Life Is a Miracle [2004]

Satirists over the years have often made use of a powerful formula, viz. “comedy equals tragedy plus time”. Yugoslavian auteur Emir Kusturica – whose films have come to be associated with a distinctive stylistic signature – too made incredible use of that maxim in his unapologetically and gloriously zany, boisterous, madcap, anarchistic, absurdist and spectacularly over-the-top film Life is a Miracle. And, through this madness, chaos and farce, he created a fabulous anti-war film both satirizing and lamenting on human lunacy, opportunism and apathy that led to a string of unimaginably bloody wars engulfing, in particular, Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo, and that, in turn, led to the disintegration of Yugoslavia. It tells the story of Luka (Slavko Stimac), an apolitical engineer who’s shifted from Belgrade to a nameless village with his buxom, mentally unstable, opera-singing wife Jadranka (Vesna Trivalic) and his football-crazed son Milos (Vuk Kostic), in order to build a railway tunnel which he’s so obsessed with that he’s completely oblivious of the impending Bosnian War – and remains so even though his son is conscripted, his wife runs away and the war reaches his doorstep; the realization that the world around him is indeed collapsing, and the ensuing political awakening, finally happens when he starts falling in love with the beautiful and vulnerable Sabaha (Natasa Solak), a Bosnian Muslim entrusted to him as a political hostage. The rollicking tragicomic gem, accompanied by a melancholic score, is populated with surrealistic and darkly humorous set-pieces – a sad and suicidal donkey, a gaggling postman (Aleksandar Berček) hoping to play a game of chess amidst the rampaging hostilities, a free-for-all football match, a night of loony drunken revelry, a hilarious concert to the warmongers, etc.

Director: Emir Kusturica
Genre: Comedy/Black Comedy/Political Satire/War Film/ Romantic Comedy
Language: Serbian
Country: Serbia

Missing [1982]

Portrayal of governmental lies, overreach, oppression, abuse of power and corruption across eras and geographies was a central tenet in Cost-Gavras’ oeuvre, best known for his tour de force political thriller Z. Missing – a tense, compelling and slow-burning adaptation of the eponymous non-fiction book by Thomas Hauser, and set at the epochal moment of the violent coup d'état led by Pinochet that deposed the democratically elected government of hugely popular Socialist leader Salvador Allende and established a fascist junta in its place – was a striking denunciation of American history of engineering such bloody events across Latin America; no wonder, the film was forced out of the US market for over 2 decades. However, it was the human story that made it even more gratifying – ensuring a palpable emotional wallop through a gradual upping of the tension, a pitch-perfect balance between simmering anger and its dramatic expression, and excellent performances led by a truly terrific Jack Lemmon and ably complemented by Sissy Spacek. The story followed the mysterious disappearance of a young American bohemian (John Shea) for his involvement in left-wing politics and for having stumbled upon the information about direct American intervention through his habit of asking questions, and the dogged and frantic search for his whereabouts by his staunchly conservative father (Lemmon) and his non-conformist wife (Spacek). The marvelous contrast between the father and daughter-in-law, albeit bound by a common cause, made the generational conflict an interesting theme, as it did the ensuing political awakening in the old man as he gets to know how the diplomats and bureaucrats, by facilitating a brutal military dictatorship in order to protect “American interests”, led to innumerable deaths, detentions and disappearances.

Director: Costa-Gavras
Genre: Drama/Political Drama/Docudrama
Language: English/Spanish
Country: US

Black Panthers [1968]

In 1967 Agnès Varda shifted to LA for a couple of years with her husband Jacques Demy. While he was working on a Hollywood project following the smashing international success of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Varda dived into a few independent projects of her own. With the rise of the New Left, and massive associated movements across the country – Civil Rights movement, Vietnam War protests, rise of counterculture, etc. – the US was a hotbed for sociopolitical dissent in the 60s, which was bound to transfix a French Left-wing intellectual like Varda. She therefore hired a 16mm hand-held camera from a U Cal Berkeley student and traveled to Oakland with a small crew to record an electrifying snapshot of a political rally arranged by the Black Panther Party (BPP) to demand the release of Huey Newton, co-founder of the organization and a staunch Marxist-Leninist, arrested for allegedly killing a police officer. The “Free Huey” movement, along with the politically activism of the group – which was vocal in advocating the rights of the oppressed and the subjugated in the US and in turn the world over, and its rousing Afro-cultural consciousness, were marvelously captured in the heady and throbbing short documentary Black Panthers, beautifully shot in grainy colours. While the mesmeric docu Salut Mes Cubains, was formalist too, this was relatively straightforward; however, encapsulating a complex sociopolitical voice and zeitgeist through the “Free Huey” rallies, while still retaining the immediacy, made this too a compelling work, and reminded me of James Baldwin’s No Name in the Street. Ironically, its broadcast on the French television was cancelled at the last moment, fearing that its revolutionary spirit may rekindle the explosive student anger of May’68.

