With Ash is Purest White Jia Zhangke created
a film that is at once expansive and intimate, broad canvased but with a tight
central focus, slow-burning and yet possessing a thrilling sense of immediacy.
And, through his novelistic portrayal of a complex relationship over a 3-act
structure, and in turn a layered exploration of China’s rampaging socioeconomic
transitions, its cultural mores based on patriarchy and machismo, and the
strict moral code of the jianghu
underworld, the film memorably blurred the personal / political divide. In the
1st act, Qiao (Zhao Tao) and her mobster boyfriend Bin (Liao Fan)
are an inseparable couple in the mining town of Datong, until their
relationship screeches to a halt when she gets imprisoned for 5 years for
protecting him from violent assailants with an unlicensed gun. In the beautifully
picaresque next act, Qiao, freshly released from jail, travels to search for
Bin, with the massive Three Gorges Dam over the Yangtze as the backdrop, only
to find desolation, loneliness, and that Bin’s now moved on from his past life
including her. And, in the final act set another few years later back in Datong,
Qiao runs Bin’s erstwhile gambling parlour, while also taking care of a disillusioned
and irascible wheelchair-bound Bin. The film abounds in self-referential
allusions which should be rewarding to those who’ve invested in Jia’s
filmography; the 2nd act, where Qiao is seen in the same outfit and setting
as Still Life, made for a stirring
sense of déjà vu. Leisurely paced, deftly photographed and comprising of pop
soundtrack, it boasts of a magnificent turn by Jia’s iconic muse in the way her
body language kept subtly changing over the course of the narrative.
Director: Jia Zhangke
Genre: Drama/Social Drama/Political Drama
Language: Mandarin
Country: China
There are movies
which are difficult to interpret and analyze, and then there are those which
are way beyond all realms of coherent or decipherable meanings – so much so
that, even an attempt at rational untangling is bound to end in futility. Kamal
Swaroop’s weird, absurdist, surrealist (or Dadaist, perhaps?), trippy, bizarre,
loony and wildly experimental cult film Om
Dar-B-Dar belongs, unequivocally, in the latter category. Hence,
understandably, watching it was equal parts infuriating, frustrating, maddening
and baffling, and it certainly doesn’t make for a regular viewing experience.
However, that said, it was also funny, quirky and gleefully crazy; no wonder,
it has been routinely classified as a “Great Indian LSD Trip”. Made in 1988 but
not released in theatres until 26 years later (interestingly, it opened on big
screen on the same day as Ashim Alhuwalia’s intoxicating grindhouse gem Miss Lovely), it reminded a bit of such psychedelic movies as Daisies, Birds Orphans and Fools, The Color of Pomegranates, etc. Set in
the small town of Ajmer in Rajasthan, the film’s array of characters includes
the titular Om, a misfit and disillusioned teenager; his elder sister Gayatri
(Gopi Desai) who seduces the love-struck bicycle riding Jagdish (Lalit Tiwari);
their wiry astrologer father (Lakshminarayan Shastri); a titillating actress (Anita
Kanwar) hoping for image makeover, etc. Swaroop filled the film with a barrage
of non-sequitur sounds and fantastical images, jarring production design, free-flowing
mash-up of reality, dreams and fantasies, a hysterical sense of humour, and some
phantasmagoric songs too – the deadpan “Bablu Babylon Se” and the nutty “Meri
Jaan” were memorable zany – as it covered themes ranging from religion, mythology,
cinema, politics, consumerism, war, voyeurism, small-town nostalgia, Freudian
dreams and whatnot.
Director: Kamal Swaroop
Genre: Avant-Garde/Experimental Film/Surrealist Comedy
Language: Hindi
Country: Country
In his 2005 gem The Squid and the Whale, Baumbach had
crafted an exquisite portrayal of marital breakdown and its effect on the
couple’s two kids. Though not a sequel, The
Meyerowitz Stories finds the three kids of an aged intellectual father with
multiple divorces to his credit, still battling with themselves and with each
other on account of having grown up in broken families. The film captured the
intrinsically dysfunctional lives of the titular family through an episodic and
wryly funny mélange – the narcissistic father Harold (Dustin Hoffman), a
retired art professor and sculptor, who’s trapped in his own image even if the
world outside doesn’t hold him on such a high pedestal anymore; the unemployed
elder son Danny (Adam Sandler), a former musician and house husband, and his introverted
sister Jean (Elizabeth Marvel), who care for their father despite the deep-set
grouse they carry for having been neglected as kids and not achieving material
successes in their lives; and Danny’s well-to-do accountant half-brother
Matthew (Ben Stiller), who, on the other hand, never liked the fact that he was
never given enough space by his domineering father. When Harold falls seriously
unwell, his siblings are compelled to come together, and that opens up their unreconciled
memories and unresolved wounds. There was a fair bit of name-dropping of
canonized artists, and also some expositional dialogues, which felt tad
superficial at times. However, that aside, it was filled with whimsical and
idiosyncratic scenarios, with an underlying naked wire that got exposed from
time to time. Performances were good throughout; Hoffman was peerless in particular
as the incorrigible but vulnerable old man, and Marvel a revelation as the deeply
troubled daughter.
