Multiculturalism, systemic
racism, the lives of marginalized immigrants and police brutality formed the
key themes in Ladj Ly’s gritty, kinetic feature debut Les Misérables. The grungy, impoverished, subaltern, graffiti-laced,
and crime-filled outskirt Parisian commune of Montfermeil – Ly, whose parents were
from Mali, grew up here, and referencing an episode from the Victor Hugo
classic – which is packed with immigrant population of diverse ethnic and
religious backgrounds, formed a pulsating entity. Set over the course of a day
and a half, it portrayed the volatile relationship between the communities there
with the neighbourhood’s anti-crime police patrol, comprising of the street
smart but loutish squad leader Chris (Alexis Manenti, also one of the
co-writers), his partner Gawda (Djebril Zonga, also of Malian descent like Ly),
and the comparatively more conscientious Ruiz (Damien Bonnard), who’s just
joined that unit. The simmering locale seems to be on the verge of erupting
into gang violence courtesy the soft-spoken but mischievous young boy Issa (a
scintillating Issa Perica). While trying to chase and catch Issa, the cops
grievously wound him with a flash-ball; and, to make matters worse, the
incident is captured on video by a shy, voyeuristic, drone-obsessed kid. The
film – photographed with a striking sense of vérité and here-and-now, and
oftentimes using spectacular overhead shots – may appear tad uneven at times,
despite the ticking tension at all time. However, the two ends stood out for me
– the throbbing opening montage portraying Paris as a multiethnic melting pot
celebrating France’s 2018 football World Cup win and Mbappé as the face of its otherwise
ghettoized and disdained immigrant populace; and the explosive, elaborate and
intricately orchestrated final act ending, literarlly, in a Molotov Cocktail
face-off.
Director: Ladj Ly
Genre: Drama/Police Procedural/Urban Drama/Crime Drama
Language: French
Country: France
Chantal Akerman, best
remembered for her haunting and disquieting 1975 masterpiece Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080Bruxelles, was forever shaped and influenced by her mother Natalia, who’d
fled from Poland to Belgium as a teenager to escape the rise of Nazism, only to
be later deported to Auschwitz during the war (which she fortunately survived,
only to be scarred by it for life). Hence, it’s both telling and tragic that
her final work was the simultaneously intimate and unsentimental documentary No Home Movie, where she recorded the last
few months in her now aged mother’s life; her mother died shortly after it was
completed, while Chantal ended her own life soon after its release. Whereas a
more conventional approach would have been to capture the physical decline of
her mother’s health, she instead portrayed that through snippets – a mix of
candid conversations, random catch-ups (over Skype and in person), silent
observations of the woman who’s clearly and visibly slipping towards oblivion,
and multiple moments of nothingness. The languidly paced narrative, therefore, was
regularly punctuated with sequences where nothing really happen – mix of static
and moving shots, often of nondescript exteriors, while at other times of her
mother’s sprawling Brussels apartment, including views from the balconies –
which imbued a mournful, fatalistic atmosphere and a novelistic feel to it, and
constantly harked upon the sense of inevitability. One of the most indelible
moments in the docu – shot digitally using hand-held camera and at times even a
mobile phone – occurs somewhere in the middle wherein mother and daughter
engage in a rambling conversation over lunch, that veered from the trivial to
painful memories from the Nazi era and the Holocaust.
Director: Chantal Akerman
Genre: Documentary/Diary Film
Language: French
Country: Belgium
The Brazilian film Bacurau, at once a pulsating thriller, a
mood piece and a sharp political critique, is two films stitched together – a
deliciously atmospheric and slow-burning neo-Western in the first half, and a
hyper-violent, campy invasion / revenge flick in the second. Consequently, its echoing
and subversion of generic conventions accentuated the filmmakers’ outrage
against neofascism. The opening scenes, where a woman and guy drive in a
ramshackle water truck towards the titular, godforsaken outpost village – a
small, arid, closely-knit community – in order to attend the funeral of a much
loved matriarch, while discussing about a rebel who’s taken up arms against the
local government, set the context for what followed. The opening half was made
exquisitely gripping by the deliberate pacing, portrayal of the weather beaten residents
– where doctors (Sônia Braga) and teachers live at par with pimps and
prostitutes, with a common disdain for the unctuous local politician –, and a beautifully
elegiac tone – established through moments of silence, mournful funeral
processions, slow guitar strummings, haunting folk songs and a stirring sense
of impending doom. Things start taking an eerie downturn, however, when their
village is suddenly erased from the map, all mobile signals get jammed, the
water tank gets punctured by bullets and a bunch of ranchers get brutally massacred.
