NYFF 2009: Mother

Mother examines the bond between an overbearing maternal figure and her dim son, and although its tonal shifts are sometimes jarring and do not always work, Kim Hye-ja’s performance is a revelation

Bong Joon-ho / South Korea / 2009 / 129m

Unconcerned with proving the crime and punishment system of South Korea ineffectual, Bong Joon-ho’s Mother exists in a very similar community to his 2003 breakthrough Memories of Murder and also follows a similar procedural format. A love/hate relationship of genre filmmaking emerges, and the film is held together entirely by Kim Hye-ja’s performance as the mother of a mentally challenged young man who clearly would not be able to live without his mother.

Surrealism takes over the first few frames, as a woman is seen dancing in a vast field by her lonesome self. The camera observes this lady from a distance as she gets her groove on in a crazed manner. Enter Do-joon, the woman’s slow son, who, in the next scene, is hit by a Mercedes Benz on the side of the road. The mother comes to his rescue, claiming that he is bleeding when, in fact, she is actually the one who cut her own finger in her apothecary. Too distracted by her son’s wellbeing to care about her own, Do-joon’s mother is on the phone in the next scene trying to find out if he is okay. Do-joon is then accused of killing a local schoolgirl, and his mom sets out to solve the case herself and prove his innocence. Her search leads to Jin-tae, her son’s best friend, whose innocence is proven and who then assists her in her search for the real killer.

Bong’s shifts in tone, from slapstick comedy to familial drama to suspense thriller and back again, weaken the impact of the film overall. Thankfully, it ends gracefully on a high note with an elderly dance party on a bus in which Kim Hye-ja once again gets to show off her sweet dance moves. Known for playing caring mothers in numerous television series and films, Hye-ja shines in this beautifully understated and subtle role. The score, by composer Lee Byeong-woo, is powerful in appropriate dramatic scenes. All in all, the narrative works for the most part and Mother proves that the matriarch is the most important person in a boy’s life.

Adios, King.

I took TJ's advice today and got the Chicken Salad Melt with Cheddar. It was delectable. In similar, food-related news, the Chickpea by the Landmark Sunshine Cinema on East Houston has closed. What a shame, I loved their baked falafel. Thankfully, there are two other locations - one in Chelsea and one in Union Square. I know I'll be making a trip to one soon. Last night I mixed apple cider with vanilla ice cream - honestly, it was one of the best ideas I've had in a while. Today, I disposed of the potato and leek soup from the farm I bought last Sunday, it was very bland and I could not imagine eating more of it. Until next time, adiós.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

I purchased a Chicken Salad Melt with Swiss today at the bagel place on Lexington. It was delicious, made even better because I have not eaten meat in a few days. I attempted to cook some chicken on my George Foreman Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine yesterday but it went horribly wrong. I settled with some Thai lemongrass noodles. The more I listen to Grizzly Bear's Horn on Plenty, the more I become one with it - especially "Shift" and "Service Bell". My last.fm radio station knows me far too well - it's always playing Radiohead, The Magnetic Fields, Beach House, and The Smiths. Sometimes I just leave it on and let my mind wander. I've picked Kerouac's Visions of Cody back up and I'm finally nearing the end. Ginsberg has some interesting insights in The Visions of the Great Rememberer, but it doesn't make it any less difficult of a reading. It's very un-like a novel and more like poetry which you could pick any page and start reading from there. Also, I forgot to mention, Patricia had a laughing fit at lunch today, which Sasha and I caught. Neter and TJ were not as affected by it. I'm seeing Mother with Deb (how appropriate) and White Material by my lonesome, which I do not mind (actually prefer), on Saturday. On Sunday, I'm seeing Life During Wartime and Bluebeard with Gary and Rose and then Broken Embraces. I hope Penélope is there, and Pedro. I do not think I'm going to be able to live here at Educational Housing Services for another semester. I want to live at home and save my money. Commuting is not a problem, I did it all summer for four days a week. I'll have to figure out my schedule when they begin letting students sign up for their spring courses. We'll see what happens. My chin hurts a lot tonight, maybe you can fix that.

NYFF 2009: The White Ribbon

Michael Haneke examines the social ills of another time in The White Ribbon, his negative worldview still strong but inflected with a slight humanism

Michael Haneke / Germany, Austria, France, Italy / 2009 / 144m

Set amongst a small community in the north of Germany during the year 1913 on the brink of World War I, The White Ribbon (ironically subtitled “A German Children's Story”) is much less concerned with shocking its audience than it is with painfully recreating a time and place in history for its characters to exist within. Sure, there are alarming instances of animal cruelty and child abuse, but it wouldn’t be a Haneke film without those nasty bits. Tame compared with his other films, Haneke structures his film around a string of wicked events happening to and by the villagers of this small community.

