The Zone of Interest [2023]

 Jonathan Glazer’s chilling examination of the co-existence of mundane and monstrous – and shattering manifestation of Hannah Arendt’s powerful phrase from her seminal reportage Eichmann in Jerusalem – was as much a meditation on the Holocaust where industrialized extermination was perpetuated by white-collar bureaucrats zealously committed to overachieving their quotas and targets, as a devastating indictment of the complicity of the rest through wilful denial of genocide. The film’s title, aside from its reference to the coinage by the Nazi forces to describe the areas surrounding the Auschwitz camps, therefore also sardonically demonstrated people’s propensity for being oblivious to and even being apologists for the killings of those not belonging to their “zones of interest”. The latter aspect was emphasized by Glazer’s moral courage in expressing solidarity with Palestinians and “Not in My Name” campaign. Loosely based on Martin Amis’ novel, it depicted – through electrifying and formally rigorous scene compositions, virtuoso sound design, and a meticulously shaped script developed through a decade’s research – the unsettling domesticity and ordinariness of Rudolph Höss (an eerily unassuming Christian Friedel), his wife Hedwig (a frighteningly brilliant Sandra Hüller) who with their kids reside in an idyllic home adjacent to the death camp. Consequently, while the camera never looks beyond the walls, what’s happening there is obliquely and viscerally indicated through discomfiting minutiae, which made it an especially clinical and disturbing evocation of malevolent apathy. Glazer found the premise – demystification of evil by situating the film as “a story of here and now”, rather than “as something safely in the past” – so relentlessly dark that he interspersed it with stirring acts of resistance by 12-year-old Polish girl Aleksandra Bystroń-Kołodziejczyk, who he’d met shortly before her death.

Director: Jonathan Glazer

Genre: Drama/Historical Drama/Family Drama

Language: German/Polish/Yiddish

Country: UK

R.M.N. [2022]

 Cristian Mungiu’s proclivity for crafting singularly oppressive and viscerally haunting films harbouring sharp political critique, the ramifications of which transcend the tight spatial and temporal scopes of their microcosmic parables, have made him a powerful voice in contemporary cinema. R.M.N. – with its bleak, sparse, formally bravura and deeply discomfiting portrayal of xenophobia and fetid nationalism – made for yet another gripping inclusion to his canon. That toxic suspicion, prejudice and hatred towards others are manifested in a multicultural and geographically fluid milieu – one where the inhabitants are of multi-ethnic descent, regularly switch between languages (predominantly Romanian and Hungarian, with spattering of German, French and English thrown in), have emigrated over generations, and keep relocating to other European countries in search of work where they often face racial discrimination and social denigration – made the proceedings all the more ironic. Matthias (Marin Grigore), a Romani migrant worker, quits his lowly job in Germany after one racial slur too many and returns to his village in Transylvania – financially struggling upon the closure of the local mine – where he grapples with his marriage to his estranged wife (Macrina Bârlădeanu) who’s had enough of his boorish masculinity and incessant philandering, tries to “fix” his young son who’s emotionally regressed, struggles with his father’s health, and hopes to rekindle his affair with Csilla (Judith State) who’s an accomplished manager at a local bread factory. The threads tenuously holding this place together, however, irrevocably unravel when Sri Lankan workers are hired at the factory. These led us to the film’s pièce de résistance – a virtuoso 17-minute sequence shot in an unbroken take and featuring a dense, divisive crowd – which powerfully underscored its political urgency and formal brilliance.

Director: Cristian Mungiu

Genre: Drama/Political Drama

Language: Romanian/Hungarian/French/German/English

Country: Romania

La Flor [2018]

A decade in the making and having a staggering runtime of 13 ½ hours, Argentine filmmaker Mariano Llinás’ playful, episodic, unpredictable, eccentric and wildly ambitious La Flor is a work of unbridled love and gargantuan audacity. Straddling across genres, formally adventurous, and comprising of a freewheeling structure – which the director explains with a deadpan demeanour – this was also a fascinating canvas for its four lead actresses (Elisa Carricajo, Valeria Correa, Pilar Gamboa, Laura Paredes) who aged over the film’s duration while enacting diverse characters, including flummoxed researchers, jealous musicians, turncoat spies, medieval seductresses, irritable actresses and aimless wanderers. The narrative is split into six chapters of unequal lengths that either begin or end in medias res – the truncated 1^st episode, made in the mould of a B-movie, is about a cursed mummy unearthed by archeologists; the 2^nd episode, a boldly passionate melodrama, is part musical on an emotionally ravaged pop diva and part mystery involving scorpions, and comprises of stunning songs; the extraordinary 3^rd episode and pièce de résistance, is a murky, melancholic, existentialist, multi-linear and breathtaking 5 ½ hour spy thriller concerning four triple agents on the run with a kidnapped scientist, interspersed with their ravishingly delineated backstories; the confounding and meta-infused 4^th episode starts with a parody of the film itself, and evolves into a befuddling film and film within the film; the 5^th episode, a silent B/W short, is a revisit of Renoir’s A Day in the Country; and the moody 6^th episode, hauntingly shot using camera obscura, is a diary on a group of women who’ve just escaped captivity. And the final cheeky coup de grâce? – the 40 minute long end credits, accompanied with the lilting melody of an improvisational song.