And then, in a gleefully lurid turn, a bunch of vicious bounty hunters, led by
a racist, arrogant and psychotic leader (Udo Kier) take siege of the village,
with the intent to kill for fun. The filmmakers, interestingly, deployed a
number of flamboyant stylistic choices, from zooms and wipes to split
screens and campy electronic scores, which counterpointed the sense of
realism.
Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho & Juliano Dornelles
Genre: Thriller/Neo-Western
Language: English
Country: Brazil
In 1965, a gruesome coup
d'état was carried out by the Indonesian armed forces that led to the fall of
the Sukarno government and establishment of Suharto’s military dictatorship. This
was accompanied by genocide and mass killings – along with tortures, rapes,
disappearances – of grotesque proportions, carried out against Communists and
Communist sympathizers, and in turn extended to intellectuals, ethnic Chinese
and essentially anyone construed as “anti-nationals”, by the army, paramilitary
forces and death squads. In his acutely harrowing, formally daring, hugely provocative,
and extraordinary documentary The Act of
Killing – made over 6 years, and executive produced by the likes of Warner
Herzog and Errol Morris – Joshua Oppenheimer powerfully tackled this ghastly chapter
in a manner that blurred the lines of documentary film-making, and crafted “a supreme
testament to the cinema’s capacity for inquiry, confrontation, and remembrance”,
the potential ethical trappings notwithstanding. In an outrageous artistic
choice, he managed to get former perpetrators of extrajudicial massacres –
members of death squads fashioned along the lines of Hollywood gangster cinema
and the country’s noxious right-wing paramilitary organization Pancasila Youth
– enact their horrible acts from half a century back in the form of lurid film
sequences. The slender Anwar Congo, who alone killed over a thousand people,
and the rotund Herman Koto, formed the key real-life antagonists here, coaxing
perplexed civilians to participate, revealing their preferred murder tools and gloating
over their revolting pasts. Yet, in unforgettable candid captures, these
stagings – despite being mock enactments – end up having intense impacts on
people, as evidenced by the profusely crying kids post the hideous performances,
and on the seemingly cool Anwar too, whose dreadful retching at the scene of
his brutalities the docu ends with.
Director: Joshua Oppenheimer & Christine Cynn
Genre: Documentary/Political Documentary/Agitprop
Language: Indonesian
Country: Denmark
Pablo Larraín’s The Club formed an interesting follow-up
to his astonishing trilogy on Pinochet’s repressive regime (Tony Manero, Post Mortem, No) – in
that, its thematic departure aside, it too served as an indictment of Chile’s dark
and complicated politico-religious milieu. Stark, intense, seething with anger
and deeply disturbing, this is a lashing portrayal of the brazen and serial culpability
– right from perpetuation to denial and cover-ups of grotesque crimes – of
organized religion in general, and the Catholic church in particular; suffice
it to say, the movie wouldn’t have earned any brownie points from either the establishment
or the ardent faithfuls. The events take place in a cloistered place located in
a remote coastal town – essentially a comfortable but secluded place off the
official maps – housing priests accused of monstrous crimes like pedophilia,
child trafficking, etc. and hence temporarily banished from regular duties in
order to undergo faux penance. Four such
retired priests (Alfredo Castro et al) live there, taken care of by a creepy former
nun (Antonia Zegers), watching TV, drinking wine and training their grayhound for
dog races. Their cocooned and largely tranquil existences are punctuated by
three developments – suicide of a new arrival accused of child abuse, arrival
of an emissary (Marcelo Alonso) to investigate the scenario, and their being hounded
by a severely damaged sexual abuse victim (Roberto Farías). The blistering and
topical subject, the grim portrayals – their stunning sense of entitlement, refusal
to even acknowledge the consequences of their deeds, the compromises made, etc.
– the somber and moody atmosphere, excellent performances, and an especially brutal
sequence involving dogs near the end, made this more than just another pedantic
film, despite its in-your-face stance at times.
Director: Pablo Larrain
Genre: Drama/Religious Drama/Psychological Drama
Language: Spanish
Country: Chile
