Alain Resnais never deterred from pushing the
boundaries of the medium of cinema. Though not as well-known even among
cinephiles as Hiroshima Mon Amour or Last Year at Marienbad, Je T’Aime, Je T’Aime Je T’Aime nonetheless remains
as one of his most audacious works – both in terms of its formal experiments,
and in its affecting meditations on time and memory. A young man named Claude
(Claude Rich) has just recovered from a suicide attempt, upon which he is
recruited by a group of scientists to be a lab rat in their experiments on time
travel to the past. Till then it didn’t just seem to be a pretty straightforward
film, but also just another hastily made, low-budget sci-fi flick. But what
transpires then is what the film was all about – a fascinating journey through
all his memories with scant regard for chronology or linearity. Claude traverses
through various incidents in his life – depicted via sequences ranging from
short bursts to full-fledged ones which were longer and more fully developed –
presented, in no particular order, as a mosaic of his life, his recurring memories,
and experiences (specifically his relationship with an enigmatic lady) that
eventually led him towards despair and suicide. The kaleidoscopic narrative
might make one feel lost initially, but a thread slowly and teasingly developed,
and deciphering this subtle thread was one of the great joys of watching this
otherwise gleefully confounding film. The accompanying philosophical ruminations,
especially on the inescapability from one’s past, was deeply melancholic and disquieting.
To say that this avant-garde movie owes its inspirations to Chris Marker’s landmark
short La Jetee would be an
understatement.
Director: Alain Resnais
Genre: Drama/Psychological Drama/Sci-Fi/Avant-Garde/Experimental Film
Language: French
Country: France
Like so many classics before and since, Barry Lyndon was met with derision upon
its release, only to be elevated to the pantheon of great cinema over time. It’s
even considered by many as Kubrick’s best work, though I wouldn’t go that far
in my adulation. Interestingly, I watched this right after Theo’s The Travelling Players, which had
released in the same year – though both were epic in length and scope, and were
both sumptuously photographed, they couldn’t be more different from one
another. Adapted from William Makepeace Thackerey’s novel, the picaresque story chronicled
the spectacular journey of its central protagonist Redmond Barry (Ryan O’Neil) –
an amoral, roguish and ambitious Irishman whose rise up the social and monetary
ladder is as compelling, as his fall from both is tragic. In love with his
cousin, the naïve, rustic Barry ends up being on the run for killing, in dual,
the English officer engaged to get married to her. Stolen of everything while
on his way to Dublin, he ironically enlists in the English Army. Before long, he
deserts, only to get enlisted in the Prussian Army. Expectedly, he deserts
again with the aid of a suave and crooked gambler, and this time for good, and
fulfills his ambitions by getting married to a wealthy and coldly beautiful Countess
(Marisa Berenson). Earning fortunes and social standing, unfortunately for him,
turn out to be far easier than keeping them. Gorgeous photography, ravishing
production designs and the Classical score, made the film elegance and opulence
personified; yet, it was also an emotionally restrained character study, and a bitingly
wry and darkly ironic social critique.
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Genre: Drama/Period Film/Epic
Language: English
Country: US
The Travelling Players (the second chapter in his 'Trilogy of History') might well have been the magnum opus of the legendary Greek filmmaker Theo
Angelopoulos. Running at nearly 4
hours, this was a sprawling, complex, and a decidedly Leftist chronicling of
the volatile political history of the country from 1939 to 1952 (through
dictatorship, militia-rule, fascism, guerilla communism, civil war and colonialism),
and was a bravura exercise in both form and content by making use of nearly
every possible techno-philosophical dimension that the medium can
offer. At the forefront of the ensemble storyline is a theatre troupe which travels
along the Greek countryside performing a popular tale from the Greek folklore, which provided for a powerful allegory both to the crisscrossing
lives of the performers, and in turn layered commentaries on the turbulent
political backdrop. The plot regularly and seamlessly jumped forward and back
in time in order to portray the cyclical nature of life and history, with
Brechtian devices like directly addressing the audience, at key moments in the circular narrative, used to join the threads. Despite the deeply disconcerting
content, the filmmaking style that Theo resorted to was one of poetic realism,
and filled the proceedings and the character dynamics with subtle observations
and a strong sense of melancholia – both at national and personal levels. It
was also fascinating from purely audio-visual perspectives – audacious scene
constructions (with a gently roving camera capturing multiple characters
spatially as well as temporally, through breathtaking single takes), haunting photography,
and a host of beautiful folk-based compositions, accentuated the deeply elegiac
tone of this brilliantly enacted, leisurely paced and richly rewarding
masterpiece.
