In an
era of “on-demand” economy, “pay-as-you-go” delivery models, “hyper customized”
business solutions and “authentic” experiences, what could be more lucrative or
ludicrous or tragically lonesome – depending on how you see it – than the commoditization
of intimate relationships and private emotions. A man called Yuichi Ishii runs
the unique titular business in Tokyo which provides family members and friends
on rent – a fascinating, albeit ethically troubling, idea that immediately
struck a chord with Werner Herzog, and formed the premise for the strangely evocative
and engrossing Family Romance, LLC.
In an impish artistic choice in keeping with the theme of fakery and
make-believe, he made a feature film with the aesthetics of documentary, and
even cast Ishii as himself. In its marvelous central set-piece, he pretends to
12-year Mahiro as her long absent father who’d got divorced from her mother
(Ichii’s employer for this job) and had moved out of their lives a decade back,
but now wants to renew connect with his daughter. The way their relationship
delicately progresses, leading to the gradual opening up of this shy,
soft-spoken, lonely girl, was both heartwarming and heartbreaking. This central
arc was surrounded by various smaller episodes – a middle-aged woman who hopes
to recreate the ecstasy of the lottery she once won, a wannabe social media
influencer using fake paparazzi to enhance her popularity, employing a stand-in
husband for a family gathering, etc. The recursive loop of "fiction masquerading as
fact" (verité style of filmmaking) on "fiction masquerading as
fact" (the business itself) laced meta elements into this sly commentary
on the consumerism and idiosyncrasies of the Japanese society, and meditation
on the fragility, loneliness and performative nature of relationships.
Director: Werner Herzog
Genre: Drama/Docufiction
Language: Japanese
Country: US
Tolstoy had said,
“The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless”.
The arbitrary nature of existence and its possible meaninglessness formed the
underlying tenet in Lucrecia Martel’s bleak, disorienting and fatalistic Zama – her first film in nearly a decade
since the compellingly elliptic The Headless Woman. Ambitiously adapted from Antonio di Benedetto’s renowned
novel, this fever dream of a movie was as both a scathing commentary and a dark
meditation on one man’s descent into the collective lunacy of colonialism;
hence, in that sense, and also in its narrative impulses, it reminded me of Herzog’s
ferocious masterpiece Aguirre, the Wrath of God. The rippling opening sequence brilliantly introduced its eponymous
protagonist (Daniel Giménez Cacho) – a magistrate with the Spanish colonial
forces stationed in 18th century Asunción, and a complex mix of tragic
grandeur, male ego, loneliness and primal impulses – who’s seen in his full uniform
peeping at native women taking bath, but scampers in shame when spotted, only
to thrash the one who boldly confronts him. As is revealed, he’s desperate to get
transferred to Lerma where his wife and son live, and believes that’s imminent thanks
to promises by pompous Governors. However, when all roads get closed, he embarks
on a nightmarish journey to capture and kill a notorious bandit, only for it to
end in devastation at the hands of an indigenous tribe wary of colonialist forces built on slavery. Cacho was spectacular as the increasingly rudderless
Zama, while Lola Dueñas was good too as a wealthy seductress who cuckolds him.
The moody visuals, elegiac score and leisurely narrative aptly complemented the
powerful depiction of prejudices, exploitation and how violence begets
violence.
Director: Lucrecia Martel
Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Historical Epic
Language: Spanish
Country: Argentina
Crisis of faith and
existential dilemma of of priests is a theme that’s been powerfully explored by
European Masters, from Bergman’s Winter Light and Bresson’s Diary of A
Country Priest to Dreyer’s Ordet
and Tarkovsky’s Sacrifice to even
Melville’s Léon Morin and Graham
Greene’s novels (The Power and the Glory,
A Burnt-Out Case, etc.). And, in many
of these works, this has straddled across both personal doubts and external political
turmoils. Hence, there have been powerful antecedents which Paul Schrader
alluded to in First Reformed.
However, it also had defiant elements of radical political activism blended – Bergman
meets Costa-Gavras or Elio Petri or Mrinal Sen, if you will – which made it a daring,
gripping work, even if the two opposing elements did create some dissonance.
That Scharader also punctuated the muted, minimalist aesthetics with surrealist
blasts made it formally bold too. The central protagonist is Ernst Toller
(Ethan Hawke), a conflicted pastor at a historic church with a dwindling
congregation that’ll be celebrating its 250th anniversary soon; his
broken past – his son died in the Iraq War which led to marital dissolution –
and his crumbling health, are exacerbated by his loneliness and borderline
alcoholism. Things, however, take a darker turn when he’s approached by Mary
(Amanda Seyfried), the pregnant wife of radical environmental activist (Philip
Ettinger), who’s morally opposed to bringing a kid to a world on the verge of
being ravaged by climate change. The man’s shocking suicide, the realization
that the parish’s billionaire donor owns a string of heavily polluting
companies, and his complicated feelings for Mary lead the reverend to extreme
despair and disillusionment, and, in turn, to the cusp of a potentially violent
rebellion.
