-fi film Dr Ivan’s Silence. The music is most likely to be a metaphor for the waves of good and evil forces that an average Russian encounters in life and learns to live with over time.

The real postman Aleksey Triyapitsyn "acts" as himself--his army clothes
indicate his status of a paid government employee

Now, Andrei Konchalovsky’s career can easily be divided into three distinct phases: pre-Hollywood work in former USSR, some with classmate Andrei Tarkovsky (The Steamroller and the Violin, Ivan’s Childhood, Andrei Rublyev) and some alone; his Hollywood phase (which included Runaway Train, Maria’s Lovers and Shy People); and the recent post Hollywood phase in Russia working with the obviously unusually talented co-scriptwriter Elena Kiseleva. The Postman’s White Nights marks the beginning of this exciting new phase in Konchalovsky’s career when he begins his collaboration with co-scriptwriter Elena Kiseleva. His second film with Kiseleva was Paradise (2016). He is currently working on a third film with Kiseleva, tentatively titled Il peccato. This critic could see parallels in this fascinating collaboration with that of the late Polish maestro Krzysztof Kieślowski’s collaboration with co-scriptwriter Krzysztof Piesiewicz, towards the evening of his respective career that resulted in his masterpieces Dekalog, The Three Colourstrilogy, and The Double Life of Veronique.

The Postman’s White Nights is one of the finest works in recent years from Russia that can rub shoulders with the cinematic gems of Andrei Zvyagintsev. The depth of the film can be lost on a casual viewer while it can offer profound commentary on Russia for the mature viewer.

The rural Russian folk smoke endlessly, drink tea and vodka, and die often alone

What did Konchalovsky and Kiseleva do in The Postman’s White Nights that will stun the viewer? They scripted a tale set in a rural setting where the village school is in ruins; men are turning alcoholics and survive on pensions; newspapers, bread, medicines, are brought from the nearest town by a postman, an alcoholic in the past, currently a bachelor; with one other regular government employee posted in this village an unpopular lady mayor, living alone with a young son, because she fines folk caught trawling fish in the nearby water bodies to win brownie points with her unseen superiors.

Everybody smokes, but the postman has kicked his drinking habit
after it ruined his family life 

As in both the Konchalovsky and Kiseleva films, the scriptwriters build-up details that do not seem to add up midway but punches you at the end of the film. And if you blink you might miss that brilliant visual that says more than all the spoken words in the entire film. (There is a third partner in the Konchalovsky-Kiseleva films: cinematographer Aleksandr  Simonov). The Russian government obviously seems to have ignored the well being or the development of this rural township.  Not only is the school in ruins (possibly because there are not enough kids to attend school) but the folks there have only the TV sets as sources of entertainment. There are no tractors to till the land, only animal driven ploughs. From all evidence there is only one plough for the entire community. It is no wonder that people in that locality are driven to steal outboard motors of boats or trawl the water bodies for fish—an illegal act for all except the powerful generals who infrequently visit the area. But not very far away, Russia rocket/space power is quietly advancing ignoring the plight of the rural poor.

The good and the bad coexist in the rural world with the committed postman being the prominent do-gooder. The townsfolk do not go out of the way to help the postman when he faces a professional crisis with his motorboat’s engine stolen and thus not being able to discharge his duties for the rural folk.  In the world of email communication and mobile telecommunication, the postman fills a multitasking role. And he loves to do it. He has to file a theft report and wait for a replacement to be supplied.  The elders in the rural areas wistfully recall better days during the socialist regime and some even recall being in Vietnam during the war there.

The postman and the mayor's son

What most viewers are likely to miss out is an important decision taken by director Konchalovsky—all characters in the film’s rural setting are played by authentic villagers. The only professional actors are the two individuals who play the roles of the lady mayor and her delightful young son, Timur, who addresses the postman as “uncle.” Now that is incredible considering how the onscreen presence of the real postman engages the viewer.  One would mistake him for a professional actor able to convey so many complex emotions and body languages.  The Russian title of the film would read as the white nights of Aleksey Tryapitsyn, the name of man who plays the postman in the film. He is playing himself. Thus the entire script revolves around real people playing themselves.  But the script belongs to brilliance of Konchalovsky and Kiseleva.

Look at how they built the script. The entire background of the life of the postman is provided by Aleksey Tryapitsyn’s monologue as he sifts through old photographs of himself with the movie’s camera placed behind his head and shoulders.  Who is he talking to? The viewer. Such a monologue is never repeated until the end sequence where all or most of the village folk sit shoulder to shoulder on a ferry, their differences forgotten, without a word spoken, looking at the camera. Who are they looking at? The viewer.

The postman shares his childhood fears and tales with the
mayor's son.

The next striking visual is the repeated morning waking shot of the postman looking down at his boots on the carpet that he need to get into. He is living alone. There is no tap water; he has to fetch water in pails. The mayor and the postman wear camouflage army clothes—possibly because they are the only paid government employees.  His life is spartan.

The filmmaking trio emphasize rumination and natural beauty—the characters are constantly reflecting, outdoors and indoors.  Those sequences are with the music of Artemev as in the early Tarkovsky and Konchalovsky films.  And that leads on to the dark grey cat (“there are no cats in the village” the viewer is informed, and ergo the cat is a metaphor of a silent imaginary friend of the lonely postman—a cinephile will recall Tarkovsky used totemic images of a dog in Stalker).  The silent cat comes through the window, follows Aleksey Tryapitsyn during his imaginary visit to the school ruins, and finally sits on the stomach of the reclining postman. Does the cat have a common link with a cat’s images on the postman’s tablecloth?

Simonov's cinematography and Artemev's music can be stunning 

...and who wouldn't ruminate on contemplating the natural beauty of Russia
captured by cinematographer Simonov?

Apart from the good actions and the bad actions of the characters in The Postman’s White Nights, the overarching philosophy of the film is to accept this truth and reconcile what is left of one’s life with this attitude. The postman runs away but decides to return to the same community where, not surprisingly, he is still welcome. Konchalovsky “ran away” from USSR to work in Hollywood only to return to Russia with all its continuing faults and greatness. The film might be a great anti-smoking film with almost all the elders addicted to tobacco and evidently not healthy but the young boy also learns to smoke following the actions of the elders. But in the end segment, Konchalovsky, Kiseleva and Simonov are pointing out with their tongues firmly in their cheeks that Russia is launching spacecrafts and rockets not very far from the world of rural folk who can’t fish in the water bodies without asking for trouble or have any entertainment beyond state TV. And guess what, these Russians on the fringes of Russian society addicted to tobacco and vodka are still happy and content as long as they get their pensions.

Where does the strange sustenance of the Russians come from? From the ground, or from the rockets? A Shakespearean conundrum indeed!

It is a meaningful film for the serious film viewer, and richly deserving of the Venice film festival honour.

P.S. The Postman’s White Nights won the Best Director Award (Silver Lion) for Andrei Konchalovsky.  Detailed reviews by the author of Konchalovsky’s earlier films Runaway Train (1985) and Paradise (2016) were posted earlier on this blog. A link to the Konchalovsky written paper/lecture on the "Russian Soul" is provided on this blog and the contents are closely linked to the basic mood of the film. A critical line from that lecture reflects the essence of the film's ending "Why Russians can build a rocket and send it off into space, but not make a decent car?" Mr Konchalovsky is also one of the author's 15 favourite active filmmakers.

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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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