Few filmmakers have
perhaps chronicled and critiqued the sweeping sociocultural transitions in their
countries, with such brutal honesty, as Jia Zhangke has over his career. The
enormous Three Gorges Dam’s construction on the Yangtze, despite its promised collective
benefits, led to the displacement of over a million people through submersion
of towns and villages. His powerful yet nuanced masterpiece Still Life provided for an
extraordinarily minimalist, profoundly affecting and deeply melancholic
exploration of the devastating human cost of development and progress. Set in a
small town on the banks of the river – a section of it is already lost into the
river, and preparations are underway for the next round of flooding – the film
chronicled lives of the displaced, the disaffected, the disenfranchised and the
marginalized through the tale of two individuals. Sanming (Han Sanming), a
coal-miner from Shanxi province who’s come down in search of his long-lost wife
and daughter, takes the job of demolishing buildings like the other migrant
workers, while hoping to be reunited with them; Shen (Zhao Tao), on the other
hand, has come down for a couple of days, also from Shanxi, hoping to seek
formal separation from her estranged husband. The understated style,
contributed by Jhangke’s rigorous visual aesthetic and the forlorn body
language of the two brilliant principal actors, laced the film with a haunting
sense of loneliness, pathos, lyricism and disquieting inevitability; Zhangke’s
bristling political angst, too, was palpable by his microcosmic representation
of China’s so-called “floating population”. The film’s breathtaking visual
canvas, achieved through masterful framing of shots and how the desolate
backdrops tell as much a story as the characters, added haunting dimensions to
its poignant beauty, depth and eloquence.
Director: Jia Zhangke
Genre: Drama/Social Drama/Political Drama
Language: Mandarin
Country: China
Comedies rarely come drier
or more deadpan and melancholic than Martín Rejtman’s wry and sardonic third
feature The Magic Gloves, which
seemed like Jarmusch meets Kaurismaki in Buenos Aires. If Silvia Prieto gave indications of Rejtman’s stylistic and thematic
choices, and in particular his love for aimless and hapless intertwined people
stuck in an existential stasis, they achieved a full bloom in this septic urban
existential comedy. The characters in this ensemble film aren’t just mostly
depressive and stuck in endless loops, but also are often so hilariously
pliable that just a gentle nudge is required for them to make surprisingly
radical changes to their habits and lifestyles – Alejandro (Vicentico), a
lonesome cab driver who wears only solid colours, is given accommodation in
return for free taxi rides by Piranha (Fabián Arenillas), a bossy businessman
obsessed with his home sound system that invariably lead the recipients of the
experience to ear doctors; Piranha is convinced that Alejando and his brother Luis,
who’s a pornstar in Canada and exercises all night long, were schoolmates, even
if neither can recognize each other; meanwhile Piranha’s equally bossy wife Susana
(Susana Pampín), who categorizes everyone into those suffering from either organic
depression or emotional depression, takes Alejandro’s morose ex-girlfriend Cecilia
(Cecilia Biagini) under her wings; Cecilia becomes so convinced of Susan’s
psychological analysis that she goes on anti-depressants, and before long Susan
is depressed too; and, not least of all, Piranha pulls in Alejandro and Luis
into a ludicrous business proposition that’s bound to end in financial
disaster. Short takes captured with a largely static camera, and interspersed
at times with elaborate fade outs, complemented the bland monotony of the
characters’ gloomy lives.
Director: Martin Rejtman
Genre: Comedy/Black Comedy/Social Satire/Ensemble Film
Language: Spanish
Country: Argentina
The narrative device
of a person vanishing into thin air, and the complex existential reactions evoked
in those around them, has found powerful motifs in various films – from L’Avventura and Picnic at Hanging Rock to A Man Vanishes and Missing to even Loveless. In Under the Sand François Ozon, too, made striking use of this device
for a meditation on loss, grief, mortality, the inability to let-go and therefore
being stuck in an existential flux. The happy married middle-aged couple of Marie
(Charlotte Rampling), a professor of English Literature in Paris, and Jean
(Bruno Cremer), while during their customary summer vacation, faces an
unfortunate turn of events when he decides to go for a swim in the sea only
never to return. While conjectures range from accident to suicide, Marie finds
herself unable to resign to that fact her husband has probably died – even if,
ironically, she appears to be making incremental adjustments to her life by
embarking on an affair with another man (Jacques Nolot). From a thematic
standpoint the film reminded of Kieslowski’s Blue – however, while in the latter the wife had a chance for
emotional catharsis because of the incontrovertible fact that her husband has
died, here she seems destined to be forever locked in a psychological space
which has simply shut out the loss. Charlotte Rampling gave a magnificently restrained
turn in capturing how Marie’s seemingly vivacious external façade becomes a
camouflage for her inner crisis and her steadfast refusal to find closure. The
elegiac final shot, where she literally runs in quest of the mirage that she’s
created for herself, against the washed-out landscape straight out of a Monet
painting, was both poignant and haunting.
