The mind is a concern in all his screenplays, but in "Synecdoche" (2008), his first film as a director, he makes it his subject, and what huge ambition that demonstrates. He's like a novelist who wants to get it all into the first book in case he never publishes another. Those who felt the film was disorganized or incoherent might benefit from seeing it again. It isn't about a narrative, although it pretends to be. It's about a method, the method by which we organize our lives and define our realities.
Very few people live their lives on one stage, in one persona, wearing one costume. We play different characters. We know this and accept it. In childhood we begin as always the same person but quickly we develop strategies for our families, our friends, our schools. In adolescence these strategies are not well controlled. Sexually, teenagers behave one way with some dates and a different way with others. We find those whose have a persona that matches one of our own, and that defines how we interact with that person. If you aren't an aggressor and are sober, there are girls (or boys) you do it with and others you don't, and you don't want those people to discover what goes on away from them.
But already "Synecdoche" has me thinking in terms of the film's insight. That is its power. Let me stand back and consider it as a movie. It's about a theater director named Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who begins with a successful regional production, is given a MacArthur genius grant, and moves with a troupe of actors into a New York warehouse. Here they develop a play that grows and grows, and he devises a set representing their various rooms and lives. The film begins as apparently realistic, but as the set expands it shades off into -- complexity? fantasy? chaos?
In the earlier scenes, he was married to Adele (Catherine Keener). She leaves, and he marries Claire (Michelle Williams), who to some degree is intended to literally replace the first wife, as many second spouses are. Why do some people marry those who resemble their exes? They're casting for the same role. Caden has hired an actor named Daniel London (Tom Noonan) to star in the play, as a character somewhat like himself. Many writers and directors create fiction from themselves, and are often advised to.
What happens in the film isn't supposed to happen in life. The membrane between fact and fiction becomes permeable, and the separate lives intermingle. Caden hardly seems to know whose life he's living; his characters develop minds of their own. How many authors have you heard say their dialogue involves "just writing down what the characters would say?"
Living within different personas is something many people do. How can a governor think to have a mistress in Argentina? An investment counselor think to steal all the money entrusted to him? A famous athlete be revealed as a sybarite? A family man be discovered to have two families? I suspect such people, and to some degree many of us, find no more difficulty in occupying those different scenarios that we might find eating meat some days and on others calling ourselves vegetarian.
"Synecdoche" is accomplished in all the technical areas, including its astonishing set. The acting requires great talent to create characters who are always in their own reality, however much it shifts. Philip Seymour Hoffman's character experiences a deterioration of body, as we all do, finds it more difficult to see outside himself, as we all do, and becomes less sure of who "himself' is, as sooner or later we all do. He shows us this process with a precise evolution.
Kaufman has made the most perceptive film I can recall about how we live in the world. This is his debut as a director, but his most important contribution is the screenplay. Make no mistake: He sweated blood over this screenplay. Somebody had to know what was happening on all those levels, and that had to be the writer. Of course he directed it. Who else could have comprehended it?
1.- Film Comment End of the Decade List – Top 10 - Alphabetical Order
-Café Lumière – Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2003, Taiwan/Japan
-La Ciénaga – Lucrecia Martel, 2001, Argentina/France/Spain
-Colossal Youth – Pedro Costa, 2006, Portugal/France/Switzerland
-The Death of Mr. Lazarescu – Cristi Puiu, 2005, Romania
-Inland Empire – David Lynch, 2006, USA/France/Poland
-Kings and Queen – Arnaud Desplechin, 2004, France
-Los Muertos – Lisandro Alonso, 2004, Argentina/France/Netherlands/Switzerland
-The Royal Tenenbaums – Wes Anderson, 2001, USA
-Syndromes and a Century – Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2006, Thailand/France/Austria/Netherlands
-The Woman on the Beach – Hong Sang-soo, 2006, South Korea
Top 11-50 – Alphabetical Order
35 Shots of Rum – Claire Denis, 2008, France/Germany
A.I. Artificial Intelligence – Steven Spielberg, 2001, USA
Black Book – Paul Verhoeven, 2006, Germany/Netherlands/UK/ Belgium
Collateral – Michael Mann, 2004, U.S.
Elephant – Gus Van Sant, 2003, USA
En Construcción – José Luis Guerín, 2001, Spain
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – Michel Gondry, 2004, USA
Far From Heaven – Todd Haynes, 2002, USA/France
Goodbye, Dragon Inn – Tsai Ming-Liang, 2003, Taiwan
Gran Torino – Clint Eastwood, 2008, U.S.
The Headless Woman – Lucrecia Martel, 2008, Argentina/France/Italy/Spain
A History of Violence – David Cronenberg, 2005, Germany/USA
In the Mood for Love – Wong Kar-Wai, 2000, Hong Kong/France
In Vanda’s Room – Pedro Costa, 2000, Portugal/Germany/Switzerland/Italy
Japon – Carlos Reygadas, 2002, Mexico/Germany/Netherlands/Spain
La Libertad – Lisandro Alonso, 2001, Argentina
Longing – Valeska Grisebach, 2006, Germany
Memories of Murder – Bong Joon-ho, 2003, South Korea
Mulholland Dr. – David Lynch, 2001, France/USA
Our Beloved Month of August – Miguel Gomes, 2008, Portugal/France
Platform – Jia Zhang-ke, 2000, Hong Kong/Japan/France/Netherlands/Switzerland
Les Ponts des Arts – Eugene Green, 2005, France
Regular Lovers – Philippe Garrel, 2004, France/Italy
Shara – Naomi Kawase, 2003, Japan
The Son – Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2002, Belgium/France
Spirited Away – Hayao Miyazaki, 2001, Japan
Superbad – Greg Mottola, 2007, U.S.
