Thursday, February 26, 2004
Monster
Directed by Patty Jenkins
Two things about Monster. Firstly, Charlize Theron as Aileen, the serial prostitute killer, puts in an incredible acting that is not only convincing, but also painful to watch. Her portrayal of Aileen reveals a lonely hooker in search for love. When she finally found it, she didn’t knew it would cost her more than that.
Aileen is at times hysterical and violent as she gets into an argument with Selby (Christina Ricci) her younger lover whom she first meet in a gay bar. She tries too hard to support their lifestyle, all the time, believing that they would be able to get away with it.
Selby, on the other hand is portrayed almost as a bitch as she accuses the former of quitting her hooker job when they couldn’t buy food or support themselves. She just wants to go out and have fun, leaving Aileen alone when she met her lesbian friends at an amusement park. She is afraid of being caught and tires to trick the former into confessing that she was the real murderer. Ricci’s acting is so bad it makes you wonder if that is the way the character is supposed to be ; as she stares at you with her huge eyes. Of course, the other possibility is that Selby’s character is seen as weak in this movie because the film doesn’t reveals much about her except as a lonely closeted lesbian who just wants to have fun.
Hence, what really makes Monster a good movie is Theron’s acting which convince us that she did what she had to do only because she wanted to survive and be with her loved one.
Monster also reminded me of Thelma and Louise. Though both revolves around relationships between women, the latter is a celebration of female friendships while the former is of the opposite. Monster reveals the disruptive and violent nature of connection between the women when one becomes overtly controlling while the other just latches along.
Directed by Patty Jenkins
Two things about Monster. Firstly, Charlize Theron as Aileen, the serial prostitute killer, puts in an incredible acting that is not only convincing, but also painful to watch. Her portrayal of Aileen reveals a lonely hooker in search for love. When she finally found it, she didn’t knew it would cost her more than that.
Aileen is at times hysterical and violent as she gets into an argument with Selby (Christina Ricci) her younger lover whom she first meet in a gay bar. She tries too hard to support their lifestyle, all the time, believing that they would be able to get away with it.
Selby, on the other hand is portrayed almost as a bitch as she accuses the former of quitting her hooker job when they couldn’t buy food or support themselves. She just wants to go out and have fun, leaving Aileen alone when she met her lesbian friends at an amusement park. She is afraid of being caught and tires to trick the former into confessing that she was the real murderer. Ricci’s acting is so bad it makes you wonder if that is the way the character is supposed to be ; as she stares at you with her huge eyes. Of course, the other possibility is that Selby’s character is seen as weak in this movie because the film doesn’t reveals much about her except as a lonely closeted lesbian who just wants to have fun.
Hence, what really makes Monster a good movie is Theron’s acting which convince us that she did what she had to do only because she wanted to survive and be with her loved one.
Monster also reminded me of Thelma and Louise. Though both revolves around relationships between women, the latter is a celebration of female friendships while the former is of the opposite. Monster reveals the disruptive and violent nature of connection between the women when one becomes overtly controlling while the other just latches along.
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
The Scarlet Empress
Directed by Josef Von Sternberg
Marlene Dietrich as Catherine the Great is a matured, sexual libertine who kills her husband, the emperor and proclaim herself the ruler of Russia. Before the transformation however, she was Sophia Fredericka, a wide-eyed innocent princess, who was raised by her parents to be a proper lady: an obedient, loyal, virtuous wife. In these manifestation within a single character, Marlene convinced us that she was truly both at different times.
If there is any "fault" with The Scarlet Empress, it is unlike other period films often suffused with a mythical recreation of that the era with pomp and graciousness.
The claustrophobic set occupied by too many actors adds a theatrical dimension to the movie. All we see is a bickering royal family who seems to do everything by themselves with no servants waiting on them hand and foot.
In Sternberg's period setting, his royals move about with haste and engage in loud conversation without much deliberation and elegance. Most obvious of them all, is the ruler of Russia, Catherine (Louise Dresser) whose dim witted nephew, Peter, is Sophia supposed to be wedded to. Catherine is mean, bitchy and lords over Sophia, treating
the girl like a servant.
Peter, is the "royal half-wit" that Catherine is disappointed with when she first met him after seven weeks of travel to Russia. She believed Count Alexei (John Lodge) who tells her that he is tall, handsome, strong and knowledgeable. The escort unwittingly falls in love with her during their sojourn and continues to court her when they arrive. He will have a pivotal role in helping Catherine become the great lady she is.
