Hard to Be a God [2013]

 Grisly, grimy, gut-wrenching, grueling – one might run out of gangrenous adjectives while describing Hard to be a God, the gargantuan final film of Aleksei German, and one in which he invested nearly 15 years of his life until his death (it was released posthumously through the efforts of his wife and son). Possibly best known until this for My Friend Ivan Lapshin – his bleak, freewheeling adaptation of stories written by his father – this is a work that’s bound to leave one gutted with its unsettling imagery of a medieval-era civilization at its most hideous, putrefying and barbaric… or, allegorically, humanity at the nadir of its humanism. On surface, though, this was a sci-fi film; adapted from Soviet writers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s novel, it’s set in an exoplanet to which a group of scientists have come from Earth in order to observe and study its inhabitants who’re stuck in the vicious loop of the middle ages due to the brutal suppression of a renaissance movement in its bud through the collective massacre of intellectuals, artists and scientists. One of those scientists (Leonid Yarmolnik) has infiltrated the dominant local kingdom where he’s established himself as a nobleman / some sort of a god, and must somehow survive the violent inter-faction rivalries (between the tyrannical “Greys” and fanatical “Blacks”), atrocity against the intelligentsia, rampant slavery and public executions, while also trying to save a supposed intellectual within this quagmire. Through stark B/W photography and on-location realism German created a hellish world filled with decay, squalour, muck and savagery, and in turn provided a metaphorical alternative portraiture of human civilization when stripped of the civility accorded by the arts and the sciences.

 

 

 

 

 

Director: Aleksei German

Genre: Drama/Medieval Drama/Sci-Fi

Language: Russian

Country: Russia

Paradise: Hope [2013]

 Paradise: Hope, the final installment in Seidl’s cinematically bold and stunningly confrontational ‘Paradise Trilogy’, continued the deeply ironic and oftentimes jaundiced interpretations of the pleasant sounding titles; while “love” was commoditized and exploitative in Paradise: Love and “faith” was oppressive and self-destructive in Paradise: Faith, “hope” was marked by emotional despair and hopeless unattainability here. The formal and visual palettes, too, were immediately distinguishable by Seidl’s rigorous precision, meticulous shot compositions, bleak austerity and deadpan tone. However, these thematic and stylistic continuities aside, this was a surprisingly wistful, tender and melancholic coda to this otherwise lacerating trilogy, and that significantly set this apart vis-à-vis the previous two films. The focus here is Melanie (Melanie Lenz), an overweight 13-year old girl who’s been sent to a summer diet and fitness camp while her mother – possibly unbeknownst to her – is holidaying in Kenya. Despite the strictness imposed by the stern-faced trainers there and physical activities that the adolescents are subjected to, the environs and atmosphere are marked by fun, playfulness, mischief, bonhomie and tranquility, especially thanks to the abundance of youngsters and her friendship in particular with a rebellious and slightly older girl who’s upfront about her sexual experiences. She encounters both frothy hope and intense grief upon getting attracted to the rakish and much older resident doctor (Joseph Lorenz) who pampers her overt gestures of teenage love with cheeky ambiguity even if he desists crossing the no-return threshold in contravention to viewer expectations. Seidl’s teasing flirtation with the moral implications of their supposedly brewing relationship, along with Melanie’s painful coming-of-age upon the rejection and her ensuing heartbreak, formed at once subversive as well as quietly affecting facets.

 

 

 

 

 

Director: Ulrich Seidl

Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Coming-of-Age

Language: German

Country: Austria

Paradise: Faith [2012]

 Paradise: Faith, the abrasive and provocative middle chapter in Seidl’s unforgiving, unsparing and thematically-linked ‘Paradise Trilogy’, and arguably also the most powerful of this triptych – it’s bookended on either side by Paradise:Love and Paradise: Hope – is centered on faith at its most violent, virulent, sadomasochistic and political too. And, in an interesting counterpoint to the previous film where the protagonist travels to a lesser developed country in an exploitative search for love, the one here travels within Vienna to exploitatively propagate religion to those who’ve come from lesser developed countries – and these parallel but opposing journeys, in a way, may remind one of Ulrich’s best known work, viz. the darkly brilliant Import / Export. The focus here is Teresa’s sister Anna Maria (Maria Hofstätter), a middle-aged, humourless, guilt-ridden, self-flagellating zealot whose obsessive love for Christ often borders on the grotesque. She takes a holiday from her day job to dedicate time to individual and group prayers – the leader of that right-wing group always ends her missives with the battle-cry to make Austria Catholic again; conduct harsh self-penance for libidinous thoughts – the sexualized form of those punishments may leave ardent believers shaken; and to perform door-to-door evangelism to browbeat vulnerable immigrants into hardline Catholicism – her visit to a paunchy, eccentric man in his underwear was darkly funny in particular. The bare bones nature of her rigorous existence, however, gets upended upon the sudden return of her former husband – a paraplegic Muslim man (Nabil Saleh) who deplores her staunchness and underhanded xenophobia, while having emotional complexities and orthodoxy of his own, and with whom she might’ve shared a tumultuous past – which takes them on a lurid collision course.

 

 

 

Director: Ulrich Seidl

Genre: Drama/Religious Drama/Psychological Drama/Marital Drama

Language: German

Country: Austria