Tarnation – Jonathan Caouette, 2004, U.S.
There Will Be Blood – Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007, USA
Time Out – Laurent Cantet, 2001, France
Tropical Malady – Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004, France/Thailand/Germany/Italy/Switzerland
Turning Gate – Hong Sang-soo, 2002, South Korea
Unbreakable – M. Night Shyamalan, 2000, USA
Wendy and Lucy – Kelly Reichardt, 2008, USA
Yi Yi – Edward Yang, 2000, Taiwan/Japan
Zodiac – David Fincher, 2007, USA
Historias extraordinarias - Mariano Llinas, 2008, Argentina
El aura - Fabian Bielinsky, 2005, Argentina
Honor de cavalleria - Albert Serra, 2006, España
Madame Sata - Karim Ainouz, 2002, Brazil
2.- BEST FILMMAKERS OF THE DECADE (TOP 3 – TOP 20)
HONG SANG-SOO
DAVID LYNCH
ARNAUD DESPLECHIN
STEVEN SPIELBERG
PEDRO COSTA
MICHAEL MANN
CLAIRE DENIS
HOU HSIAO-HSIEN
JIA ZHANG-KE
JOSE LUIS GUERRIN
JAFAR PANAHI
CLINT EASTWOOD
DAVID CRONENBERG
TODD HAYNES
WERNER HERZOG
PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON
GUS VAN SANT
KELLY REICHARDT
JEAN PIERRE AND LUC DARDENNE
HAYAO MIYAZAKI
3.- BEST NEW FILMMAKERS OF THE DECADE (TOP 3-TOP 10)
BONG JOON HO
LISANDRO ALONSO
APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL
RAMIN BAHRANI
ALBERT SERRA
KARIM AINOUZ
CARLOS REYGADAS
CHRISTIAN PETZOLD
LUCRECIA MARTEL
EUGENE GREEN
Cuando se pensaba que James Cameron no podía apostar a hacer algo más grande que Titanic –o que había perdido la razón en el intento-, doce años después de aquel megaéxito aparece Avatar, una película que deja, al menos en tamaño y en búsqueda creativa, a aquel clásico como un filme pequeño... y hasta es probable que lo supere también en taquilla.
Cameron tenía todo servido para el gran fracaso: el tiempo transcurrido daba la impresión de que se había internado en una conquista tecnológica imposible y los primeros avances con las criaturas azuladas que pueblan el filme (los Na'vi, habitantes del casi mágico planeta Pandora) eran casi risibles. Pero no hay más que calzarse los anteojos 3D, sentarse frente a la pantalla y casi todas las dudas desaparecen: Cameron está de vuelta. Y, con todas sus virtudes y defectos, su regreso es más que bienvenido.
Avatar cuenta una historia muy simple y de manera bastante tradicional, al punto que definirla como “Danza con lobos” en el espacio” no es tan reduccionista como suena. El filme se centra en Jake Sully, un marine lisiado (Sam Worthington) que es enviado a Pandora en una misión especial: debe reemplazar a su hermano gemelo, un científico que ha muerto, como parte de un equipo de investigación en la cultura y costumbres de los Na'vi. La forma de hacerlo es a través de los “avatares”: el hombre se coloca en una camilla, su ADN es transportado al cuerpo inerte de un nativo y así puede ingresar a la increíble “caja/mundo” de Pandora.
Pero, como Jake es marine, los militares que están apostados en Pandora quieren utilizarlo para otros fines. Básicamente, convencer a los Na'vi de dejar su tierra ya que debajo del gigantesco árbol que les sirve de “hogar” hay una importante reserva de unobtanium, valioso material que los terrícolas quieren llevarse. Tras una serie de errores y accidentes (cuando Sully pasa a su cuerpo azul y gigante se entusiasma con la posibilidad de volver a correr), el avatar de Sully termina entre los Na'vi, entra en su extravagante mundo (una mezcla de selva amazónica con pecera psicodélica que contiene la flora y la fauna más extravagante jamás imaginada en el cine) y, a lo largo del filme, deberá debatirse entre cumplir su misión militar o la científica: aprender las costumbres de los “indígenas”.
En el medio habrá espacio para una épica romántica (Sully se enamora de la Na'vi Neytiri), una bélica (será inevitable la batalla y la invasión militar), un recorrido geográfico-cultural (Neytiri le muestra a Sully, y a nosotros, los hábitos, costumbres y criaturas de esta versión elongada de los hobbits) y un combate interior entre varios mundos: el de la ciencia (con Sigourney Weaver como la científica a cargo del programa), el militar (con Stephen Lang en el rol del comandante invasor, un George W. Bush con esteroides) y el espiritual/ecológico que profesan los habitantes de Pandora, conectados a la “Madre Tierra” de una manera, digamos, inusual.
Más allá del aspecto “virtual” de Sully que lo obliga a una extraña doble vida, hay muy poco en Avatar que escape a la estructura tradicional de un western o una película bélica. De hecho, pueden hacerse muchas lecturas del filme como una crítica a la política invasora de los Estados Unidos (de Irak para atrás, cualquier comparación funciona), tanto en lo militar como en lo cultural (“¿qué le podemos ofrecer nosotros a ellos? -se pregunta Jake en su videodiario personal-. ¿Bluejeans y cerveza light?”) al punto que uno se pregunta si lo que sucede en la Tierra, paralelamente a estos hechos (corre el año 2154) no se parecerá al futuro visto en Terminator.