Director: Francois Ozon
Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Marital Drama
Language: French
Country: France
Most memorable movies
on marital breakdown, and they are a dime a dozen, parallel its imminent
collapse with interplays between malaise, disaffection and conflict. In Zvyagintsev’s
grim, gripping and scorching look at a crumbling marriage in Loveless – a fabulous follow-up to the
terrific Leviathan – the relationship
has crossed the point of no return; in fact, it has grown so openly toxic and
is in such a state of irreparable disrepair at the start of narrative itself,
that the film’s title, ironically, appeared moderate in comparison. Zhenya (Maryana
Spivak), who’s begun an affair with a wealthy older man, can’t stop spewing vitriol
when he sees her husband Boris (Aleksey Rozin); while he, also in an
extra-marital affair and worried of losing his job because of his
ultra-conservative boss, seems every time on the verge of imploding in return. Their
blistering hostility, and its damaging repercussions on their 12-year old son
Alyosha (Matvei Novikov), traumatized by his belligerent parents for whom his
existence has taken a fringe position – the shot capturing his silent howl in
the dark was really powerful – made for bleak viewing. And then, one day, the
kid disappears into thin air, perhaps as a metaphorical cry to finally establish
an indelible presence through his physical absence. The massive hunt organized by
a volunteer group led by a weary, impassive coordinator (Alexey Fateev) – inspired
by the real-life non-profit search-and-rescue organization Liza Alert – as
opposed to by the cops, which temporarily forces the couple to come together,
formed the film’s most compelling section through a mix of rippling suspense,
growing fatalism and a searing commentary by a filmmaker deeply critical of the
Putin regime and of the country’s social institutions.
Director: Andrey Zvyagintsev
Genre: Drama/Marital Drama/Urban Drama
Language: Russian
Country: Russia
Argentine filmmaker Martín
Rejtman’s whimsical, deadpan and droll comedy-drama Silvia Prieto wryly captured mundane snippets from the lives of a
few aimless, disaffected people – drifters, so to speak – floating through
their purposeless lives in contemporary Buenos Aires. Suffice it to say, the characters
just keep gently migrating from one state of stasis to another. The titular
Silvia (Rosario Bléfari) is a slender, naïve, soft-spoken, impulsive, neurotic
and quietly alluring young loner living in a tiny apartment with a parakeet.
She has just the hint of OCD – she keeps a precise track of the lattes and
espressos she’s served as a waitress, she mysteriously disappears with a man’s
Armani coat while on a solo holiday, she often roams around in her jumper suit,
and she’s obsessed with cooking chicken. The few people she interacts with
aren’t any different either – her placid ex-husband who keeps hanging out with
her, his new girlfriend who peddles shampoo on the streets, and her stony broke
ex-husband who loves his deodorants. Ironically, she dramatically announces at
the outset that she decided to change her life the day she turned 27; but,
apart from a few readjustments, she doesn’t really change much. Meanwhile she
becomes fixated with the fact that there’s another person with her name in the
city, who, in turn, becomes obsessed with starting a running get-together for
all the Silvia Pietro’s out there. The dryly humorous banality of her confused
existence and of those around her made this a fluid and curiously interesting film
devoid of pretenses. The end credits, where a number of the other Silvia
Prietos share fragments from their equally unspectacular lives, added to the running
idiosyncratic streak.
Director: Martin Rejtman
Genre: Comedy/Existential Comedy
Language: Spanish
Country: Argentina
