Documenteur [1981]

 Made back-to-back during her second stint in California – while on a temporary hiatus from Demy – Documenteur made for an interesting double bill with Mur Murs. On one hand, they couldn’t be further apart formally, given that the latter was a documentary with a broad scope while the former was a tightly-knit family drama. On the other hand, however, one would discern striking underlying connecting threads – in their essayistic styles, feminist and underdog subtexts with empathy for those existing outside the mainstream, and in how Varda’s interest lay resolutely outside the glitzy, touristy sides of Los Angeles. On the latter aspect, one can’t help but be captivated by how so beautifully and delicately she explored diverse shades and subaltern flavours of LA in these two films despite being a visitor; though, that said, she certainly had extraordinary company in terms of outsiders (Akerman, Wenders, Kiarostami, Buñuel, Polanski et al) who’ve succeeded in irresistibly capturing diverse facets about a place despite hailing from elsewhere. This semi-autobiographical reflection by her was centered on a mother-son pair – Emilie (played by Sabine Mamou, the editor of Mur Murs), a recently divorced single-mom of French origin, and her kid son Martin (played by Varda’s real-life son Mathieu Demy) – living a transient, isolated and working-class existence in the city’s blue-collar neighbourhood. Though independent and self-sufficient – she’s employed in a clerical job overlooking the sea and shares a loving relationship with her perceptive son – familial estrangement formed a key motif, and this manifested through her recurring sexual fantasies and her son’s enquires about his invisible dad. Mamou gave a low-key but boldly daring turn, and vignettes from their lives were interspersed with melancholic, meditative monologues by Varda.

 

 

 

 

 

Director: Agnes Varda

Genre: Drama/Family Drama

Language: French/English

Country: France

La Promesse [1996]

 The Dardenne brothers had already made 7 feature-length films earlier, but it was with La Promesse that they didn’t just mark a new beginning and receive smashing international breakthrough, it remains one of their most incredible works too. With this, therefore, the Belgian duo marvelously established – with assured command, immediacy and vitality – their radical humanism, political defiance, aesthetic palette and formal rigour that would define their filmography thenceforth. Set in the outskirts of Liège – the city which, with its industrial and working-class ambience, would become the dominant milieu in their works – it stirringly focused on impoverished illegal immigrants who face exploitation, discrimination and apathy in the hopes of finding better lives for themselves; and, in turn, it provided a peek into the underground trades that profit out it. Roger (Olivier Gourmet), a relentless middle-aged man, is in this business – providing shabby accommodations to undocumented migrants, and fleecing them of money and extracting free labour too. His comrade-in-arms is his gangly teenage son Igor (a then 14-year old Jérémie Renier) who works as an apprentice, but gets pulled in by his demanding father for various chores. His impressionable mind and underlying empathy are tested upon a Burkina Faso man’s accidental death; and when Roger tries to brush it under the carpet by tricking his intensely vulnerable, newly arrived wife Asita (Assita Ouedraogo) and infant son out of his radar, the young boy takes a stance even if that can rupture the fragile bond with his self-serving father. Brilliant performances, exquisite evocation of the grungy surroundings, unequivocal yet understated political commentary, and extraordinary balance between minimalism and emotional undercurrents, made this a quietly devastating work filled with moving moral epiphanies.

 

 

 

 

 

Directors: Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne

Genre: Drama/Social Drama/Urban Drama/Psychological Drama

Language: French

Country: Belgium

Lorna's Silence [2008]

 Coming right after their devastating portraiture of the nadir of desperation in L’Enfant, the Dardenne brothers – the proletarian chroniclers of the voiceless, the marginalized and the working-class, with their distinctive brand of gritty social realism – once again treaded on dark waters in the bleak and tragic Lorna’s Silence. With its thematic focus on lonely illegal immigrants who’re pushed to live outside the edges, and in its evocation of overpowering guilt – for inability to prevent an avoidable death, even if the death is neither mourned nor regretted by anyone except by the protagonist – reminded me of their fabulous and heart-breaking recent film The Unknown Girl. Lorna (Arta Dobroshi) is a striking Albanian woman who – coaxed by her boyfriend (Alban Ukaj) with whom she dreams of opening a café, and orchestrated by the shady, ruthless Fabio (Fabrizio Rongione) – has entered into a sham marriage with Claudy (Jérémie Renier), a junkie in need of money, in order to get Belgian citizenship. The plan’s to bump the pitiful Claudy off with drug overdose, as that would allow her to keep her citizenship and get hitched to a wealthy Russian in another fake marriage; however, upon seeing his desire to quit, she starts developing a soft corner for him; and her impassive existence is thrown off balance when she ends up sharing an unplanned moment of passion with him borne out of this growing tenderness. Some of the plot contrivances and the allegorical climax felt tad unlike the Dardennes; however, Doroshi’s superlative turn, her defiance to exit the inexorable cycle of exploitation she’s stuck in even if that may cost her everything, and all portrayed through steadfast minimalism, definitely made it a poignant watch.

