My Winnipeg [2007]

 In Guy Maddin’s hallucinatory, surrealistic and experimental faux-documentary, Winnipeg – the Canadian India filmmaker’s hometown – was, by turns, oddball, nightmarish, somnambulist, packed with Freudian memories and shaped by conflicting contradictions. It’s the sleepwalking capital of the world where it’s forbidden to destroy old signage, a frozen lake with the heads of six dead horses that died while trying to swim through it became a picnic spot, two taxi companies divided their territories wherein one plied across the city’s main streets and the other its forbidden back-alleys and its closet is filled with grotesque skeletons. The bourgeoisie and the working class, conservatives and progressives, prudish and decadent, wealthy and impoverished, and those who want to conserve this bitingly cold city’s cultural legacy and those who don’t wink twice before razing them down co-exist in such a deeply distrustful alliance that the fragile faultlines often erupt into hostile confrontations. As one might therefore expect, he’s had a deeply ambivalent relationship with Winnipeg – a place he wants to escape from but can’t (or won’t), as portrayed through a groggy man traveling interminably in a train full of half-asleep passengers – and he captured that through expressionistic B/W photography, a jaded and staccato voiceover straight out of classic noir, and free intermix of archival footage and personal impressions that blurred the lines of reality. These complexities were amplified by his brooding and discomfiting psychosexual memories of his domineering mother, and which he evoked through melodramatic recreations featuring a cold, sardonic Ann Savage – best known for her role in Detour – cast as “Mother”, and other actors as his siblings, in vignettes shot at his childhood house and which he now had to rent for this enactment.

 

 

 

 

 

Director: Guy Maddin

Genre: Documentary/Essay Film/Diary Film/Experimental Film

Language: English

Country: Canada

Breaking Bad [2008-2013]

 Breaking Bad possibly ranks – alongside Sopranos and The Wire – as one of the most acclaimed American crime TV series of the last few decades, in terms of both popular and critical consensus. Though it took time to garner viewership – its creator Vince Galligan, in fact, had to pitch the idea to multiple networks before being hesitatingly accepted by AMC – by the time it concluded its run of 5 seasons, it was among the most watched, discussed and awarded television shows of all time. The distracting fandom/hype surrounding it aside, it does remain a smart, compelling, brilliantly written and superbly realized show that slowly grows on one thanks to its original, unconventional storyline – albeit using a frighteningly real scenario as its springboard –; blend of multiple genre elements – crime, black comedy, family drama, morality play, Western –; a protagonist who one roots for even though he transitions into a fiendish antagonist; and interjections of ingenuity, dark undercurrents, ethical wranglings and violence into an otherwise deliberately paced narrative. The basic premise involved middle-aged high school chemistry teacher Walter White (Bryan Cranston) – bitter, proud, overqualified, underpaid and suffering from mid-life crisis – who, upon being diagnosed with stage-three lung cancer, gets into crystal meth production and distribution in order to pay for his treatment and secure financial security for his family. Cranston displayed a gripping screen presence, and was ably supported by a fine support cast – notably his headstrong wife Skylar (Anna Gunn); emotionally vulnerable meth addict and Walter’s partner Jesse (Aaron Paul) with whom he shares a complex relationship; incredibly capable DEA agent Hank (Dean Norris); deceptively vicious druglord Gus (Giancarlo Esposito); unctuous, resourceful and hilariously crooked lawyer Saul (Bob Odenkirk), etc.

 

 

 

 

 

Directors: Vince Gilligan et al

Genre: Crime Drama/Western/Family Drama/TV Series

Language: English

Country: US

Mamma Roma [1962]

 Pier Paolo Pasolini – the reluctant Catholic, firebrand Marxist and radical intellectual who defied conservative social mores and reactionary political views, and was murdered at the age of 53 – expressed his solidarity and empathy for the marginalized and the dispossessed with his revered second film Mamma Roma, as he’d done with his debut film Accattone. Made in the classic neo-realist tradition, it served as a grim, furious and unforgiving portraiture of post-War Italy – with ghosts of fascism still hanging in the air – as sections of people strive to move up the social ladder. A critic aptly mentioned that in his world – and definitely here too – “upward mobility is a descent into hell”, and this was conveyed through the aspirational journey of its titular heroine. Mamma Roma (Anna Magnani) is a middle-aged woman who wants to leave her days as a prostitute behind, and glide into a lower-middle class existence in a Roman suburb, with her driving force being to provide a “respectable” life for her teenage son Ettore (Ettore Garofolo). Her dreams, however, start coming undone when Ettore becomes infatuated with a promiscuous single mother (Silvana Corsini); befriends petty thieves; and Mamma’s former pimp (Franco Citti) starts blackmailing her for money. Magnani, the rare professional actor in a cast filled with amateurs, gave a magnificent turn right from the infectious opening scene involving a village marriage – where she’s at her vivacious, flamboyant best – till the tragic finale. Parallels, in fact, have been drawn by many with her shattering role in Rossellini’s Rome, Open City from 17 years back. A couple of bravura single take tracking shots – where the protagonist rambles on her eventful life while walking aimlessly – were particularly noteworthy.