Lo que sí es diferente, revolucionario en el sentido de iniciar un cambio tecnológico clave en la historia del cine, es su formato tridimensional y sus personajes digitales. En el primer caso, la película es un triunfo absoluto. Cameron ha creado un mundo en 3D inmersivo, que permite al espectador ser un segundo “avatar” en todo este proceso, casi un participante más del asombroso universo de un filme hecho en base a incontables transferencias (psicológicas, físicas, metafóricas). Y lo hace casi sin apelar a los trucos de lanzar objetos a la cara del espectador: el 3D en Avatar ensancha la pantalla, le otorga volumen, la expande. Cameron sabe que hay mucho en el cuadro para observar y tiene la discreción (o el clasicismo narrativo) de, más que tirarnoslo por la cabeza, hacernos entrar como en un encantamiento.
Donde la película no termina de “revolucionar” es en el tema de los personajes digitales. Los Na'vi son un gran paso en ese viaje (si vale la pena hacerlo o no, es otro tema), pero sigue habiendo algo indescifrable en ellos y resulta complicado involucrarse emocionalmente en la historia de la misma manera que se lo haría con actores. Sin embargo, el poder narrativo de Cameron es tal que, al ver el filme más de una vez, uno empieza a olvidar esa extrañeza y logra compenetrarse, un poco, con esas criaturas gigantescas y con cola, más allá de que se los pinte con un dejo de condescendencia (¿o inocencia?, ¿o decisión política?) new-age.
Avatar es un cúmulo de contradicciones. Una película ecologista y defensora de la naturaleza hecha casi toda de manera digital, virtual. Un filme sobre el respeto a la identidad cultural de los pueblos que aterriza en los cines de todo el mundo a la manera de un ejército invasor. Una apuesta a una revolución técnica armada con una estructura narrativa propia de la literatura del siglo XIX. Una épica de motivos cristianos para una película que abraza una suerte de panteísmo científico. Una crítica al abuso de la tecnología que no podría hacerse sin “abusar” de ella. Y así se podría seguir al infinito.
Sin embargo, todas esas contradicciones, más que arruinar la experiencia, la expanden, la complejizan, enriquecen su lectura. Sí, es una película con momentos y escenas cursis, con otras prestadas (de “King Kong” a “Matrix”, de “Pocahontas” a “El Rey León”, de “Tarzán” a “Los pitufos” y se podría seguir, interminablemente) y una buena cantidad de autocitas (“Terminator” y “Aliens” en lo audiovisual; “El abismo” en lo filosófico). Pero su poderío visual y narrativo procesa todo ese material sin fagocitárselo, sin llevárselo por delante. Cameron cuenta, seduce, involucra e impacta. Por momentos exagera y se le va mano, es cierto, pero en tiempos de entretenimientos que se esfuman en el momento en que la pantalla se pone en negro, uno agradece y celebra el exceso.
Recuadro
Tras ver Avatar en una proyección 3D y en otra IMAX 3D se puede concluir que la primera es la opción más conveniente, al menos para verla por primera vez. Es que, sentado en una sala de cine convencional, la diferencia que hace su formato resulta muy llamativa y es recomendable para observar todos los detalles. El IMAX de por sí es una tecnología mucho más “envolvente”, con lo que esas diferencias se destacan menos. Es buena idea volverla a ver allí y “meterse” literalmente en la pantalla gigante. Eso sí, no conviene arrancar viéndola en un cine convencional 2D ya que se pierde parte de “la revolución”. Aunque bien podría verse allí... por tercera vez. Y seguir comparando.
Diego Lerer
Su labor como cartelista no se vio interrumpida. Ilustró películas de Almodóvar, José Luís Garci o Manuel Gutierrez Aragón, entre otros muchos, y sus carteles se mostraron en numerosas exposiciones pero no volvió a filmar nada. En una de sus últimas apariciones públicas para recoger el Premio a la Película de oro en el Festival de cine de Málaga en 2008, Zulueta dijo que tenía un grave problema para trabajar. "No arranco, lo último que hice fueron una decena de carteles de cine y de eso hace ya casi diez años. Quisiera no perderme en esos entresijos de la metadona. Los últimos carteles que he hecho no me han gustado mucho y eso para mí es muy doloroso". En aquella ocasión, el director dijo no haber tirado la toalla y tener ganas de volver al cine.
Zulueta se formó en la Escuela Oficial de Cinematografía, como Pilar Miró, Álvaro del Amo, Juan o Jaime Chávarri y allí conoció al guionista José Luis Borau, que se convirtió en su mentor y amigo. Arrebato fue su segunda película. En 1968 había rodado Un, dos, tres, escondite inglés, contra los escollos del control franquista. La película se estrenó en Cannes en 1969 y no se proyectó en salas españolas hasta 1970. Durante los años setenta, y siempre con un tono experimental realizó cortos como KingKong (1971), Frank Stein (1972), Masaje (1972) o Roma-Brescia-Cannes. En estos años también dirigió el programa televisivo Último grito, presentado por José María Íñigo
En su faceta como artista visual, igual que en la cinematográfica, Zulueta apostó por la experimentación. Deja una colección de más de 10.000 polaroids en las que volcó su inventiva a partir de los ochenta sometiéndo el papel hasta a 48 sobreimpresiones, pintando o rayando la imagen con una cuchilla de afeitar.
Su trayectoria estuvo ensombrecida por la constante lucha contra su adicción a la heroína y dejó como legado una película de culto que le granjeó para siempre el sambenito de "director maldito". En una de las últimas exposiciones de su obra gráfica aún se preguntaba "¿Pero como es posible que con 60 años tenga que dar cuentas de cómo es mi vida?"