The film begins with voice-over narration; a man’s voice tells us that this is the best of what he can remember of the story and most of it is based on hearsay. In the first scene, the local doctor is injured when his horse stumbles over a trip wire intentionally set us across a field on two trees. The next horrific act, not seen on screen, is that of a farm worker’s wife falling through the Baron’s barn floor. The farm worker’s son decides to lay the blame on the Baron for his mother’s death and wrecks his employer’s cabbage crop. The son of the Baron and Baroness is then found badly beaten and tied upside down in the barn, thankfully still alive.

The White Ribbon might sound grim on paper, and it is a film filled with its share of malicious characters, but where Haneke’s period piece really shines is the depiction of youthful innocence and human kindness. A very young boy asking his nanny about death, and finding out his mother is actually dead and not on a long trip is a particularly poignant moment. The schoolteacher, who also acts as the narrator years after the events of the film, is the most pure character, with wholesome intentions to court coy but outspoken Eva, a nanny at the Baron’s estate.

By analyzing the power structure of the village, Haneke is working with familiar themes like oppression and the lower class versus the upper class. Haneke does not provide easy answers, as he said in his own words during the Q&A, he “refuses to give instructions on how to interpret his films.” A viewer of this film should not go in expecting Haneke to answer the film’s central mysteries, but allow him to take them to a time and place that seems eerily familiar to today’s society.

The film is shot in monochromatic black and white so it is easier for the viewer to interact with it and also so the feel of it fits the time period, when black and white photography reigned supreme. Christian Berger fills each image completely, rich in detail and utilizing the foreground, midground, and background entirely. The costume design by Moidele Bickel is meticulous and impressive, while there is no traditional score, just music that comes from within the set-up world of the film. The White Ribbon has a lived in quality, and sustains interest throughout its 144 minute running time – it is both sprawling, but tightly wound thanks to the editing by Monika Willi. It is quite an impressive feat for Michael Haneke, a true European auteur.

A Serious Man

With a familiar formalist look, the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man has all their stylistic and substantial trademarks, but it’s also their most mature and personal film yet

Joel and Ethan Coen / USA / 2009 / 105m

What better way to start off A Serious Man, the Coen Brothers’ new mystery of a film, with an enigmatic Yiddish parable shot in a different format than the rest of it? Prior to this scene, the film opens with a French rabbi Rashi quote, “Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you,” which sets the tone perfectly – and which Larry Gopnik, a physics professor living in Minneapolis in 1967, struggles with the entire duration of a serious midlife crisis. His wife tells him that she’s seeing someone else and asks for a traditional ritual divorce, his son is forever on the run from his pot dealer, his brother is being sought by the police for gambling, and his daughter steals from him wallet and doesn’t go to Hebrew school because she needs to do her hair. All the while Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody to Love” plays over key scenes in Joel and Ethan Coen’s successful attempt to integrate autobiographical bits into a smart, black comedy that is more serious than it gives itself credit.

By loosely adapting the story of Job, The Coen Brothers are asking some weighty questions. Does God exist? Why do bad things happen to good people? What role should religion play in a man’s life? Most of which are not answered, depending on the viewer’s interpretation of the film. Larry is also being blackmailed by Clive Park, a Korean student from his class, to change his grade from an F to a more favorable mark. Clive’s father comes to Larry’s house, stating that he will sue him for defamation if he keeps the envelope of money Clive left of Larry’s desk. The conversation ends with the father whispering, “Accept the mystery,” a motto most viewers should take seriously, although a deeper look into the themes of this work should also be considered.

The Coen’s script is specific to the era. Drugs and rock and roll music were becoming more culturally relevant in the suburbs. Michael Stuhlbarg is pokerfaced in his portrayal of Larry, working from a particularly dense and almost literary screenplay. Carter Burwell’s score is appropriate and Roger Deakins’ lensing is crisp and crafty, aligning flawlessly with the Coen’s editing (under the usual pseudonym Roderick Jaynes). After working with big names in No Country for Old Men and Burn After Reading, The Coen Brothers decide to fill the supporting cast with mostly unknowns, who are all brilliant in their performances nonetheless and there is no reason why they should stay unknown for much longer. A Serious Man has staying power, and the bewildering ending only proves that there is no order in the world and begs the question of why we even ask questions like, “Why me,” to begin with.

NYFF 2009: Antichrist

Exorcising his personal demons, Lars von Trier has purged one of the most mesmerizingly cinematic films of the year; Antichrist does not disappoint and must be experienced

Lars von Trier / Denmark / 2009 / 109m

It’s a fact: self-identified “greatest director of the world” Lars von Trier evokes strong reactions from critics with his controversial films. Antichrist is no different as it was simultaneously booed and applauded at the Cannes premiere, although it received more positive responses from Toronto and New York crowds. Von Trier said that he could offer no justification for the film, except his absolute belief in it and that it is the most important of his career. Working out of a two year depression, von Trier made Antichrist as an exercise in writing and a therapeutic way of overcoming his condition. Believe it or not, Antichrist is a work of art – a pure, thought-provoking piece of filmmaking teeming with a constantly engaging visual sense, intense sexually violent, violently sexual and religious imagery, and two performers who are completely dedicated to their craft.