 

 

 

 

 

Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini

Genre: Drama/Urban Drama/Neorealism

Language: Italian

Country: Italy

No Time To Die [2021]

 There are few absolutes in life, but one of those is the fact that Daniel Craig completely redefined James Bond. He provided the franchise – which had become staid, sagging and plain uninspired – with a dramatic fillip by replacing slick, over-stylized, blasé depictions of ubercool with a gritty, grimy and gripping palette, so much so that the first three (of the five) films starring him remain by some distance the best “Double-O 7” movies ever made and strong spy thrillers too. This tectonic shift was heralded by the exceptionally thrilling Casino Royale, and things were taken a notch higher in the brilliantly topical Quantum of Solace – my personal favourite of the lot – and the dark, visceral Skyfall. The curve, however, went south with Spectre, especially through introduction of a typically all-powerful, megalomaniac, sociopathic super-villain – something that Bond movies are overstuffed with, but which the above three had intelligently sidestepped – and that annoying facet was continued in No Time to Die. But, that aside, Craig’s last hurrah as a bruised, battered and beleaguered Bond – he’s decided to retire but his past inevitably catches up with him– was interesting, if uneven. Its first half, in fact, was spectacular – covering a mysterious flashback; a leisurely vacation with his fiancée Madeleine (Léa Seydoux) that gets explosively ambushed; a high tech robbery; an engaging, extended sequence in Jamaica involving a new 007 (Lashana Lynch), Bond’s final get-together with Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright), and a sassy CIA agent (Ana de Armas); his antagonistic reconnect with M (Ralph Fiennes); and an ominous but brief reintroduction of Blofeld (Christopher Waltz). The rather bloated second half and overlong climax featuring a tepid super-villain (Rami Malek), however, were big downers.

 

 

 

 

Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga

Genre: Spy Thriller/Action

Language: English

Country: UK

Seven Beauties [1975]

 Few filmmakers display the kind of gall or temerity that Lina Wertmüller did while making a film as unapologetically divisive, discomfiting, ferocious and provocative as Seven Beauties. Deliriously dripping with tar black humour that fluctuated between bawdy lowbrow comedy, outrageous farce, pungent satire and grotesque horror, its picaresque portrayal of a hustler – who nonchalantly plumbs the nadir of morality to survive – formed a grimy counterpoint to the unsurpassed savagery of fascism that engulfed Europe during the 1930s and 40s (and, in some cases, even beyond). The movie, as a result, was troubling and tour de force in equal measures, and thus a devious work of such stunning bravado that simultaneously astonished and appalled as its zany, achronologically structured narrative unfolded. Its protagonist/antagonist is Pasqualino (astoundingly played by Giancarlo Giannini), a smug, dandy and proudly patriarchal Neapolitan scoundrel who kills a pimp for having outraged his “family honour” by luring one of his sisters to what he construes as decadent; dismembers the corpse to hide the murder; gets into an asylum by pleading insanity; commits a hideous act there that lands him in Mussolini’s army (which he has no qualms in embracing); turns a deserter only to be captured by the Nazis and thrown into a concentration camp; and tries seducing the camp’s sadistic, obese commander and puts some of his comrades to their death to save his neck. Comprising of a terrific opening montage – wherein documentary footage is accompanied by jazz score and voiceover dripping with sarcasm towards proponents and apologists of fascism – flamboyant aesthetic palette, and wildly oscillating tones that build towards utter desolation, this felt like a film made by Fellini’s doppelgänger while drunk on Molotov Cocktail.

 

 

 

 

 

Director: Lina Wertmuller

Genre: Comedy/Black Comedy/Political Satire

Language: Italian

Country: Italy