By Michael Atkinson
Bearing the sulphurous odor of a film artist with very particular and often well-hated views on how much visual narrative should mean and how little it should actually show or "make" us feel a certain way, Lucrecia Martel has made only three features, but immediately, at 35 with "La Ciénaga" (2001), she had a unique vocabulary and a unique voice. (She's also become, for whatever difference it might make, arguably the world's greatest working woman filmmaker.)
Sure, she falls into the neo-minimalist catalogue -- an idiotic label, given how inhabited and rich and unsolvable so many of those films are, by Tsai or Reygadas or Weerasethakul or Costa or whomever. But Martel's movies are entirely hers, breathtakingly sustained essays in unease that lance the cyst of our pressurized anxieties better than any genre film, as well as being experiments in how to experience story -- as spectacle, which is how Hollywood has come to define cinema, or as a mystery we have to wonder about and understand as a living metaphor for bigger, badder, hairier questions of emotional existence. One of the best (and, naturally, least seen) films of 2009, "The Headless Woman" is about disconnection -- so how can anyone have expected to connect?
Martel routinely lays into the comfortable, well-pickled Argentine bourgeoisie she apparently knows so well, and the new movie begins at a simple afternoon outing of mothers and kids and cars. But right away, the framing and cutting and layered busyness suggest an imbalance, a lack of seeing clearly, an impending catastrophe -- we're not being fed expository information, but instead observing the smug, shallow, utterly real nouveau riche as they walk some kind of precipice... Something's going to happen, and it won't be good.
When it does, we're still not sure what it is -- Veró (María Onetto), an aging bleached-blonde wife and mother, runs over something on the way home. But does she? She's not sure, either, but whatever happened, it cut her loose from her privileged moorings.
She stalks back into her life in a dumbfounded daze -- is she an amnesiac? Does she remember the husband, the kids, the old boyfriend who seduces her? -- and her discombobulation is so complete that her sleepwalk through rampaging affluence, where everyone is solicitous to her, becomes not only an existential dynamic but a political one as well. It's worth remembering, because Martel needs no reminding, how small a percentage the SUV-driving, couture-wearing suburbanites represent in South America, surrounded by oceans of poor people just like the ones that landscape Veró's garden.
Throughout "The Headless Woman," Martel keeps us as off-kilter as Veró, chopping up time and launching into traveling shots that imply wicked narrative torque, but which are, finally, just as enigmatic to us as the moments are to the half-lidded heroine. The experience is electrifying; like a journey through an underlit basement or a strange neighborhood after dark, you're wide awake. Onetto's performance is almost entirely passive, and is rather amazing for that, but Martel, and the subjective, upsetting lens she aims at the world, is the star.
If you have come to see movies, or really any narrative art form, as a perpetual conflict between how much should be explained away in unambiguous detail and how much should be left unsaid, coaxing us forward in our seats and asking us questions, then Martel's movie is a crucible you need to pass through.
How did "Police, Adjective" come about?
After "12:08," I started four different stories, but at the end, a friend of mine, a policeman, told me a story, a small case of conscience. And he told me he had a case like [the one in the film], and he didn't want to solve it. I was touched by a story like that because usually you see the movie and it's very big cases and all the time, it is possible that policemen can save the world. I [also] heard another story about a brother who betrayed his brother. So these were the two stories that I started with.
This film suggests that many things are in decay in contemporary Romanian society, but do you feel language in particular has been a catalyst?
No, I think we're living in a world [where] each [person] has his own individuality, more and more in how we communicate, what are our values. At the same time, there's a lot of loneliness in my movies; the characters I construct, they are living in a bubble. The starting point [for "Police, Adjective] was how we understand each other, what is the background, what is their representation of the world for each one of us. It's a world that's very fragmented and each one has his own truth. For me, it's a quite absurd if we follow a dictionary because sometimes we can use words to speak to each other and after that, we reuse words and there are so many [words] used, they lose their meaning.
It requires a certain confidence to shoot such long scenes, and it's been a point of contention among audiences -- why did you feel it was necessary for this film?
When I'm making the movie, I don't think about the audience. I'm interested in finding the spirit of my character. So [in doing research], I saw that the policeman spent so much time waiting and following and at the end, it's a movie of meanings and sense. It's real time there, but in my [film], it becomes absurd time - watching, waiting, watching, waiting -- that could [demonstrate] a certain psychology that's unexplainable.
I've spoken with a lot of people and [some of them] don't believe that at the end [the main character is] convinced by his chief [to make the arrest] because his chief gives him the meaning, gives him the sense. A lot of people like to think that he was forced. But I think maybe this kind of audience didn't enter into the first part of the movie. It's weird because yeah, the people need the explanation, but for me, it was more important to show character -- he's like a hunter, you see that he's born for this, he likes what he's doing, but at the same time, he has this conscience problem and he's in between and how could he do this.
Much has been made of a Romanian New Wave that includes Cristian Mungiu ("4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days") and Cristi Puiu ("The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu"), but as a filmmaker, what do you make of that label?
As a director, you choose your own way, you choose your own cinema. Of course, cinema is an art, it's been around 100 years, so you have a lot of forms, you have a lot of types of cinema. I'm quite strict and I have a point of view of cinema, but at the same time, I'm not feeling that this is the ultimate truth. For me, it's important to have all these kind of movies. At the same time, I want to find my own voice.
How did you actually get interested in cinema?
First, I was studying management in Bucharest [at the Academy of Economic Studies] and after that, I started to go to the cinematheque and there I discovered Chaplin, Antonioni and after that, Polish cinema and Nouvelle Vague Français and after that, I said I want to do this.
