Road movies, partly motivated by US’ sprawling
highway network and neon-lit motels, and partly by the possibilities of
existential meditations, formed the most definitive aspect of Wenders’
filmography. The Wrong Move was the
middle chapter in his famed ‘Road Movie
Trilogy’ – it was preceded by the fascinating Alice in the Cities and was followed by the powerful Kings of the Road. This made-for-TV film
was also the most curious, overly philosophical and experimental of the lot (also
the only one filmed in colour), even if it never reached the breathtaking
beauty of the two that this was sandwiched by, thus making it the least watched
of the trio. Wilhelm (Rüdiger Vogler), the depressive, uncommunicative and
directionless protagonist suffering from a deep sense of existential and
identity crisis, wants to be a writer, but hasn’t managed to translate his
thoughts into something tangible. Realizing that he’s become akin to a frog in
a well, he decides to plunge into a randomly chosen trip across West Germany in
search of meaning and truth. He’s joined in his wanderings by an equally weird
and drifting group of fellow travelers – Therese (Hanna Schygulla), an alluring
but deeply lonely movie actress, Laertes (Hans-Christian Blech), an ageing
hippie-like street musician, Mignon (Nastassja Kinski), a young and mute juggler
of ambiguous sexuality, and Landau (Peter Kean), a sensitive poet of rather
limited talents. The bleak tone, rambling narrative and deliberately disjointed
interactions between the oddball characters, along with the underlying thematic
strand of regrets, ennui, confusion and aimlessness, made this a dense,
aesthetically challenging and confounding watch – striking and off-kilter in
some parts while dry and self-conscious in others.
Director: Wim Wenders
Genre: Drama/Existential Drama/Road Movie
Language: German
Country: Germany
Husbands and Wives, Woody’s
fabulous take on his idol Bergman’s Scenes from A Marriage, might well be the last masterpiece in his prolific
filmography thus far. Mordantly funny, incredibly penetrating, wryly ironic, deeply
perceptive, and filled with elements of docu-drama, the film provided a darkly
fascinating examination on marriage, fidelity and neurosis amongst Woody’s pet
demography of intellectual, urban, upper middle-class. When their best friends
Jack (Sydney Pollack) and his striking wife Sally (Judy Davis) casually
announce during a dinner invitation that they have decided to split, the news
do not just infuriate Gabe Roth (Woody) and his wife Judy (Mia Farrow), it
literally rips apart the veneer of their seemingly happy married life by
bringing to the surface rarely spoken discontents and dissatisfaction in their
relationship. While Jack starts dating a pretty, dim-witted aerobics instructor
(Lysette Anthony) and Sally plunges into a tentative affair with the dandy and
younger Michael (Liam Neeson), it’s clear that neither relationships would last
long. On the other hand, Gabe, a novelist who borrows freely from his own life,
starts getting deeply besotted with his precocious student (Juliette Lewis) who
hero-worships him, while Judy finds her infatuation towards Michael, who’s her
colleague, turning into love, and one realizes that their lives have started
taking divergent paths. Faux-interviews of the characters were slyly juxtaposed
with the narrative, which added to the film’s brittle, pungent, self-deprecatory,
bare-knuckled and at times disconcerting humour (given Woody and Mia’s scandalous
break-up during the time of the film’s release) and underlying melancholia,
aided in no small parts by the savage, witty and perceptive script, terrific
character arcs, and fabulous performances by the ensemble cast.
Note: My earlier review of the film can be found here.
Director: Woody Allen
Genre: Comedy Drama/Urban Comedy/Marriage Drama
Language: English
Country: US
The beautifully titled A Pigeon Sat on the Branch Reflecting on Existence brought to close
Roy Andersson’s droll, poignant, episodic and highly ambitious ‘Grandeur of Existence Trilogy’, which comprised of Songs from the Second Floor and You, the Living, and made 7 years apart
from each other. Mordant humour, deadpan observations on the perils of modern
existence, melancholic undertones, stylized production designs, static
camerawork, multiple tableaus stringed around a central narrative, and
meditations on such themes as mortality, unemployment, loneliness,
socio-economic oppression, and so forth, imbued the trilogy with the feel of
one continuous show shot as three different films. The central tale dealt with
the woes, frustrations and existential crises of Sam (Nils Westblom) and
Jonathan (Holger Andersson), two travelling salesmen striving in futility to
sell novelty items intended to make people laugh – ironically, sight of the two
glum, ageing and down-on-luck men, with no companions but each other, and
living in claustrophobic apartments, was anything but smile-inducing. Various
vignettes were woven around this – the bitingly funny sequence where the sons
of a dying lady try to get hold of valuables clutched by her as she’s convinced
she can carry them to afterlife; an enthralling and deeply tragic musical interlude
where a partially crippled waitress at a bar rouses emotions among a group of
young, sad-faced war drafts many years back; Charles XII, the glibly callous
Swedish king, making a stop at a diner in order to make a trip to the loo; et
al. Despite the been-there-seen-that feel that is bound to emanate having
watched the earlier two films, on its own this once again managed in being a
simultaneously playful and bleak work filled with striking visual signatures
and a running sense of pathos.