The use of montage is also apparent in The Scarlet Empress. In the sequence where tortures are being done to prisoners, it ends with a superimposition of a man being knocked around in a bell while Sophia is happily playing on a swing. The imagery of the chiming of the bell would later be enacted many times over in the movie.
One can ascertain that it is a fairly early "talkie" through the use of its intertitles and abundant soundtrack which were commonly used in silent movies.
The victory of Catherine can be read as a rag girl to riches story who was corrupted by power as she attains it through unscrupulous means. On the other hand, we can interpret it as something inevitable – that she was forced to do what she had to do just to survive. The irony of course is already codified earlier when the first Catherine said that women do not made good rulers because they are lead by the heart.
Directed by Josef Von Sternberg
Marlene Dietrich as Catherine the Great is a matured, sexual libertine who kills her husband, the emperor and proclaim herself the ruler of Russia. Before the transformation however, she was Sophia Fredericka, a wide-eyed innocent princess, who was raised by her parents to be a proper lady: an obedient, loyal, virtuous wife. In these manifestation within a single character, Marlene convinced us that she was truly both at different times.
If there is any "fault" with The Scarlet Empress, it is unlike other period films often suffused with a mythical recreation of that the era with pomp and graciousness.
The claustrophobic set occupied by too many actors adds a theatrical dimension to the movie. All we see is a bickering royal family who seems to do everything by themselves with no servants waiting on them hand and foot.
In Sternberg's period setting, his royals move about with haste and engage in loud conversation without much deliberation and elegance. Most obvious of them all, is the ruler of Russia, Catherine (Louise Dresser) whose dim witted nephew, Peter, is Sophia supposed to be wedded to. Catherine is mean, bitchy and lords over Sophia, treating
the girl like a servant.
Peter, is the "royal half-wit" that Catherine is disappointed with when she first met him after seven weeks of travel to Russia. She believed Count Alexei (John Lodge) who tells her that he is tall, handsome, strong and knowledgeable. The escort unwittingly falls in love with her during their sojourn and continues to court her when they arrive. He will have a pivotal role in helping Catherine become the great lady she is.
The use of montage is also apparent in The Scarlet Empress. In the sequence where tortures are being done to prisoners, it ends with a superimposition of a man being knocked around in a bell while Sophia is happily playing on a swing. The imagery of the chiming of the bell would later be enacted many times over in the movie.
One can ascertain that it is a fairly early "talkie" through the use of its intertitles and abundant soundtrack which were commonly used in silent movies.
The victory of Catherine can be read as a rag girl to riches story who was corrupted by power as she attains it through unscrupulous means. On the other hand, we can interpret it as something inevitable – that she was forced to do what she had to do just to survive. The irony of course is already codified earlier when the first Catherine said that women do not made good rulers because they are lead by the heart.
Monday, February 23, 2004
Wild Strawberries
Persona
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
Two Friends
Directed by Jane Campion
Victor Sjöström is Isak Borg, an old emeritus professor who is attending a ceremony honouring his contribution to society. The day before the event, he dreams of his own death, which troubled him to change his sojourn. He decided hastily to drive to Lund instead with the accompaniment of a disgruntled daughter-in-law, Marianne (Ingrid Thulin). During their journey, he dreams and remembers his youthful days and picked up, along the way, three young hitchhikers, including a bubbly Sara (Bibi Andersson), caught in between two male suitors who are as different as day and night. They also gave a lift to a bickering middle age couple whom they threw out after a while because of their bad influence to the children in their car. Isak visits his old town as it is along the way and sees his ageing but healthy mother who complains of being left behind by her descendants.
Considered one of his most important work, Wild Strawberries that moves between dreams, flashbacks and reality explores the existential themes of morality, mortality and God. Morality is explored through the relationships. Isak and his ex flame, Sara who left him for his brother is a bitter pill of lost love while his relationship with the daughter-in-law is characterized with a one-sided distrust from the latter. Marianne’s marriage to Isak’s son is similar to Isak’s. Isak’s son decides against having a child; which is in conflict with Marianne’s desire to shower her maternal instincts.
Isak’s dream of seeing his own death can be interpreted in many ways. Recalling his younger days as an outsider and an older man is a metaphor of death and living outside one’s body. His mother cynically jokes that she can never die.