You're the son of a football referee and I was wondering whether that contributed to your interest in language and rules.
No, I think this obsession is coming more from my mother because she was a Romanian teacher - she's now retired. And [from] my father, I [played] sports when I was a teenager and this helped in my development. Now, I'm smoking too much and drinking too much coffee, so for me, it was very important I [played] sports when I was a teenager. [laughs] That keeps me alive, even now.
"Police, Adjective" is now open in limited release and available on VOD.
Even the best actors will occasionally take a paycheck from a film they know is a stinker, but a great director is the closest Hollywood has to a sure thing. Some of these films may not live up to Raging Bull, The Squid and the Whale or The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but we’ll be giving all 15 directors a chance to wow us once again. Here are 15 films from 15 great directors to look forward to in 2010:
1. Martin Scorsese
Film: Shutter Island
Release Date: February 19
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley
The scoop: Fresh off his first Oscar win for The Departed, Scorsese re-teams with his 21st-century muse, Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays a U.S. Marshall investigating the escape of a murderer from a hospital for the criminally insane.
2. Tim Burton
Film: Alice in Wonderland
Release Date: March 5
Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter
The scoop: The trailer and early stills make this match between Lewis Carroll’s classic tale and Burton—the creator of countless wonderlands himself—a perfect fit.
3. Noah Baumbach
Film: Greenberg
Release Date: March 12
Starring: Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig, Dave Franco, Jennifer Jason Leigh
The scoop: The master of family dysfunction directs his sixth film, starring Stiller as Roger Greenberg, who moves from New York to L.A. to house-sit for his brother and falls for his brother’s housekeeper.
4. Paul Greengrass
Film: Green Zone
Release Date: March 12
Starring: Matt Damon, Jason Isaacs, Greg Kinnear, Brendan Gleeson, Amy Ryan
The scoop: After Greengrass’ gritty portrayal of one of Ireland’s darkest hours in Bloody Sunday, he was handed the Bourne series, and made two of the most compelling action movies we’ve seen. He again teams with Matt Damon, who plays an American investigated the missing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and stumbles on a cover-up instead.
5. Atom Egoyan
Film: Chloe
Release Date: March 19
Starring: Julianne Moore, Amanda Seyfried, Liam Neeson, Max Thierot
The scoop: The director of The Sweet Hereafter, Exotica and Ararat explores jealousy and infidelity when a doctor hires a young escort to test her husbands faithfulness.
6. Roman Polanski
Film: The Ghost
Release Date: Spring 2010
Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Kim Cattrall, Ewan McGregor, Tom Wilkinson
The scoop: It’s hard for us not to consider the heinous crime for which Polanski is currently under house arrest, but there’s no denying his talent as a filmmaker. His latest follows a former British Prime Minister writing his memoirs with the help of a ghostwriter, who uncovers secrets that put him at risk.
7 .Christopher Nolan
Film: Inception
Release Date: July 16
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard
The scoop: Everything Nolan has done has been fun to watch, and his latest looks to be another mind-blowing affair.
8. Anton Corbijn
Film: The American
Release Date: September 1
Starring: George Clooney, Violante Placido, Thekla Reuten, Paolo Bonacelli
The scoop: He’s only got one feature film under his belt—the Joy Division biopic Control—but we’ve been a fan on Corbijn from his days as music video director, documentarian and photographer. Clooney plays an international assassin ready to retire on his final assignment, and while that sounds like a familiar trope, Clooney isn’t known for picking unoriginal scripts.
9. Darren Aronofsky
Film: Black Swan
Release Date: Fall 2010
Starring: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Winona Ryder
The scoop: Aranofsky’s last film, The Wrestler, made hulking gladiators seem vulnerable. In Black Swan he does the opposite, taking the elegant world of ballet and exposing a vicious underbelly.
10. Anna Boden/Ryan Fleck
Film: It’s Kind of a Funny Story
Release Date: November 2010
Starring: Keir Gilchrist, Zach Galifianakis, Emma Roberts, Viola Davis, Lauren Graham
The scoop: The filmmaking pair of Boden and Fleck have delivered two films (Half Nelson and Sugar) which both managed to be simultaneously sweet and unflinching. Their third is a teenage romance set in a mental health clinic.
11. Michel Gondry
Film: The Green Hornet
Release Date: December 22
Starring: Seth Rogen, Cameron Diaz, Jay Chou, Edward James Olmos, Christoph Waltz
The scoop: A comic-book movie from the director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotted Mind and a half-dozen Björk videos? Count us in.
12. Clint Eastwood
Film: Hereafter
Release Date: December
Starring: Matt Damon, Bryce Dallas Howard, Cecile de France
The scoop: Eastwood’s transformation from one of the most accomplished actors of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s into one of the most accomplished directors of the ’90s and ’00s has been a pleasure to witness. His latest is a supernatural thriller about a blue-collar American, a French journalist and a London school boy.
13. Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Film: Micmacs (à tire-larigot)
Release Date: 2010
Starring: Dany Boon, Andre Dussollier, Nicolas Marie, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Yolande Moreau
The scoop: Jeunet’s Amélie was our pick for the second best movie of the decade. Micmacs is a carnivalesque revenge tale about a man who was struck by a stray bullet in a drive-by shooting. It comes out in March in the U.K., but no U.S. date has been set.
14. Kevin Macdonald
Film: The Eagle of the Ninth
Release Date: 2010
Starring: Channing Tatum, Jamie Bell, Donald Sutherland, Mark Strong, Tahar Rahim
The scoop: Macdonald was a documentary filmmaker before directing Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin in the Last King of Scotland_. His new film reaches much further back into the past, following a Roman centurion in ancient Britain.