Director: Theo Angelopoulos
Genre: Drama/Political Drama/Historical Drama/Epic/Ensemble Film
Language: Greek
Country: Greece
Aguirre, the Wrath of God, considered to be a part of his so-called “Selva Trilogy” (which also comprised of Fitzcerraldo and Cobra Verde), remains the single most famous work of celebrated New German Cinema filmmaker Werner
Herzog, and his first collaboration with Klaus Kinski. It was a
relentlessly disturbing, intense and psychologically arresting portrayal of megalomaniac
ambitions, manic obsessions, man’s propensity for ruthlessness, and the
infiniteness of human folly and lunacy, and a peek into the darkest corners of
human heart. The film is about a group of Spanish explorers who are in an
expedition in the Peruvian forests along the Amazon River in search for El
Dorado, the mythical city of gold. Aguirre (Kinski), the second-in-command,
spectacularly usurps power from the group leader, anoints a dim-witted guy as
the tin-pot emperor of their “kingdom”, and leads the men in a fruitless quest
for infinite riches on a rickety raft. Their journey, which is as much physical
as it is psychological, is plagued by treacherous waters, starvation, diseases,
and the deadly arrows of the aborigines silently trailing them along the banks;
but everything paled in comparison to Aguirre’s penchant for violence and increasing
madness. Kinski gave a tour de force performance – perhaps the
best of his distinguished career – as the psychopathic, malevolent and misanthropic antagonist.
The climax, where the camera keeps revolving around the despot glibly alone in
his raft, surrounded by monkeys and corpses of his former comrades, made for a
chilling finale. The filming process, interestingly, was besieged by
innumerable issues, ranging from the hazards of shooting on
location, to the impossible tantrums thrown by the lead actor.
Director: Werner Herzog
Genre: Psychological Drama/Historical Epic/Adventure
Language: German
Country: Germany
Martin Scorsese captured New York City after
hours with nightmarish effect in TaxiDriver; he did that again in the aptly titled and criminally underrated gem
After Hours. Referred to by one
critic as the “male rendition of Alice in
Wonderland”, this delirious, Kafkaesque comedy about a man trapped in a
hellish, surreal and seemingly inescapable nightmare, was a pungent satire on
urban paranoia, and the life-sucking monotony and emotional bankruptcy of
corporate desk-jobs. The man in question is Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne), a bored,
lonely and disenchanted word processor in a large corporation, who takes the
impulsive decision of taking a cab one night, from his upscale Manhattan
residence to SoHo, in order to meet the young woman (Rosanna Arquette) he
chanced upon in a lonely café. What ensues is a series of bizarre developments –
each more demented than the one preceding – which doesn’t just put Paul’s
sedate and morose existence into utter chaos and disarray, it takes him to the
very edge of sanity and human reasoning within the space of a few hours. The
script was gleefully unpredictable – enough to leave the viewers
as exasperated as the hapless protagonist; yet, it was also expertly paced, and
in some ways believable too despite the fantastical developments. The film was
also visually engaging; it memorably began with a spectacular zoom-in of the
protagonist, and ended with an audacious single-take tracking shot within a crowded office floor. Dunne did a fine job at effectively portraying his
character’s unforgettable physical and psychological journey and in getting the audience too emotionally involved in this devilish and incredibly engaging film.
Director: Martin Scorsese
Genre: Comedy/Black Comedy/Social Satire
Language: English
Country: US
