The moody, fatalistic and noirish crime drama The Man from London can loosely be
considered as a companion piece to Damnation,
with which the films of Hungarian auteur Béla Tarr had begun adhering to
distinctive and formally rigorous aesthetics. Made seven years after the darkly
spiritual and apocalyptic Werckmeister Harmonies, the film, which was an adaptation of a 1934 French novel, was
about the devastating effects that a crime deal gone awry has on the life of a
railway night-watchman (Miroslav Krobot). The stupendously choreographed
opening sequence established the film’s theme, setting, narrative springboard
and principal protagonist in one long take. The drab and uneventful life of the
middle-aged man, who spends lonely nights in his watch-tower suddenly, starts
bursting when he comes into possession of a bag of cash (akin to No Country for Old Men) after silently
witnessing the crime. His behavioral changes upon this serendipitous possession
were particularly noteworthy in his interactions with his wife (Tilda Swinton)
and his daughter (Erika Bók – anyone who has seen Satantango would instantly recognize her). Meanwhile, an aged and
corrupt police inspector from London starts chasing the money, further
affecting his stability and conscience. Tarr eschewed conventions of crime
thrillers and stripped the plot to its bare essentials in order to paint an
allegorical and disconcerting picture of the collapse of social order.
Audacious long takes, quasi-static camera movements, chiaroscuro lighting, and
a highly effective organ-based score which was alternately melancholic and ominous,
were meticulously used to complement the story and accentuate its doom-laden
mood and atmosphere. The dubbing, though distracting, can easily be ignored in
the general scheme of things.
Director: Bela Tarr
Genre: Drama/Crime Drama/Psychological Drama/Post-Noir
Language: French/English
Country: Hungary
Despite Silver
Linings Playbook being, at the end of the day, an unabashedly "feel-good" film, director David O. Russell managed to make it stand
out from the crowd, even if by only a small distance, on account of the quirky
tone and neurotic characters. Like his previous film, The Fighter, this too was an underdog film, where the protagonists
are essentially outsiders to the social norm. Patrizio (Bradley Cooper), who is
afflicted with bipolar disorder, had been put into a mental facility due to his
violent reaction upon having found his wife with another man. Entrusted to the
care of his parents, he is convinced that he has changed enough to get his wife
back, who, incidentally, has put restraining orders on him. In this pursuit he
befriends Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), an asocial young lady who has just lost
her husband, who bargains him into participating in a dance competition in lieu
of her delivering letters to his wife on his behalf. To add to the
idiosyncrasies, his father (Robert De Niro) is a bookmaker with borderline OCD
and is highly superstitious about Philadelphia Eagles, while his closest friend
(Chris Tucker) is smooth-talking fellow inmate who keeps crashing out of the
facility. The film’s humour revolved mostly around the whimsical and irreverent
interactions between these characters. Lawrence was particularly good, while De
Niro was easily the funniest of the lot. The film, however, was in its weakest
during the some of the more serious moments as the script oftentimes veered into overly
sentimental and even clichéd territories – most notably in its resorting to an
overused and predictable climax.
Director: David O. Russell
Genre: Comedy Drama/Romantic Comedy/Family Drama
Language: English
Country: US
Swedish Master Ingmar Bergman was already at the
height of his creative prowess when he made Hour
of the Wolf, a fascinating exploration into the dark and grotesque recesses
of the human mind. This was at once a disturbing psychological drama and a gothic
horror film, and was imbued with elements of marital fidelity, religious symbols
and the complex inner workings of an artist. In an interesting decisionl, the
opening credits were accompanied by Bergman’s voice and discussions about a
shot, thus immediately clarifying the pseudo-reality of what was to follow. The
principal protagonists of the story are, Johan Borg (Max von Sydow), a painter in
creative limbo and Bergman’s alter-ego, and his doting wife Alma (Liv Ullmann).