Director: Noah Baumbach
Genre: Comedy/Drama/Family Drama/Social Satire
Language: English
Country: US
Maverick Korean
filmmaker Park Chan-wook’s movies have always been about unhinged outsiders –
be it men (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance,
Oldboy, Cut) or women (Lady Vengeance,
I’m A Cyborg but that’s Ok, Stoker) – who operate outside the
conventional social dynamics, and invariably end up instigating violent, even
operatic, chain reactions. In a fabulous continuation of that thematic trend in
his filmography, The Handmaiden is a
lush, gorgeously mounted, deliciously twisted and gloriously unpredictable tale
with a script that progressively upped its delirious idiosyncrasy like a
sumptuous orchestra; it also had Park’s quintessential signature all over in
his penchant for gallows humour, shocking violence and outré in general.
Adapted from the novel Fingersmith,
but the setting transplanted from Victorian-era Britain to colonial-era Japanese-occupied
Korea, the film also bristles with subversive political and stirring feminist subtexts,
which made this more than just a thriller. The intricately structured gothic
tale – where one sees moments from Chapter 1 in a diametrically different light
in Chapter 2, before hell starts breaking loose in Chapter 3 – covers the
scintillating relationship between the seemingly placid and immensely wealthy
heiress Hideko (Kim Min-hee), a closet femme fatale whose life is controlled by
her tyrannical japanophile uncle (Cho Jin-woong) whose grotesque perversions
know no bounds, and the sassy Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri), an attractive pickpocket
hired by a conman (Ha Jung-woo) to masquerade as Hideko’s maid. The compelling
tale of devious one-upmanship and forbidden romance between these two
brilliantly etched and marvelously enacted women, in a rigidly patriarchal
social construct, was complemented by elaborately designed set-pieces and
sumptuous camera work. The hideous octopus, by the way, gleefully referenced
the notorious octopus eating sequence in Oldboy.
Director: Park Chan-wook
Genre: Thriller/Psychological Thriller/Romance
Language: Korean/Japanese
Country: South Korea
François Ozon
resorted to an interesting use of reverse chronology – a device that has been popularly
used in films like Nolan’s Memento
and Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter
– in his deconstruction of a marital breakdown. Instead of providing a linear account
of the marriage, he chronicled that through 5 discrete chapters – with each
chapter capturing a key event lasting within the space of a single day – that marked
the genesis, strains and eventual dissolution of the relationship between Marion
(Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) and Gilles (Stéphane Freiss), albeit in reverse order.
It was, therefore, ironic in the way mood in the narrative – from hostile and toxic
to bleak and edgy to lively and hopeful – ran opposite to the way their
relationship actually progressed, with subsequent framed 5 key moments in their
relationship – their divorce proceeding and a self-destructive post-divorce liaison
in a hotel room that made this an intensely disturbing opening gambit; a dinner
party simmering with tensions on the question of fidelity; the birth of their
only child where Gilles is internally struggling to accept this development;
their buoyant marriage ceremony, and then, unbeknownst to Gilles, Marion’s casual
fling on their wedding night; and the tentative beginning of their affair which also,
ironically, coincided with petering away of Gilles’ previous relationship. The
elaborate fade-outs after each chapter were accompanied by lilting love songs
that had love and heartbreak written all over them, while extreme close-up were
often used throughout to portray how their facial expressions and body languages,
and the underlying emotions they contain, transitioned over time. Both Tedeschi
and Freiss gave noteworthy turns, as Ozon employed a mix of revelations and red
herrings to portray their arc.
Director: Francois Ozon
Genre: Drama/Marriage Drama/Romantic Drama
Language: French
Country: France