15. Wong Kar-Wai
Film: The Grand Master
Release Date: 2010
Starring: Tony Leung, Zhang Ziyi, Chen Chang, Zhao Benshan, Brigitte Lin
Summary: Wong Kar Wai was scheduled to begin shooting this month on a Bruce Lee biopic, meaning that he’ll be following a Norah Jones road-trip movie with a kung-fu flick. Chang (Crouching Tiger, 2046, Red Cliff) will have his work cut out for him portraying the martial arts legend.
This year's crop includes the Registry's first musicvideo -- Michael Jackson's 1983 landmark "Thriller" -- and "Hot Dogs for Gauguin," a 1972 entry from then-NYU student Martin Brest featuring Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman in her film debut.
The titles join 500 other pics that have been added to the Registry since it was created in 1989 by the National Film Preservation Act. Librarian of Congress James H. Billington selects 25 films each year that are deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant," culled from hundreds of titles nominated by the public, members of the National Film Preservation Board and the library's motion picture staff.
The Registry "spotlights the importance of protecting America's matchless film heritage and cinematic creativity," Billington said. "By preserving the nation's films, we safeguard a significant element of our cultural patrimony and history." The films (and video) on the list are not tapped as the "best" of all time but are merely deemed works of enduring importance to American culture, he said.
To be eligible for the Registry, a film must be at least 10 years old. All titles in the registry are available for screening free of charge at the Library of Congress on Capitol Hill.
This year's entries again include a mixture of classics and obscure gems spanning most of the 20th century, from the 1911 live action/animation work "Little Nemo" and Mabel Norman's 1914 silent pic "Mabel's Blunder" to Helen Hill's 1995 student film "Scratch and Crow." Others include 1938's "Jezebel," the William Wyler-directed pic that won Bette Davis her second Oscar; 1957 sci-fi classic "The Incredible Shrinking Man"; and William Wyler's 1942 WWII British homefront drama "Mrs. Miniver," which earned six Oscars, including best picture.
The library reached back to WWI for 1920's "Heroes All," one of many films produced by the Red Cross Bureau of Pictures about the Great War and its aftermath. The WWII era is also represented by 1945's "The Story of G.I. Joe," featuring Burgess Meredith as the gritty war correspondent Ernie Pyle.
Among the other obscure titles added to the registry are 1967's "The Jungle," a docu-drama made by a group of young African-American gang members in Philadelphia, and 1932's "A Study in Reds," an amateur film by Miriam Bennett that spoofed women's clubs and the Soviet menace in the 1930s.
Also selected were the 1927 film "Stark Love," director Karl Brown's depiction of mountaineers of North Carolina and Tennessee, and "The Revenge of Pancho Villa," a compilation film from 1930-36 that demonstrates the early Mexican-American film presence.
Other films from the '30s and '40s were "Under the Western Stars," the 1938 pic that turned Roy Rogers into a matinee idol; 1940's "The Mark of Zorro," with Tyrone Power and Basil Rathbone; and 1949's "The Lead Shoes," from avant-garde filmmaker Sidney Peterson.Among the more prominent titles, 1959's "Pillow Talk" marked the first teaming of Doris Day and Rock Hudson and is considered by the library to be "a time capsule of 1950s America." Sidney Lumet's "Dog Day Afternoon," starring Al Pacino, predicted the contempo era of media frenzy in its portrayal of a bank robbery gone awry as a media circus ensues. Jim Henson solidified his position as a spiritual heir to Walt Disney with the success of 1979's "The Muppet Movie."
Filmmaker Kent MacKenzie's 1961 docu "The Exiles" "sensitively captures the raw essence of a group of 20-something Native Americans who left reservation life in the 1950s to live among the decayed Victorian mansions of Los Angeles' Bunker Hill district." Sergio Leone's 1968 epic "Once Upon a Time in the West" marked a peak of the spaghetti Western genre.
The Registry's other new entrants are 1975's cult-fave toon "Quasi at the Quackadero"; 1986 docu "Precious Images," commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Directors Guild of America; and 1994 experimental pic "The Red Book," from helmer Janie Geiser.
The complete list of 2009 selections:
Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
The Exiles (1961)
Heroes All (1920)
Hot Dogs for Gauguin (1972)
The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)
Jezebel (1938)
The Jungle (1967)
The Lead Shoes (1949)
Little Nemo (1911)
Mabel's Blunder (1914)
The Mark of Zorro (1940)
Mrs. Miniver (1942)
The Muppet Movie (1979)
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Pillow Talk (1959)
Precious Images (1986)
Quasi at the Quackadero (1975)
The Red Book (1994)
The Revenge of the Pancho Villa (1930-36)
Scratch and Crow (1995)
Stark Love (1927)
The Story of G.I. Joe (1945)
A Study in Reds (1932)
Thriller (1983)
Under Western Stars (1938)
By A.O. Scott/The New York Times
The last shot of Michael Haneke’s “White Ribbon” is haunting not because it sums up the unnerving, at times horrifying series of events that have filled up the previous 2 hours 25 minutes, but rather because it seems to unfold as if none of them have taken place. Taken alone, the film’s final image might conjure a mood of gentle, pastoral nostalgia. Here, in glowing, understated black and white, we glimpse part of a world that used to be. The camera sits inside an austerely beautiful village church that is illuminated by winter morning sunlight, its pews filling with congregants whose dark clothes and weathered faces bespeak hardy old virtues of work, faith and family.