Director: Mariano Llinas
Genre: Drama/Thriller/Spy Thriller/Musical/Avant-Garde Film
Language: Spanish/French/Catalan/German/Russian
Country: Argentina

Femme Fatale [2002]

If you ever want to see the cinematic expression of “style over substance”, Femme Fatale is the movie to watch. In fact, but for Brian De Palma’s presence, this was a movie tailor-made for a trashy direct-to-video thriller that wouldn’t have attracted even a cursory glance from anyone. Palma must have had one hell of a fun time making this unabashedly stylish neo-noir, what with split screens, outlandish plot developments, snazzy craftsmanship and carefree indulgence into “cool factor”, so much so that the inane pulpy plot, wafer-thin characterizations and bizarre coincidences somehow do not come into way of the wholesome entertainment the movie provides. The movie starts off with the famous climax scene from Billy Wilder’s classic noir Double Indemnity. The plot is so gleefully byzantine and well, ludicrous, that I won’t even go into that; suffice it to say, the film abounds in amoral characters, double (even triple) crosses and enough of sleazefest to make this one of your guilty pleasures. Rebecca Romjin is smoking hot as a deliriously twisted femme fatale and her emotionally broken doppelganger, while Antonio Banderas’ turn as a down-and-out paparazzo is a really funny watch. It has at times been referred to as the lunatic and brazen half-brother of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, and why not?








Director: Brian De Palma
Genre: Thriller/Crime Thriller/Mystery/Post-Noir
Language: English/French
Country: US

The Japanese Wife [2010]

Aparna Sen’s Japanese Wife, based on the novel of the same name by Kunal Basu, is the most offbeat love triangle one can hope to come across. Snehamoy is a “chhaposha” (simple, average, middle/lower middle-class) Bengali school teacher at the Sundarbans, while Miyage is a shy Japanese girl residing in Yokohama, who, through pen-friendship, end up having a 17-year long platonic relationship and marriage despite never getting to see each other in person. The third angle is a young widow who silently loves Snehamoy, who in turn gets subtly attracted to her physically. The movie is, lets face it, is based on an improbable premise, and the emotional impact is not as much as a movie such as this ought to have. But the acting of Rahul Bose as the soft-spoken teacher, Moushumi Chatterjee as his loquacious aunt, and especially Raima Sen as the young widow, are pitch-perfect, which in turn get amply complemented by the impressive photography – the tranquility and fury of the region and the river Matla have been very well captured. The standout moment in the movie – the kite-flying competition between Bengali and Japanese kites; the overhead shots of the soaring kites took the film to a different plane altogether at times (no puns intended).









Director: Aparna Sen
Genre: Drama/Rural Drama/Romance
Language: Bengali/English
Country: India

The Edge of Heaven [2007]

Fatih Akin’s The Edge of Heaven is a morally and psychologically complex tale on human nature – the inherent fallibility in human character, and his futile attempts at reconciling with his life and love. Given that Akin is of Turkish origin, but was born and brought up in Germany, political and cultural diasporas of both the countries form the perfect setting for the rich, temporally fractured tale of three sets of unconnected parent-child pairs brought together through subtle interventions of ‘fate’ – a short-tempered hard-drinking Turkish immigrant and his quiet, educated professor-son; a prostitute living on the streets of Hamburg and her anarchist daughter who’s part of a radical political outfit in Turkey; and, a disapproving German lady and her rebellious daughter. Coincidence plays a strong role as the six fiercely independent yet lonely individuals (incidentally or accidentally) embark a tragic collision course through the vicious cycle of love, loss and their various repercussions. Continuing on the theme of death and bereavement, the emotionally charged movie is gritty like Head-On (though certainly not as much), with an elegiac tone that is deeply affecting. The acting, it ought to be mentioned, is very good without ever being flashy or spectacular.