The conversation between the two adversarial suitors revolves around an existence of God. One believes in romance and plays the guitar to woo Sara while the other is pragmatic.
Wild Strawberries is stunning with Gunnar Fischer’s black and white cinematography. The profile close-ups betrays character’s emotions and gives the script a tour de force.
Persona, which is also filmed in black and white, is Bergman’s psychological thriller, that evokes powerful imageries. Persona is punctuated with extra-diegetic visuals that recalls the cinematic experience.
One early scene where a young boy sees a woman’s face and tries to touch it can be interpret with regards to Lacanism. Briefly speaking, the theory hyperbolizes that the film watching experience is stemmed from the recognition of one’s differences to the mother and upon recognizing the differences, learn the lack of the phallic from the maternal and hence acquires the symbolic paternalistic language, to which his desire is based on. On the other hand, it can also act as an opening metaphor of Alma (Bibi Andersson) and her abortion story.
Elizabeth (Liv Ullmann) , a famous actress, stops speaking and retains an unmoving portrait in the middle of one of her performance. She was subsequently sent to a female psychiatrist who thinks that Elizabeth’s condition could be self-imposed as part of an inherent psychological desire to play a part forever.
Nurse Alma who is sent to take care of her, accompanies the former to the doctor’s holiday house, hoping to cure her mental sickness. The lonely stay turns Alma into a confessional soapbox as she recollects and gripes about her pasts, including her affair with a married man and an orgy during her younger days. Elizabeth remains nonchalant but sends a letter to the doctor revealing her interest in Alma as a person. The nurse who gets to read the latter is angered at the betrayal and decides to take things into her own hands.
Much has been written about Elizabeth and Alma being seen as a merger of two characters into one or two sides of the same coin. Their relationship can also be seen as a perverted twist between the healer and his patient. The film also highlights the discrepancy between real life and an imaginary construct. Elizabeth as the patient is seen as an artificial construct (theatre, movies) because she refuses to participate in life and acts as if she is a mirror. When she screams with horror at a news footage showing a man being burned, it is highly theatrical and hysterical. The idea of being burnt will later be played out when Alma threatens to pour hot water from the kettle on her. On the other hand, Elma’s story which are mostly told from teh horses mouth, in various settings at different days and times of the day, within the house, conjures a sense of claustrophobia and intimacy between the two women. Nelma is symbolized as the “human” and “natural” as she weeps and recollects painful memories.
It is interesting that Bergman inserts shots that reminds one of the movie watching experience. The ending alerts audience to the artificiality of the story by showing us the act of filming as we are notified of Elizabeth’s demise. Hence, Persona can also be read as a critique of the film experience.
Director of The Piano, Jane Campion’s debut is a 79 minute feature of two young adolescent, Louise (Coles) and Kelly (Kris Bidenko) who took on different paths when they were forced to go to different high schools.
Told in reverse order and separated by intertitles which notifies us the span of time, Two Friends cleverly reveals the degeneration of their friendship by making the audience “work out” for themselves what went wrong.
Unlike Memento or Irreversible which are 2 similar movies in terms of story-telling nature (showing everything in reverse) that I have seen, Two Friends does not engage in shocking stylistics. Campion’s directing is low brow which calls for similar acting from the actors as they deliver their lines and act without much fanfare; except for the sequence when Kelly writes in her journal including a fantasy of painting her room.
Two Friends can be seen as a path of growing up and teenage rebellion filled with uncertainty or the depiction of a friendship that grew apart due to circumstances or both.
Two Friends needs to be seen as a whole to recognize the issues plaguing youths from puppy love to trying to gain social acceptance to being individual.
Persona
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
Two Friends
Directed by Jane Campion
Victor Sjöström is Isak Borg, an old emeritus professor who is attending a ceremony honouring his contribution to society. The day before the event, he dreams of his own death, which troubled him to change his sojourn. He decided hastily to drive to Lund instead with the accompaniment of a disgruntled daughter-in-law, Marianne (Ingrid Thulin). During their journey, he dreams and remembers his youthful days and picked up, along the way, three young hitchhikers, including a bubbly Sara (Bibi Andersson), caught in between two male suitors who are as different as day and night. They also gave a lift to a bickering middle age couple whom they threw out after a while because of their bad influence to the children in their car. Isak visits his old town as it is along the way and sees his ageing but healthy mother who complains of being left behind by her descendants.
