Limelight, for all practical purposes, could very well be considered as Chaplin’s swansong, as it was composed in the form of an ode to his profession and his life, and was made at a time when he was a political pariah. An ageing former tramp-comedian, who is no more a name to be reckoned with, is desperately hoping for an encore and one final hurrah – the storyline, as can be easily appreciated, is highly autobiographical in nature, and is filled with dollops of nostalgia and melancholia. Chaplin himself played the role of Calvero, the drunken protagonist who dreams of his glorious past, that is when he is not taking care of Terry (Claire Bloom), a beautiful suicidal girl and former ballerina whose responsibility got entrusted to him by chance rather than by choice. Despite its rather melancholic and deeply affecting theme – hell, this was probably one of the rare films in which Chaplin dies in the end – it has no dearth of comic gags, witticisms and humour. The dream sequence where Calvero and Terry are conversing with each other in ironic one-liners was ample proof that Chaplin was still the genius with words and comedy that he always was. And the sequence near the end where he teamed up with Buster Keaton, arguably his greatest contemporary but now an ageing man himself, well, that sure took the cake for me – if not for anything, to see two of the great masters on the same pedestal. The background score, composed by Chaplin himself, remains another highlight of the film. Yes, the movie is unabashedly sentimental and a tad wordy too for its own good, and nowhere close to Chaplin’s best works, but it also remains a film worth savouring for all cinephiles.
Director: Charlie Chaplin
Genre: Comedy/Drama/Showbiz Drama
Language: English
Country: US
The phrase ‘American Dream’ has historically symbolized hope for better times; yet, dreams can be dark, crippling and shallow, too, and this in essence formed the core theme of this excellent albeit underrated and largely unrecognized film noir. Like most archetypal noirs, the movie shows the slow but sure disintegration of a model happy family owing to a casual mistake (if I’m allowed to use that word) committed by the head of the family. John Forbes (Dick Powell) leads a seemingly contended life – he’s a well-to-do insurance man, has a beautiful wife and a cute little son. But, from his very first appearance it becomes clear that he’s not really satisfied with his routine existence, and as a logical consequence to his sense of ennui and dissatisfaction with his status quo, he ends up having an affair with a client of his – a classic damsel-in-distress (Lizabeth Scott). In a world as dark and doomed as in noirs, adultery is inevitably followed with blackmail and murder, and Forbes’ life to ends up following that downward spiraling path. Powell gave a startling turn as a man who, like classic noir anti-heroes, who strays despite having everything to lose – he perfectly managed to make his character both utterly believable and subtly tragic through his composed performance. The supporting turns, too, were noteworthy, especially that of Raymond Burr as a seedy and psychotic private eye with an imposing physical presence. This moody and compelling film painted a truly desolate and distressing picture of life, the ephemeral nature of happiness and how everything one cherishes can fall apart so easily courtesy just one inadvertent indiscretion.
Director: Andre De Toth
Genre: Crime Drama/Film Noir
Language: English
Country: US
The Joke, adapted from the debut novel of the same name by the famed Czech writer Milan Kundera, and directed by Jaromil Jires, was one of the most politically charged movies to have come out of the Czech New Wave movement. That, combined with its subversive humour and sharp commentary on the then-totalitarian regime, ensured that it was promptly banned by the powers that by. The joke that the movie’s title refers to was an innocuous and a tad cynical statement made by the film’s protagonist, Ludvik, to his frigid and politically-bent fiancé during his college days in the Stalinist-era – and this had resulted in his expulsion both from the Party and university. Now, a couple of decades later, the middle-aged, embittered and even more cynical Ludvik (excellently played by Josef Somr) has returned Prague with the sole intention of exacting revenge on his buddy who had done him in all those years back, by seducing his wife. The narrative of this crisply timed film regularly alternates between the past and the present, thus deftly revealing the changed perspective of the protagonist as well as his inability to disassociate with the events – the betrayal by his girlfriend and his friends, as also his compulsory days in the army and forced labour in the mines, that destroyed his life, filled him with bitterness and disillusionment, and turned him into an isolated person. The allegorical story, filled with pinching wit and a rather bleak point-of-view of life, marvelously portrayed the dehumanizing nature of the Communist society, and how the diktat for optimism and emphasis on the community breaks the spirit of the individual. The director also made absolutely terrific use of music to accentuate the sense of loss, loneliness and sadness.
Director: Jaromil Jires
Genre: Drama/Political Satire
Language: Czech
Country: Czech Republic (erstwhile Czechoslovakia)
Alexander Payne returned to the director’s chair for a feature film a good seven years after his last film, Sideways, with this one, but the end product is a proof of the fact that he hasn’t really lost any of his touch. The Descendants, which is a movie about one man’s vain attempts at coping with loss, tragedy and infidelity, that, despite its seriocomic tone, is filled with warmth, poignancy and a certain degree of exuberance – and this makes this film quite unique in his filmography since Payne is mostly associated with biting satires. Matt King (George Clooney) is a well-off Hawaiian workaholic who is on the threshold of earning millions by selling a piece of real estate. However, he’s struck by tragedy when his wife becomes comatose after a boat accident, which gets further amplified when he learns that his wife was having an affair behind his back. The fact that he has never spent much time with his two daughters, especially his teenage daughter who has had some issues with addiction, has made his situating that much more delicate and difficult. George Clooney has given a gently affecting and restrained performance as a family man who seems to be at his wit’s end at the sudden turn of events. Payne underscored most of the dramatic moments as a result of which one might feel a tad hoodwinked from the standpoint of the film’s emotional content, and neither did he take us to any great depths so to speak; but he also interjected the film’s rather serious theme with moments of wry humour and subtle jabs at social mores which nicely complemented both the pathos and the few moments of contentedness that the characters experience.
Director: Alexander Payne
Genre: Drama/Comedy/Family Drama
Language: English
Country: US
David Cronenberg has travelled a long way over the course of his eventful career – from shocking body horror and grotesque sexual imagery to the movies he’s been making in the last few years, which, in comparison, appear almost mainstream on account of their restraint and understated natures. A Dangerous Method, in which he’s chronicled the complex and deteriorating relationship between two legendary figures of 20th century – Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen), father of psychoanalysis, and Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), father of analytical psychology and a disciple of the former during his earlier days. To complicate matters further, the presence of the Russian-Jewish lady Sabrina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), initially a patient of Jung but later goes on to become a psychoanalyst herself, creates an uneasy and turbulent psychological triangle of sorts between them. The film is extremely verbose in nature thus necessitating undivided attention from the viewers; further most sequences that had dramatic potential have been deliberately underplayed in order to ensure that its darker themes remain well below the surface during the better parts of its length – these two facets have made this quite a different experience for Cronenberg aficionados. The fact that mental degeneration and sexual deviation formed two core themes of this film would perhaps be the sole redeeming qualities for those who still equate the Canadian filmmaker with his earlier works. These apart, the simmering tension and dynamics between the two scientific giants have been very well captured, thanks in large parts to the exceptionally assured and quietly powerful turns by Mortensen and Fassbender, the matured and cerebral treatment, and the layered script.
Director: David Cronenberg
Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Biopic
Language: English
Country: Canada