Director: Fatih Akin
Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Political Drama/Ensemble Film
Language: Turkish/German
Country: Turkey/Germany

Head-On (Gegen die Wand) [2004]

The epithets that might closely define Fatih Akin’s Head-On are, in my opinion, grimy, brooding and bare-assed. Akin completely stripped off any sugar-coatings while displaying human frailties and loneliness at their rawest and most naked – both literally and otherwise. The movie concerns the unlikely emotional connect that develops between two severely self-destructive Turkish immigrants residing in Germany – Cahit, an angst-ridden, hard-drinking 40-something widower living in a state of perpetual disarray, and Sibel, a suicidal young girl whose free, rebellious spirit is at complete odds with her restrictive and conservative family – both roles passionately and fearlessly performed. Despite its content of intense emotions, the movie never plays out as either sentimental or exploitative; rather, it is disturbing, downbeat, provocative and unabashedly erotic. In fact, by using a Turkish folk-song as a motif and to loosely divide the movie into various chapters, it seemed to me structurally quite similar to Lars von Triar’s devastating masterpiece Breaking the Waves. And by mixing punk and grunge rock tracks with exotic Turkish numbers in the score, Akin has managed to be unflinchingly brutal yet surprisingly humane in nearly every frame of the movie.








Director: Fatih Akin
Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Romance
Language: German/Turkish
Country: Germany/Turkey

Fulltime Killer [2001]

Fulltime Killer is Hong Kong filmmaker Johnnie To’s unabashed expression of his love affair with the action genre. In fact the movie abounds in scenes and sequences that pay homage to a range of thumping contemporary action flicks like Terminator I & II, Heat, Desperado and Assassins, as well as earlier-era masterpieces like Rear Window. Further, it is a decent blend of stylish action sequences and fast-paced editing, and Adrian Lau’s turn as a psychotic killer is really fun to watch. However, despite the plethora of references and the reasonably entertaining watch, the movie certainly falls short of any lasting impact. By trying to aim at too many things, the director has failed to make any of the subplots of this kinetic take of one-upmanship between two assassins (a laconic, unparalleled hitman, and his younger and brasher rival) and their vying for the attention of a shy, beautiful girl, anything more than just about moderate. The movie, quite unfortunately, has followed a downward curve – it starts off really well with the look of an existential and fatalistic tale of contract killers, perhaps something like Le Samourai or A Bittersweet Life, but by the time it ends, it is hardly any better than the over-the-top, farcical climax.








Directors: Johnnie To & Wai Ka-Fai
Genre: Action, Thriller
Language: Mandarin/Japanese
Country: Hong Kong (China)

Underground [1995]

Rarely does one get to watch a movie with such a fascinating blend of irreverence and nostalgia like Emir Kusturica’s imperious masterpiece Underground. Through the absurd exploits of its three unpredictable protagonists – the flamboyant Blacky, the intellectual Marco, and the beautiful Natalija, and a host of other colourful characters, Kusturica has painted a whimsical, outrageously farcical and deliriously exuberant recreation of the erstwhile Yugoslavia’s devastating history from being a Nazi-occupied territory during World War II, through Communist regime during Cold War, to the ugly Balkan Wars that resulted in the disintegration of the country along ethnic lines. On the surface the movie might seem like a vaudeville with its surrealistic images and carnival atmosphere, but scratch a little and you have a movie of epic proportions with a deeply tragic statement on the ludicrous and destructive nature of war where “brother kills a brother.” The acting is gleefully over the top, the trumpet-dominated score is brilliant, and the screenplay an original and freewheeling expression of artistic freedom. At once a black comedy and a grim tragedy, Underground begins with a thumping procession, twists and twirls through madcap adventures, and ends spectacularly in the land of Utopia. As an afterthought, the "underground" aspect of the movie might have been the inspiration for Goodbye, Lenin.









Director: Emir Kusturica
Genre: Comedy/Drama/Black Comedy/Political Satire/Avant-Garde/Experimental/Historical Epic/War
Language: Serbo-Croatian/German
Country: Serbia/Bosnia

Slumdog Millionaire [2008]

Slumdog Millionaire could easily have been the cinematic equivalent of ‘Slum Tourism’. However, despite the graphic detailing of the dark underbelly of Mumbai, the commercial capital of India, the movie has come out with a content that far surpasses the physical displays of poverty, slums and crime. Brimming with hope, humanism and humour, this Dickensian tale of an underdog, who, with a basketful of street-smarts and infinite love for his childhood sweetheart at his disposal, makes the incredible journey from hell hole to "hot seat", and experiences every possible kind of joy, heartbreak and horror in the process, is a grim fairy tale and an ode to life itself. Danny “Trainspotting” Boyle, has shown his amazing ability to capture a place and its inhabitants without diluting the contents; in fact I can recall of only a handful of Hindi movies, like Parinda and Satya, that succeeded in painting the city in such striking detail. Boyle’s tour-de-force direction has been aided by terrific camera work, an expressionistic splash of colours and images, hyper-kinetic narrative (making terrific use of flashbacks), and a thumping score by A. R. Rehman. Right from Dev Patel’s restrained and mature performance and Anil Kapoor’s sleazy and wisecracking game show host, to every single support and child actor employed, the acting is first-rate and the characters very well delineated.