Director: Roy Andersson
Genre: Black Comedy/Social Satire/Ensemble Film
Language: Swedish
Country: Sweden
Peppermint Frappe,
Saura’s first of 9 films with his muse Geraldine Chaplin and the brilliant
first chapter in his Bourgeois Trilogy
(which also comprised of Stress is Three
and Honeycomb), was highly
reminiscent of the Bunuel and Hitchcock masterpieces El and Vertigo,
respectively. The film, through delightful concoction of dark, brooding
character study, and an alternately playful and pungent tone, provided a striking
critique on Franco-era bourgeois morality and shallowness, and a lacerating
examination on obsession and repression. The seemingly discordant opening
sequence, showing a pair of male hands meticulously cutting images of models
from fashion magazines purportedly for his personal scrap-book, exquisitely set
the thematic context for what followed. The hands, as it turned out, belong to Julián
(José Luis López Vázquez), a middle-aged physician who runs a clinic with the
aid of his shy, introverted assistant Ana (Chaplin). When a long-time friend
(Alfredo Mayo) introduces his much younger, newly-wed wife Elena (also played
by Chaplin) to him, he immediately becomes enraptured by the carefree,
liberated and outgoing lady as she reawakens a memory and also titillates his
suppressed desires; he starts pursuing her with increasing vigour, albeit in
futility, with his brazen obsession further fuelled by her casual flirtations
and deliberate teasing, and he even starts moulding Ana, through a mix of cajoling
and coercion, in Elena’s image. Understandably, these increasingly sordid and
desperate attempts lead the tale to a disturbing climax. Loaded with socio-politico-religious
imagery and commentaries, this gleefully perverse, subversive and captivating
film boasted of an arresting central performance by Vázquez and an equally
fascinating dual-turn in diametrically opposite roles (a reverse of what Bunuel
did in That Obscure Object of Desire)
by Chaplin.
Director: Carlos Saura
Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Romantic Drama
Language: Spanish
Country: Spain
During its short lived history Amicus
Productions became the only serious rival to Hammer Films in the domain of British
horror B-films, and Tales from the Crypt,
based on stories from the cult EC Comics, remains the most well-known among the
seven portmanteau horror films that it produced, thanks in no small measures to
the popular 7-season HBO TV series. Connected by a framing story about a group
of 5 tourists stuck in an underground catacomb and made to face their futures
by a robed man (Ralph Richardson), it comprised of 5 shorts that were
deliciously misanthropic in their portrayal of the grotesque side of human
nature and in their espousal of the tenet that human society is basically
rotten to the core. In the gleefully bloody …And
Through the House, a scheming lady (Joan Collins), after murdering her
doting husband, finds herself running from a homicidal lunatic on the loose; in
Reflections on Death, a businessman
(Ian Hendry) coolly abandons his wife, only to be left disfigured by an
accident while eloping with his mistress; in the deeply melancholic Poetic Justice, a wealthy snob (Robin
Phillips) decides to get rid of his neighbor, an aged garbage man (Peter
Cushing), but faces a horrible comeuppance in return; in Wish You Were Here, a rendition of the renowned W.W. Jacobs short
story The Monkey’s Paw, a business
man (Richard Greene) close to bankruptcy faces a horrendous future thanks to an
ancient statuette; and in Blind Alleys,
the residents of a home for the blinds exact a clinical revenge on their
callous director (Nigel Patrick). Despite the weak framing device and a
forgettable climax, the demented episodes made this a rather enjoyable ride.
Director: Freddie Francis
Genre: Horror/Thriller/Omnibus Film
Language: English
Country: UK