Considered one of his most important work, Wild Strawberries that moves between dreams, flashbacks and reality explores the existential themes of morality, mortality and God. Morality is explored through the relationships. Isak and his ex flame, Sara who left him for his brother is a bitter pill of lost love while his relationship with the daughter-in-law is characterized with a one-sided distrust from the latter. Marianne’s marriage to Isak’s son is similar to Isak’s. Isak’s son decides against having a child; which is in conflict with Marianne’s desire to shower her maternal instincts.
Isak’s dream of seeing his own death can be interpreted in many ways. Recalling his younger days as an outsider and an older man is a metaphor of death and living outside one’s body. His mother cynically jokes that she can never die.
The conversation between the two adversarial suitors revolves around an existence of God. One believes in romance and plays the guitar to woo Sara while the other is pragmatic.
Wild Strawberries is stunning with Gunnar Fischer’s black and white cinematography. The profile close-ups betrays character’s emotions and gives the script a tour de force.
Persona, which is also filmed in black and white, is Bergman’s psychological thriller, that evokes powerful imageries. Persona is punctuated with extra-diegetic visuals that recalls the cinematic experience.
One early scene where a young boy sees a woman’s face and tries to touch it can be interpret with regards to Lacanism. Briefly speaking, the theory hyperbolizes that the film watching experience is stemmed from the recognition of one’s differences to the mother and upon recognizing the differences, learn the lack of the phallic from the maternal and hence acquires the symbolic paternalistic language, to which his desire is based on. On the other hand, it can also act as an opening metaphor of Alma (Bibi Andersson) and her abortion story.
Elizabeth (Liv Ullmann) , a famous actress, stops speaking and retains an unmoving portrait in the middle of one of her performance. She was subsequently sent to a female psychiatrist who thinks that Elizabeth’s condition could be self-imposed as part of an inherent psychological desire to play a part forever.
Nurse Alma who is sent to take care of her, accompanies the former to the doctor’s holiday house, hoping to cure her mental sickness. The lonely stay turns Alma into a confessional soapbox as she recollects and gripes about her pasts, including her affair with a married man and an orgy during her younger days. Elizabeth remains nonchalant but sends a letter to the doctor revealing her interest in Alma as a person. The nurse who gets to read the latter is angered at the betrayal and decides to take things into her own hands.
Much has been written about Elizabeth and Alma being seen as a merger of two characters into one or two sides of the same coin. Their relationship can also be seen as a perverted twist between the healer and his patient. The film also highlights the discrepancy between real life and an imaginary construct. Elizabeth as the patient is seen as an artificial construct (theatre, movies) because she refuses to participate in life and acts as if she is a mirror. When she screams with horror at a news footage showing a man being burned, it is highly theatrical and hysterical. The idea of being burnt will later be played out when Alma threatens to pour hot water from the kettle on her. On the other hand, Elma’s story which are mostly told from teh horses mouth, in various settings at different days and times of the day, within the house, conjures a sense of claustrophobia and intimacy between the two women. Nelma is symbolized as the “human” and “natural” as she weeps and recollects painful memories.
It is interesting that Bergman inserts shots that reminds one of the movie watching experience. The ending alerts audience to the artificiality of the story by showing us the act of filming as we are notified of Elizabeth’s demise. Hence, Persona can also be read as a critique of the film experience.
Director of The Piano, Jane Campion’s debut is a 79 minute feature of two young adolescent, Louise (Coles) and Kelly (Kris Bidenko) who took on different paths when they were forced to go to different high schools.
Told in reverse order and separated by intertitles which notifies us the span of time, Two Friends cleverly reveals the degeneration of their friendship by making the audience “work out” for themselves what went wrong.
Unlike Memento or Irreversible which are 2 similar movies in terms of story-telling nature (showing everything in reverse) that I have seen, Two Friends does not engage in shocking stylistics. Campion’s directing is low brow which calls for similar acting from the actors as they deliver their lines and act without much fanfare; except for the sequence when Kelly writes in her journal including a fantasy of painting her room.
Two Friends can be seen as a path of growing up and teenage rebellion filled with uncertainty or the depiction of a friendship that grew apart due to circumstances or both.
Two Friends needs to be seen as a whole to recognize the issues plaguing youths from puppy love to trying to gain social acceptance to being individual.