Director: Paul Schrader
Genre: Drama/Religious Drama
Language: English
Country: US
Raúl Ruiz’s magisterial
and monumental 4 ½ hour symphony – the prolific Chilean filmmaker’s penultimate
feature film, initially made as a 6-hour miniseries – is a work of seductive
beauty, stunning bravado and staggering brilliance. Memory, parental
abandonment, infidelity, unrequited love, passionate but destructive relationships,
aristocratic entitlements, and faith were the key themes in this luxuriously
mounted period piece akin to a Dickensian saga or a Balzacian “human comedy”,
while its narrative intricacies – achieved through elaborate, interconnected
flashbacks – were quite breathtaking. Yet, for all its irresistible
storytelling, Ruiz’s artistic and formalist vision, be it structurally and tonally
or in its shifting POVs and sensorial compositions, were also discernible,
making this a work of grand artistry. The episodic, labyrinthine plot was strung
together by the intertwined lives of three men – João (João Arrais / Afonso
Pimentel), the illegitimate son of an obsessed aristocrat’s wife (Maria João
Bastos), who later, as a young poet haunted by the memories of his mother, falls
hopelessly in love with the ravishing older lady Elisa (Clotilde Hesme); Father
Dinis (Adriano Luz), an enigmatic but compassionate priest who was an
illegitimate child to a doomed affair, fell in love as a young man with Elisa’s
enchanting mother (Léa Seydoux), and later became a caretaker for João’s life
and fate; and Alberto de Magalhães (Ricardo Pereira), a roguish, enigmatic nouveau riche man with a disreputable
past whose life, too, has been inextricably linked to Pedro and Dinas, and to
Elisa too. The magnificent cinematography – a rapturous synthesis of delicate
hues, compositions and framing of impressionistic paintings, brought to motion
with glorious tracking shots and signature deep focus shots –, and hauntingly melodic
soundtrack, made this masterwork a mesmeric audiovisual spectacle.
p.s. My 1400th movie review at Cinemascope.
Director: Raul Ruiz
Genre: Drama/Period Drama/Romantic Drama/Religious Drama/Family Drama/Epic
Language: Portuguese/French
Country: Portugal
Dissident filmmaker Jafar
Panahi’s Taxi Tehran is impish and
defiant, freewheeling and formalist, matter-of-fact and reflective, amusing and
serious, deadpan and reflective. And, irrespective of how one views this – subversive
mock documentary, underhanded city portrait, meta commentary on cinema itself –
it’s a remarkable example of political dissent in world cinema. In 2010 Panahi
was handed 6-year suspended prison sentence, 20-year ban on filmmaking and
indefinite moratorium on foreign travel by the Iranian government. Yet, despite
these directives, he made two films in secrecy, viz. the impudent video essay This is Not a Film and the allegorical
“personal agitprop” Closed Curtain; and,
with this, he made a triumphant return to the streets of his city in the garb
of a taxi driver who, as it initially appears, has either taken this as a
parallel vocation or is conducting a sly social experiment. Over the course of
the day his green taxi turns into an eclectic, microcosmic melting pot – a
conservative man who supports capital punishment and a liberal woman who irks
him by calling for its abolition; a seller of pirated foreign films; an injured
man who wants his wife to record his will on a mobile phone so that he can
bequeath his possessions to her; a couple of superstitious old women; Panahi’s
precocious niece Hana Saedi (she later received the Golden Bear Award at Berlin
on her uncle’s behalf) who’s been given an assignment to make a short film, but
bereft of themes that would make it “undistributable”, all of which,
ironically, Panahi amply indulges in himself; and human rights lawyer Nasrin
Sotoudeh on her way to visit a young woman imprisoned for attending a men’s
volleyball match.
Director: Jafar Panahi
Genre: Docufiction/Experimental Film/Diary Film/Political Satire
Language: Persian
Country: Iran
It’s truly surprising,
and a tremendous rarity too, that Pablo Larraín made two biographical films in
the same year, and which couldn’t have been more spectacularly different in nearly
every aspect. Neruda, chronicling the
legendary poet’s flee upon the Chilean government’s purge against Communists,
was a playful and delightfully modernist mock-biopic; Jackie – his first venture into Hollywood – centered on Jacqueline
Kennedy (Natalie Portman) reminiscing certain key periods in the aftermath of
her husband’s assassination, was, in contrast, a somber, serious and
self-conscious study in grief. Yet, the startling tonal and formal differences
aside, both had a strong focus on the idea of myth making, and how history is often
shaped by perceptions. It starts off with an interview of the recently widowed Jackie
by a journalist (Billy Crudup) – a composite character – whose insolence and
cynicism are palpable, even if Jackie controls what gets printed; this
establishing premise, which somehow reminded me of Frost/Nixon, held a tantalizing potential of a take on truth vis-à-vis
perceptions, and therefore the unravelling of the myths surrounding the superceleb
couple. Larraín, despite his penchant for subversive and political filmmaking, however,
went for a rather straightforward portrayal, by intercutting between a few key
moments – her hosting of a televised tour of the White House; being beside JFK when
he got shot; the strains between the cocky Robert Kennedy (Peter Sarsgaard) and
LBJ (Caspar Phillipson); being comforted by her close confidante (Greta
Gerwig); bulldozing her desire for a gala funeral procession; and sharing her
insecurities with a priest (John Hurt). However, despite its overly staid
approach, the film did have its moments that resonated, courtesy the stark production
designs, and Portman’s immersive turn.
Director: Pablo Larrain
Genre: Drama/Political Drama/Biopic
Language: English
Country: US