To read a more in-depth review of the movie by me, click here.










Director: Danny Boyle
Genre: Drama/Urban Drama/Underdog Story/Romance
Language: English/Hindi
Country: UK/India

Traffic [2000]

What most critics call the prolific after American auteur Steven Soderbergh’s magnum opus, Traffic was the director’s grandest venture that is epic in its scope. This tour de force movie, interestingly, was made just after the much more intimate Erin Brokovich. Comprising of some of the who’s who of the American film industry and multiple inter-connected parallel plots, Traffic is a ruthlessly detailed albeit ideologically somber movie that managed to tackle the issue of drug trafficking right from its source to its end usage in the streets of America. Benicio Del Toro (in one of his best performances) and his buddy are Mexican cops fighting a self-destructive battle against the drugs; Don Cheadle and his partner are fighting a similar seemingly-losing battle in the US; Catherine Zeta-Jones (in a delectably amoral performance) has taken the onus, at whatever costs it may incur, to save her arrested drug-trafficker husband, using the aid of a crooked lawyer played by Dennis Quaid; Michael Douglas, in a typically intense role, has been appointed drug czar to clean off the mess only to find that his daughter is an addict. Making terrific use of colour filters and film stocks, exceptionally fast-faced editing, and succinct narrative that is simultaneously gripping and economical, the movie is a memorable body blow for the politicos with a simplistic view of this complex and all-encompassing monster of a problem. Unlike two other terrific movies on narcotics, viz. Trainspotting and Requiem for a Dream, Traffic doesn’t have black humour or psychedelic visuals; rather it is more revelatory in its intent and matter of fact in its opinion.








Director: Steven Soderbergh
Genre: Drama/Crime Drama/Police Drama/Epic
Language: English/Spanish
Country: US

A Lost Man (Un Homme Perdue) [2007]

A Lost Man is the kind of movie the only way of viewing which is at film festivals, where one often ends up watching movies which are stranger than what one might have bargained for. Ditto for this French movie; this was the first film that I saw at this year's Kolkata Film Festival. The movie, in the form of a loose travelogue, follows two protagonists – a trigger-happy French photographer with a lewd fetish for ‘live’ photography (if you know what I mean), and a mysterious, laconic and world-weary Middle-Eastern wanderlust who is running away from one thing that no one can ever escape – past. The movie is unabashedly artsy in nature, but hopelessly hollow in its intellectual content. The biggest failure of the movie is that it fails to add layers of these two otherwise enigmatic and deeply existential characters; in other words, the director, by stubbornly refusing to delve into their pasts and their thought processes, ends up presenting two characters who remain as two-dimensional and unknown to us during the end credits as they were when the movie began. And what happen in between seem inconsequential in hindsight.








Director: Danielle Arbid
Genre: Drama/Road Movie/Existential Drama/Psychological Drama
Language: French/Lebanese
Country: Lebanon/France

Three... Extemes [2004]

Three…Extremes is a unique omnibus of short films in the genre of psychological terror – unique because three reputed directors, one each from Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan, combined forces in order to scare the viewers. The first one, Dumplings, directed by Fruit Chan (of Made in Hong Kong fame), is a well-made and marvelously eerie tale of a beautiful lady going to a mysterious maker of home-made dumplings, eating which would improve her fertility. The second film, Cut (undoubtedly the best of the trio), directed by the inimitable Park Chan-Wook, is a near poetic execution of a tale of extreme violence. The short, involving a vicious psychological tussle between a famous filmmaker and psychopath, is brilliantly conceptualized and extremely well enacted. The finale, Takashi Mike’s Box, unfortunately, is a complete letdown. The tale of a lonely writer harboring a dark secret from her childhood days, by simultaneously being too surreal and bizarre, fails to either terrify or engage the viewers. Though episodic shorts can be disorienting and/or disengaging for viewers at times, Three… Extremes, on the whole, is a decent watch – if not anything, for Chan-Wook’s enthralling piece. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Directors: Fruit Chan, Park Chan-Wook, Takashi Mike