 

 

 

 

 

Directors: Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne

Genre: Drama/Social Drama/Urban Drama/Psychological Drama

Language: French/Albanian

Country: Belgium

Far from Vietnam [1967]

 Far from Vietnam is unlike most omnibus films. For one, it’s stellar cast of directors comprised of firebrand Nouvelle Vague icons and rebels Marker (who held this audacious project together and also edited it), Godard, Resnais, Varda and Lelouch, along with photographer turned filmmaker William Klein and Dutch documentarian Joris Ivens; for another, the collaborators forsook individual authorship while contributing their sections (the ones by JLG, Resnais and Klein were discernible, though). The above aspects, along with a topic as bristling as this, were key to the film’s most striking facets – viz. its revolutionary fervour, dissent, anger, and staunchly anti-imperialist, anti-fascist and anti-war stance – and these were accompanied with formal flamboyance, unapologetic messiness, provocative agitprop, and crazy mashup of narrative content… stitching together segments made by spectacularly different artists, even if bound by their shared disdain for this dirty war, must’ve been one helluva task. And, given that raging anti-Vietnam War protests were still few years away, its release unsurprisingly evoked backlash from conservative, right-wing populace. Thus, over the course of its strangely captivating length, we witness the American war machine (the full nine yards); pompous lies by Gen. Westmoreland and others; speeches by Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Minh; fascinating footage of North Vietnamese street plays, rebels and war shelters; sombre interview with the wife of Norman Morrison who’d self-immolated in protest outside McNamara’s office in the Pentagon; defiant American peace marchers facing derision from reactionaries; metaphorical fictional interlude; irreverent comic strips; and well, a typically eccentric monologue by Godard on his decision to mention about Vietnam – the first war to be telecast “live” on TVs – in all his films, upon being denied permission to visit the country.

 

 

 

 

 

Directors: Chris Marker, Agnes Varda, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais, Claude Lelouch, William Klein, Joris Ivens

Genre: Documentary/Anthology Film/Agitprop

Language: French/English

Country: France

Sympathy for the Devil (One Plus One) [1968]

 Sympathy for the Devil (originally titled One Plus One, but changed by the producer without Godard’s consent) was lambasted, derided and summarily shot down by the conservative critics and viewers upon its release. That’s all good, of course (and I’m sure Godard wouldn’t have wanted it any other way), considering what a gleefully and gloriously provocative, subversive, mordantly funny, madcap and riotously impolitic film this was. Most pertinently, this was also such a fabulous time-capsule, encapsulating the period’s radicalism, rebelliousness and roguish audacity. And well, that the producer (who, ironically, played a neo-Nazi and snuff bookseller in it) was gifted with a well-deserved punch on his face by the French iconoclast for the title change and inclusion of the full titular song at the end despite Godard’s conscious avoidance of that, further underlined everything that the film and its maker so distinctively embodied. This one-of-a-kind movie was an exhilarating mashup of a behind-the-scenes music video – one worth its weight in gold for rock music aficionados – and bewitching political agitprop, polemics and formal experimentation in a continuation of his three remarkable previous films. Thus, in its key thread – shot at London’s Olympic Recording Studio, often using deceptively long single-takes – we see Rolling Stones’ iconic rock anthem evolving from a bluesy, acoustics-heavy song into its euphoric final version, and in the process also observe Mick, Keith, Watts and co. jamming up-close. And, this was constantly punctuated with zany vignettes – Black Panthers members reading revolutionary Marxist texts at a junkyard; a hilariously rambling and polemical interview with “Eve Democracy” (Anne Wiazemsky) answering questions with only “Yes” and “No”; and Wiazemsky spray-painting droll political portmanteau griffiti like “Cinemarx”, “Sovietnam” and “Feudemocracy” across London.

p.s. This is my 1500th review at Cinemascope, and glad to have reached this milestone with a Godard gem.

 

 

 

 

 

Director: Jean-Luc Godard

Genre: Documentary/Essay Film/Music Video/Avant-Garde/Experimental/Political Satire

Language: English

Country: UK