Narrated in flashbacks by the beautiful and emotional Alma, the tale goes on to
chronicle the severe inner turbulence of the artist and his subsequent
disappearance, after moving into a small and secluded island. Constructed out of
his ramblings in his personal diary that she chances on, we are told of the
sense of Catholic guilt and sin plaguing Johan on account of his torrid affair
with the seductive Veronica Vogler (Ingrid Thulin). The couple meets a Baron
(Erland Josephson) in the island, but what transpires is a bizarre mix of supernatural,
delusion and surrealism. Sven Nykvist’s visually arresting cinematography,
making brilliant of expressionistic B/W, shadows, silhouettes, canted camera
angles, deep focus and extreme close-ups, further added to the perpetuating sense of
disquietude and terror. The film’s title, by the way, referred to the hour before
dawn when most people die, most children are born, and most people are visited
by nightmares, and perhaps even demons.
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Genre: Drama/Horror/Psychological Drama/Gothic Horror/Marriage Drama
Language: Swedish
Country: Sweden
Melville’s name is generally associated with Le Samourai and Army of Shadows, and to a lesser extent, Bob Le Flambeur and Les
Enfants Terribles. But he made a number of lesser known masterworks – Le Deuxieme Souffle, Le Cercle Rouge, Un Flic
et al are marvelous examples of that. This fabulous gangster and heist film
remains an archetypal elucidation of cool, palpable existentialism and
doom-laden fatalism – the kind that’s bound to end in tragedy for its
protagonists. The film begins with veteran criminal Gustave (Lino Ventura)
escaping from prison. His plan is to escape to a life of solitude with the help
of his beautiful and resourceful sister Manouche (Christine Fabrega). However
three things stand in his way to bliss and freedom – the cynical but brilliant
Inspector Blot (Paul Meurisse) who’s doggedly pursuing him, an antagonistic
mobster, and the irrepressible allure of one final job. The job, which dealt
with the spectacular robbing of platinum bars worth millions from an armoured
car, goes as per plan, but that provides the final knell in his coffin. The
tar-drenched tone and themes of honour among thieves, the inevitability of
fate, and the concept of a lone shark, were superbly accentuated by the moody
and expressionistic B/W photography and the minimally used score. Ventura gave
an outstanding turn reminiscent of his towering performance in Army of Shadows, as did Meurisse as the world-weary cop, while the other actors, too, were eminently watchable.
Though timed at 150 minutes, this exquisitely paced, brilliantly
characterized and memorably atmospheric film kept me glued right from
the tense first scene to the unforgettably staged finale.
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
Genre: Crime Thriller/Gangster Film/Heist Film/Existential Thriller/Post-Noir
Language: French
Country: France
American mood, and in turn cinema, in the 60s
and 70s were marked by anti- establishmentarian spirit. Cool Hand Luke, thus, was a
quintessential film of its era, with its tale of a naturally rebellious individual
at odds with overbearing authority. The allegorical story centered on the eponymous
Luke (Paul Newman), a war veteran, who is sentenced to 2 years of imprisonment
for an act of drunken vandalism. The prison is run by a group of ruthless
jailers led by a slimy Warden (Strother Martin). The inmates, who work as a
chain gang, slowly and eventually warm up to him on account of his delightfully
unpredictable nature, with his biggest supporter being their brash and imposing
leader (George Kennedy). And then he escapes from prison, and to add salt to
wound, keeps escaping each time he’s caught. Thus, the more he steps on his
irreverence and non-conformism, the more he becomes a symbol of freedom and
hope for others, and the more he alienates the authority. The best part of this
tragi-comic character study was that, the director neither turned it into a
social message movie nor portrayed Luke as a product of social injustice. He is
what he is, and that’s what made him such a memorable character. This was an
out and out Newman vehicle and he gave a effortlessly endearing performance;
the rest of the cast, and in particular Martin whose character came to represent
the seemingly irreconcilable generational gap of the times, was good as well.
Dennis Hopper, who would go on to make the iconic anti-establishment film Easy Riders, played a small role here.
Director: Stuart Rosenberg
Genre: Drama/Prison Drama/Escape Drama
Language: English
Country: US
