Film Reviews by CH

A dense primeval forest canopy on the edge of US. suburbia shelters a father and teenage daughter, living unaccountably on the wild side. They collect mushrooms and rainwater, rub sticks together to light the campfire (with the occasional sneaky trip to Walmart when stocks get low). So far, so paradise found…escaping the rat race with no address, no phones or tech,  just books, chess games and dad’s safety drills. Is it possible to live wild and incognito in US. or anywhere these days? What if 4 walls, a dry ceiling and suburban community living is, in fact, the pinnacle of civilised and human organisational achievement ?

A film about a film maker whose efforts to capture daily rural life are thwarted by elderly folk, not least his own aged parents reluctance to learn their lines or act for the camera. The hapless repetiteur promptings confuse the directors efforts to micromanage these mischievous elders. A charming film with gentle humour and sadness at a way of life being lost to legislative modernisation.

A beautiful and cleverly crafted film that shines it’s light into the darkness of the human heart and soul…….this is a film to be watched many times over for nuances of human behaviour, reminding us that however small, the possibility of change, acceptance and understanding of our enemy is always there. 

Rupert Everett pouts and glowers his way through this Bondarchuk film (which not surprisingly so far no-one has reviewed.) The novel Quiet Flows the Don by Sholokov about Cossack village life before the Russian Revolution is interspersed with the travails of a very mean and moody Rupert Everett, as he negotiates his way around the pitfalls and snares of love and duty. The novel itself is quite a difficult read and I’m not convinced that this interpretation by Bondarchuck won over the audiences in the same way that his epic film War and Peace did. Quiet Flows the Don isn’t quite the masterpiece of epic cinema it strives to be,  with a Dr Zhivago-esque Hollywood orchestral score.  However with many dramatic well choreographed horse mounted Cossack battle scenes, historically the film may well stand the test of time.

Families…..we’ve all got them and we didn’t choose them. Trapped in those dark, dense sticky spiders webs of lies, silence and deceit, families grind us down with their power crazed games of one upmanship and emotional blackmail. Festen gathers together dysfunctional adult siblings at the Patriarchs 60th birthday party, where they resume their battles to be heard, to be understood and to be revenged, neatly picking up where they left off messily years ago. A Savage film that is not really viewing for the faint hearted.

A hard hitting film, a very hard watch.  Predators circle the unwary and naive new city dwellers, where human life is cheap and red in tooth and claw….everyone is dispensable prey in the Manila food chain.

Don’t even try to guess the direction, ulterior motives or outcomes in this tense Danish drama…it’s a yarn and a half, let the film slowly unravel to reveal itself to you. The brilliant Mads Mikkelson as inscrutable as ever.

Another excellent tense and bleak slow burn drama from Russia (directed by Popogrebsky). Out on the furthest, fringes of the Russian arctic circle, at an old Soviet weather station, an inexperienced student is partnered as summer assistant to a surly meteorologist to relieve the lonely tedium of taking readings and logging statistics. The scientist simmers with rage at the boy’s careless confidence, but finally entrusts to this student, the daily routine readings, enabling him to take (illicit) time off to go fishing. The isolated archipelago has a dark recent history that leaks and seeps into the inexorable descent of the relationship between the two, (not unlike the madness and menace that grips in the recent British film ‘The Lighthouse’) 

The Banishment based on a novel by William Sorayan, interpretation by Russian film maker  Zvagyntsev opens in a starkly silent  and claustrophobic industrial city, then moves to wide open grassland locations reminiscent of the paintings of American artist Andrew Wyeth. The story is an uneasy one, the unraveling of a marriage  that suddenly turns a sharp and unexpected corner, descending rapidly and inevitably to tragedy. Blood is thicker than water….the bloody theme opens the first chapter with the shady mafia bloodied brother……keeping the blood brothers family honour is what must be preserved and ultimately avenged.

If Bresson had lived a few more decades he might have made films about the morality of some Virtual Brave new world of unfettered Global online fraud, scam phishing, Bitcoin (and Nigerian Romance scammers constantly defrauding silly old Ladies into sending their pensions and entire life savings.) Sadly Bresson’s film L’Argent is a victim of the passage of time, and we are that Virtual Brave New world, now inundated by the tsunami of cashless exchanges thundering under the technological bridge of total unaccountability.

A meandering modern quasi Chekovian scripted film set in outskirts of Marseille with some gritty locational detail…..noisy trains cross the rail viaduct built into the cliff face, security police constantly scouring the coves for illegal immigrants..The reluctant return of (ageing and quarrelsome) siblings to the deathbed of their sick father, is a chance to pick at old familial sores and settle old scores. The actress (d’un certain age) consummates her stay with a one night stand with a young fisherman, the pretentious and depressed old writer’s young girlfriend elopes with a local doctor, whose elderly parents have quietly decided commit suicide rather than become a burden to encroaching modern society. Not feelgood French fare

Rather overlong melodrâme that meanders around the coquettish and tedious past history of a cloistered nun and her slavishly devoted and equally depressed admirer (recently returned from the Napoleonic wars.) I may give this film another go sometime, but suspect that Balzac’s book may be a better read.

Much to admire in this gloomy and dark humoured film. The mounting irritations of relatives overstaying their welcome is a theme Ceylan explored in his film Winter Sleep and he does so here in Uzak…..the claustrophobia of a sudden and unwanted domestic intimacy, the petty disruptions of banal daily routines and constant mirror of encroaching loneliness and desperate, useless orbiting of the other.

Initially quite a gripping understated  film…..but about 90 minutes in I wondered if I should definitely know by now, who this collection of malingering characters are and how relevant or irrelevant are they to the plot? I lost the plot altogether during the final blue lit cabaret scene….was everyone on drugs? Was some unseen overlord spiking their green juice? Too obscure, surreal and clever for me to follow.

This gently comic film takes its time to link one small tableau with the next scenario,, overlayed with what the French might describe as ennui or lassitude and Turks might refer to huzun (world weary acceptance of fate in all its tedium and banality). There were so many interwoven comic moments, the simple man child with his beloved nameless pet donkey, a boutique owning uncle trying to bring chic fashion to the menfolk of the town (with a single improbably busty female display mannequin and a range of clothes that seemingly fit no-one.) A grumpy Turkmen musician travels around with a photographer searching for that ideal location to create a tourist brochure and a lovelorn chicken factory worker makes a final last ditch attempt to court the object of his desire. I loved this Iranian film of closely observed tristesse and mal de coeur of daily life in the flat Borderlands.