The structure of Antichrist is as follows: Prologue, Chapter One (Grief), Chapter Two (Pain), Chapter Three (Despair), Chapter Four (The Three Beggars), Epilogue. The Prologue has the sense of an opera, as the aria "Lascia ch'io pianga" from Handel's Rinaldo permeates the perfectly executed mise-en-scène. An unnamed couple are shown making passionate love, while their child, Nic, gets out of his crib and climbs onto a table by the window. After Nic brushes three figures with the names of the chapters off the table, he plummets to his death. She is seen climaxing and the snow continues to fall. The whole sequence is monochromatic and slowed down, utilizing a different kind of film stock that stretches seconds of footage out to several minutes, creating a dreamy atmosphere. Every aspect works in conjunction, the couple having sex and the laundry cycle working at the same rhythm.

In Chapter One, aptly titled “Grief,” He, a therapist, believes he knows better than She’s doctors and attempts to guide her through the grieving process. She is apprehensive to his cognitive therapy techniques and has frequent outbursts where she tells him that she doesn’t think he cares about her and questions his own grieving. He thinks that traveling to a cabin in a forest ironically called Eden will help her overcome her fear of this place where she brought Nic the previous summer to write a thesis on gynocide.

The imagery is frequently horrific, particularly that of a fox disemboweling itself and a deer with a dead calf hanging from its rear. There is genital mutilation, of both sexes, and it is no laughing matter. At the end, it becomes somewhat of a cat and mouse power play between the two and loses its grasp, but this misstep is helped by a particularly ambiguous Epilogue that depicts hundreds of faceless women obscuring Willem Dafoe’s character on a hill in the woods. Charlotte Gainsbourg keeps up with her character’s emotions to the extent that it could be considered one of the bravest female performances ever committed to celluloid. Anthony Dod Mantle’s cinematography is admirable, making the woodsy setting otherworldly, magical, and sinister at the same time. There will not be a shortage of interpretations when it comes to Antichrist, an important film made at one of the pinnacle moments for art cinema that should be required viewing for film students. It simply needs to be seen.

NYFF 2009: Lebanon

War is hell (surprise! surprise!) in Samuel Maoz’s visceral debut Lebanon

Samuel Maoz / Israel / 2009 / 92m

Taking a stylistic cue from Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat, Samuel Maoz’s Lebanon takes place completely inside of a tank, with the exception of the first and last shot. This presents a challenge to both the filmmaker and the viewer. Maoz’s film is not completely successful, although it works on an aural and visual level. Comparisons to Waltz with Bashir are only indicatory of the time and war, while comparisons to The Hurt Locker are unfounded on another plateau – director Kathryn Bigelow understands the rhythm of war and knows how to express it, while the spatial restriction controls how much Maoz is able to convey, and the confidence he must have in his actors. Unfortunately, Lebanon’s impact is weakened by the cast’s theatrical acting and Maoz’s uncertainty about the message he wants to convey.

Within the confines of the dank, limited space, Maoz introduces four soldiers – the shooter, the driver, the shell loader and the leader of the troupe. A commanding officer appears here and there to relay the group’s mission, but the film concentrates on these four young men who are clearly not ready to be fighting any kind of war. Shmulik, the man in charge of firing, is loosely based off Maoz’s own experiences in the 1982 Lebanon War. In the beginning, when the enemy is coming straight at the tank, he is unable to gun them down. This ends in the death of an Israeli soldier from the outsider of the tank, who is then thrown in and acts as a constant reminder of his hesitancy. The viewer never gets to know the soldiers well enough to care about them, and this is a major problem as Maoz has no other choice with the gimmick he chose to employ but to script the action solely around them. The dialogue exists as purely functional to pass the time and advance the story.

The film opens with a beautiful, straightforward eye level shot of a field of limp sunflowers. Maoz returns to this image at the end, but with a tank driving through it. So painful and hackneyed is one of the obvious messages he is trying to express – war is hell and beauty is destroyed by the carnality of human behavior and politics – that it is hard to understand why the film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Also, by the end it’s hard to remember the aspects of the film that were actually successful, like Alex Claude’s perfect sound design and the minimalist score by Nicolas Becker. Giora Bejach’s photography is particularly striking with the way light plays on the actors’ faces. Maoz also successfully explores the soldiers’ feelings and their tenuous relationships. In one of the most powerful and affecting scenes, one of the soldiers shows compassion towards a Syrian war prisoner. In the end, Lebanon never does rise above its gimmicky premise and experimental style.