Director: Agnes Varda
Genre: Documentary/Political Film
Language: English
Country: France

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs [2018]

The Coens’ fascinating proclivity towards counterpointing pitch-dark world views with morality, and droll humour with brutal violence, have often seen them returning to Westerns – be it in its traditional form (True Grit), or in spirit (Western elements abound in Blood Simple, The Big Lebowski, Fargo, No Country for Old Men, etc.). The anthology film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs – seeped in meditative, brooding, melancholic and cynical interpretations of the quintessentially lonely, lawless and unforgiving West – was a distinctive genre exercise, but laced with the kind of revisionism that the eccentric bothers love. The film comprises of 6 shorts of varying lengths and diverse styles – a wacky and idiosyncratic outlaw (a hokey Tim Blake Nelson) whose melodic crooning masks his sociopathic gun-slinging (reminded me of The Proposition, which too brilliantly captured these seemingly opposing traits); a ludicrously unlucky bank robber (a deadpan James Franco) who keeps moving from the frying pan to fire; a glum, laconic traveling impresario (a feral Liam Neeson) whose objet d’art is an armless, legless guy (Harry Melling) who can recite from Shelly’s Ozymandius to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, in arguably the darkest tale of the lot; a grizzly, solitary prospector (an insane Tom Waits) obsessed with striking “gold”; a lonely woman (a sad-eyed Zoe Kazan) who finds tentative love while on a wagon trail to Oregon; a group of surly fellow-travelers in a stagecoach (a fabulous ensemble of Tyne Daly, Brendan Gleeson, Saul Rubinek, Chelcie Ross, Jonjo O’Neill) whose casual conversations turn increasingly testy and heated. Though perhaps lacking in consistency and cohesiveness, the Coens, in this harsh and gorgeously photographed film, never failed to evoke despair and wry chuckles in equal measures like only they can.

Director: Ethan & Joel Coen
Genre: Western/Psychological Western/Revisionist Western/Anthology Film
Language: English
Country: US

Transit [2018]

Transplanting a novel to current times while adapting it for the screen can be an interesting but tricky exercise. Jerichow, which was adapted to present-day Germany from James M. Cain’s hardboiled classic The Postman Always Rings Twice, was an assured effort, even if not at par with Visconti’s brilliant Ossessione or Tay Garnnet’s classic noir. With Transit – adapted from Anna Seghers’ powerful and trenchant tour de force, albeit to present-day Marseilles, and the final chapter in his trilogy also comprising of Barbara and Pheonix – Petzold made an austere, restrained, deeply existentialist and strikingly beautiful film. Set in a neo-fascist and heavily militarized Europe, Georg (Franz Rogowski), on the run for political reasons, stumbles upon the belongings (manuscript, passport, letter from his estranged wife) of Weidel – an author who’s committed suicide in a Parisian hotel – and with those he flees to the port city with the hopes of emigrating to Mexico. And thus begins four intertwined narrative strands – the Mexican Consulate mistakes him for Weidel, and he plays along; he becomes infatuated with the enigmatic Marie (Paula Beer), who’s in a complicated relationship with a forlorn doctor (Godehard Giese), while stuck to the memory of her husband Weidel; he develops an affecting kinship with an immigrant kid who’s the son of a dead comrade from the Resistance; and, he witnesses the darkly ironic stasis of people desperate to escape. The last aspect, borne out of Kafkaesque geopolitical bureaucracy, along with its darkly satirical ramifications – which were the most unforgettable aspects of the novel – was tad underplayed here; it nevertheless was a remarkably layered and complex film, laced with melancholia, fragility, political prescience, brooding fatalism, and a haunting, low-key score.

Director: Christian Petzold

Genre: Drama/Existential Drama/Political Satire/War Drama
Language: Germany/French
Country: Germany