By now we know otherwise. The only comfort offered by “The White Ribbon,” a chronicle of small-town German life on the eve of World War I, is that the social order it depicts has vanished from the earth. Good riddance to the good old days! But at the same time, Mr. Haneke may intend that sense of distance, of pastness, to be illusory, so that the strangeness of these people and their doings is shadowed by an uncomfortable sense of recognition. We fool ourselves if we think bygones are bygones. We’re on a guilt trip down memory lane. And though the road twists and turns and reveals some pretty scenery, in the end we arrive in a familiar place, to be lectured and scolded by a filmmaker whose rich craft disguises the poverty of his ideas.
Our guide is the village schoolteacher, played on screen in his relative youth (by Christian Friedel) as an earnest, chubby-faced bumbler and in voice-over narration (by Ernst Jacobi) as a ruminative old man. This teacher, who like most of the adult characters in the film is not referred to by name, is by far the most benign — if also the most ineffectual — authority figure in a place that turns out to be a veritable theme park of patriarchal abuses.
The wholesome facade of this hamlet, with its tidy brick houses and wind-swept wheat fields, where residents tip their hats and address one another with unfailing formality, masks a carnival of cruelty. Children are beaten and molested. Women are silenced and humiliated. Workplace accidents claim the lives of innocent farmwives. Horses and house pets are maimed, cabbages are wantonly decapitated and the only force more fearsome than the brutality of fathers is the innocence of children.
Mr. Haneke, born in 1942 and perhaps the most lauded living European filmmaker with a surname other than Dardenne, traffics in shock and terror, but in a cerebral, systematic way. His films rarely foreshadow their jolts or speed up their plots to generate suspense, but rather proceed, with almost meditative calm, to weave a cocoon of dread around intimations of mystery and implications of violence.
“The White Ribbon,” which won the Palme d’Or in Cannes and the top European Film Award this year, is a rare foray out of the clamor and anomie of modern urban Europe that is Mr. Haneke’s favored setting. The film also marks his return to his native German after a decade of mainly French-language films. In it, he uses the sharp elegance of Christian Berger’s monochrome cinematography (achieved by shooting in color, then draining it away), the grammatical precision of old-fashioned speech and the pageantry of period drama to lull and also to inflame the audience’s expectations. The effect is something like a ghost story, the horror of which is at once elusive and pervasive. What is happening here? Why is it happening?
The answer to the first question: a lot of weird stuff. The town doctor (Rainer Bock) is injured when his horse trips over a wire strung across his gate, apparently for just that sinister purpose. That apparently inexplicable crime is followed by others, including the abduction and beating of one small child and the near blinding of another. There are whispers and denunciations, and visits from the police, but no solutions are forthcoming.
Instead, as suspicions multiply, we are led on a tour of several households, which taken together offer a sociological composite portrait of guilt and repression. The schoolteacher, whose courtship of a milky-fresh young woman named Eva (Leonie Benesch) provides hints of tender comedy, traffics mainly in rumors and surmises while the camera assumes a position of omniscience. (Unless, that is, it is the vehicle for the narrator’s retroactive speculation or self-protecting deceit, which is not unthinkable.)
In due course we enter the homes of the Baron (Ulrich Tukur), the town’s principal employer and landowner; the doctor, a widower with two children and an interesting relationship with the midwife (Susanne Lothar); the steward (Josef Bierbichler); a tenant farmer (Branko Samarovski); and, perhaps most important, the pastor (Burghart Klaussner).
Each of these men, with the partial exception of the poor farmer, represents a different face of power. And each one, accordingly, manifests his own special brand of awfulness, mistreating those close to him with methods appropriate to his station. The Baron is cold and sarcastic with his wife (Ursina Lardi). The steward beats his children in a state of volcanic rage, while the pastor does the same in a mood of pious sorrow.
Monstrous as these daddies are, their children may be worse. A gaggle of towheaded darlings walks through the film, their mild smiles so sinister that they might have wandered in from the 1960 British science-fiction horror chestnut “Village of the Damned.” Anyone who has seen Mr. Haneke’s “Cache” or his twin versions of “Funny Games” will be aware that he does not believe in the blamelessness of youth. Quite the contrary: children, in his world, carry the sins of their parents in concentrated, highly toxic form, and are also capable of a pure, motiveless, experimental evil.
What will become of these particular blond children, who are either demons or victims, driven to mischief by severe paternal discipline or so intrinsically bad that no punishment could suffice? Do the math: it’s 1914. In 20 or 30 years, what do you suppose these children will be up to? Our narrator, well into old age, tells us that he is revisiting the strange events in the village to “clarify things that happened in our country” afterward.
But “The White Ribbon” does the opposite, mystifying the historical phenomenon it purports to investigate. Forget about Weimar inflation and the Treaty of Versailles and whatever else you may have learned in school: Nazism was caused by child abuse. Or maybe by the intrinsic sinfulness of human beings. “The White Ribbon” is a whodunit that offers a philosophically and aesthetically unsatisfying answer: everyone. Which is also to say: no one.
The teacher may be Mr. Haneke’s obvious surrogate: an intellectual whose pursuit of the truth is enabled by his inability to change anything. But really the filmmaker is closer to the pastor, his chosen emblem of blindness and hypocrisy. After caning his children for a minor infraction, the pastor makes his oldest son (Leonard Proxauf) and daughter (Maria-Victoria Dragus) wear white ribbons, which serve both as emblems of shame and reminders of the purity of soul they are in danger of sacrificing. “The White Ribbon” is offered to its grateful, masochistic audience in a similarly punitive and yet oddly forgiving spirit, as a reminder of just how awful we are and how much worse we used to be.
“The White Ribbon” is rated R (under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Sex, violence, repression.