Genre: Horror/Psychological Thriller/Anthology Film

Language: Chinese/Korean/Japanese 

Country: China (Hong Kong)/South Korea/Japan

Three Colors: Red, White, Blue (Trois Couleurs: Rouge, Blanc, Bleu) [1993, 1994, 1994]

Polish master Krzysztof Kieslowski’s greatest achievement, undoubtedly his magnum opus (along with Decalogue), the Three Colors Trilogy is an astounding episodic journey where each film is based on the theme propounded by the corresponding colour in the French national flag, viz. liberty, equality and fraternity. Blue (Bleu) is a deeply philosophical exploration that portrays the protagonist’s attempt at liberty from her deceased legendary husband’s inescapable presence; White (Blanc) (on a personal note, this being my favourite) is a mordant black comedy and a neo-noir where a divorced and humiliated husband attempts to get even with his former wife; Red (Rouge), often considered the best of the venerable trio, follows the unlikely friendship between a young girl and a retired judge, and their heart-rendering commonality. Evocatively composed, hauntingly photographed, exceedingly well enacted - especially by the three female actors, and passionately directed, the trilogy is a marvelous demonstration of a visionary director at the pinnacle of his artistic and philosophical prowess, and will forever be glowingly referred to as one of cinema’s most profound achievements.









Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Black Comedy/Social Satire/Romantic Drama
Language: French/Polish
Country: Poland/France

The Last Lear [2008]

Bengali auteur Rituparno Ghosh’s latest outing has generated a lot of hype not only because this is his first English feature, but also because of his collaboration with Amitabh Bachchan. A number of people are of the opinion that this is the best performance of the iconic Bollywood actor. I will not go into that debate, but there’s no doubt about the fact that Last Lear is nowhere near Ghosh’s best works like Utsab and Dahan. At the heart of the movie, in a not so subtle but finely delineated manner, lies the age-old struggle between theatre and cinema, which was the principle theme of Ray’s masterpiece Nayak, too. Bachchan has delivered a powerful performance of Harry – a fiery, brooding, and fiercely independent Shakespearean actor, trapped in a time warp, and for whom “All the World’s a Stage”. The movie, told in elaborate flashbacks, essentially deals with how the veteran stage actor is coaxed into acting in a movie by an equally independent and obstinate director, and the disastrous aftermaths this leads to. The movie, though leisurely in pace, has an underplayed captivating quality, which maybe chiefly attributed to the arresting play between light and darkness. Though Indian actors starring in an English language movie might feel slightly disconcerting for some and the “explosive” climax doesn’t really create any palpable impact per se, but it would be worthwhile for Ghosh aficionados to have a go at it.









Director: Rituparno Ghosh
Genre: Drama/Showbiz Drama/Psychological Drama
Language: English/Bengali
Country: India

Last Tango in Paris [1972]

Sexuality, repressed and otherwise, has been the central theme in most of the renowned (and I daresay, controversial) Italian maestro Barnardo Bertolucci’s movies. And it is nowhere better expressed, or for that matter more graphically depicted, than in The Last Tango in Paris, which ranks along with The Conformist as his two most famous works. A complex examination of the relationship between two distinctly different individuals united by chance as well as convenience, the movie boasts of fine performances by its two leads – a world-weary middle-aged American globetrotter who has recently lost his wife (in the champion hands of the great Marlon Brando, the role has attained a surreal, philosophical level), and a young French lady tired of her superficial relationship with her eccentric fiancé. Thanks to the director’s sensitive treatment and evocative photography, even the graphic nudity and strong sexual content seems simultaneously mundane and artistic. At the end of the day, the various parts of this deeply philosophical movie have added up to produce a marvelous deconstruction of the human psyche, the conflict between physical attachment and spiritual detachment, and the various paradoxes that define existence.









Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Genre: Drama/Erotic Drama/Psychological Drama
Language: French/English
Country: France

Red Violin (Il Violino Rosso) [1998]

Red Violin is a visually arresting and emotionally binding epic tale of an exquisitely crafted violin’s spectacularly eventful journey through various times, regimes and personalities. The violin, which starts its outlandishly unique three century musical journey at a small village in Italy, travels across England, Communist China, and ends up at a present day auction at Montreal, deeply touches and changes irreversibly (for better as well as for worse) those who have come in its contact. During the course of its travel it witnesses everything – love, loss, joy, anguish, genius, apathy, virtuoso performance, devastation, selflessnessness, hypocrisy et al. Stunning cinematography, fluid narrative, deft editing, haunting score and memorable performances by the actors, especially by the incomparable Samuel L. Jackson (cast against his type), make watching this movie a memorable experience.










Director: François Girard
Genre: Drama/Epic/Period Film
Language: English/Italian/Chinese
Country: Canada, Italy