The White Ribbon
Opens on Wednesday in Manhattan.
Written and directed by Michael Haneke; director of photography, Christian Berger; edited by Monika Willi; produced by Stefan Arndt, Veit Heiduschka, Margaret Menegoz and Andrea Occhipinti; released by Sony Pictures Classics. At the Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, South Village. In German, with English subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes.
WITH: Ulrich Tukur (the Baron), Susanne Lothar (the Midwife), Christian Friedel (the Schoolteacher), Burghart Klaussner (the Pastor), Leonie Benesch (Eva), Josef Bierbichler (the Steward), Rainer Bock (the Doctor), Ernst Jacobi (the Narrator), Ursina Lardi (Marie-Louise, the Baroness), Fion Mutert (Sigmund), Branko Samarovski (the Farmer), Leonard Proxauf (Martin),Maria- Victoria Dragus (Klara) and Michael Kranz (the Tutor).
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By Betsy Sharkey/Los Angeles Times
A period piece set on the eve of World War I in an echt Protestant, still-feudal village somewhere in the uptight depths of Northern Germany, The White Ribbon—which won a deserved Palme d'Or at last May's Cannes-fest of Cruelty—is as cold and creepy and secretly cheesy as any of Haneke's earlier films, if not quite as lofty. Instead of sermonizing, Haneke sets himself to honest craftsmanship. Detailed yet oblique, leisurely but compelling, perfectly cast and irreproachably acted, the movie has a seductively novelistic texture complete with a less-than-omniscient narrator hinting at a weighty historical thesis: It's Village of the Damned as re-imagined by Thomas Mann after studying August Sander's photographs of German types while perusing Wilhelm Reich's Mass Psychology of Fascism.
The White Ribbon's original title identifies the movie as "A German Children's Story" and, recounted by the village schoolteacher 40 or 50 years later, this dark fable has a mock legendary aspect. The tale may not reflect "the truth in every detail," the elderly teacher-narrator announces. Much is known only by hearsay and "a lot of it remains obscure to me even today." Many questions are unanswerable, he admits, and yet "the strange events that occurred in our village . . . may cast a new light on some of the goings-on in this country." No need to speculate on what those goings-on might be.
The first strange event occurs seconds into the action, when the irascible village doctor is thrown by his horse, having tripped on a mysterious wire strung across his habitual path. Thereafter, this quiet town, comfortably nestled into its peaceful landscape yet seething with hidden resentments, is subjected to an escalating series of inexplicable accidents and unsolved incidents of terror, most of which are discussed after the fact, but never shown. Some are precipitated by the angry son of a tenant farmer after his mother is fatally injured in a barn collapse while working for the local baron; other events, foretold by dreams and portents, appear connected to a pack of angelic-looking little towheads, led by the pastor's eldest daughter and seemingly possessed of a group mind. In the meantime, the narrator—or, rather, his youthful avatar—shyly woos the equally bashful nanny who watches over the baron's children.
This circumspect courtship may be the one purely innocent activity in a movie unfolding beneath a rubric of innocent purity. Nothing is ever truly revealed, least of all who commissioned the most heinous crimes. With one exception, the only wrongs shown onscreen are committed against the village children—who are regularly subjected to corporal punishment, among other abuses. (There is to be no laffing at these funny games!) In a scene that could have been lifted straight from Reich's Mass Psychology, the implacable pastor, a poster boy for vindictive divinity, ties his eldest son's hands to prevent even the possibility of nocturnal masturbation; the widowed doctor meanwhile engages in unmentionable practices with his 14-year-old daughter. (Notable for its obdurate, unsmiling, and down-right mean-spirited fathers, the town is populated by case studies from The Authoritarian Personality; it might be re-christened Patriarchalischenplatz or just plain Schweinhundtstadt.)
In a sense, Haneke is strictly bound by his own white ribbon. Although based on an original screenplay, the movie strongly resembles his adaptations of Franz Kafka and Joseph Roth. The odd quality of seeming to faithfully follow an acknowledged literary classic is heightened by Haneke's deliberate, almost parodic, classical filmmaking. The camera is quiet; the compositions are studied and seldom in close-up. The black-and-white images are etched on the screen with precise hyperreal clarity. (Christian Berger's impeccable cinematography was cited as the year's best by the New York Film Critics Circle.) Only rarely is the ominous stillness disturbed, as with the sudden eruption of deftly choreographed collective activity that is the town's harvest festival and, not coincidentally, leads to the single instance of revolt against Herr Baron.
History has the same brusque impact. Just as the baroness prepares to leave her unpleasant husband, citing not only his own insensitivity but the intolerable "malice, envy, apathy, [and] brutality" of his town, the steward rushes in with news that Archduke Ferdinand of Austria has been assassinated in Sarajevo. End of story, almost. All police investigations are halted; everything is subsumed by the expectation of war, if not the 30-year nightmare about to convulse Europe. The final shot finds the townspeople gathered in church, perhaps for the last time. In any case, the narrator maintains that he never saw any of them again.
No one's idea of a cinematic cuddle-bunny, Haneke is as much strategist as filmmaker and more pedagogue than visionary. The White Ribbon is certainly the most beautiful movie he has made—a sort of triumphantly willed Meisterwerk. His use of narrative uncertainty, resembling those in the unsolved mystery at the heart of Caché, may be standard-issue, but there's no denying The White Ribbon's seriousness and unity. The severe, withholding culture that Haneke critiques is precisely mirrored by his methods. The White Ribbon keeps the viewer in a state of perpetual uncertainty, but it's more than clear how things will end.
J. Hoberman will be on leave for the next two months
