Month: July 2021

Flag Day is…

Benedetta is a testament to uncompromising vision. Much like George Miller, Paul Verhoeven’s stamina to continually appease himself is remarkable. Having started out producing films in the Netherlands, to his 80’s blockbuster stint in the U.S., he now conquers France with his diabolical taste.

The film centers around Benedetta, a nun in a convent who is so convinced she is ordained by God, that she suffers from visions of Jesus Christ himself resulting in real world consequences such as stigmata and cuts on the forehead as if she donned Christ’s thorn crown herself. She then comes into the responsibility of Bartolomea, a girl seeking refuge in the convent from her abusive father, with whom she begins a passionate affair. However, the surrounding nuns soon grow suspicious, suspecting that Benedetta’s visions of Christ is all just an act, that is until she’s appointed abbess, sparking envy amongst the nuns.

The acting is well internalized, as if these characters truly believe that it is God punishing them due to the plague ravaging Europe. The conflict is apparent in every scene, using the theme of “suffering” as its story engine. The film asks, “What does it mean to suffer?” Is it us who must suffer? Or suffer at the expense of others in order to achieve salvation? As the tension and pressure rises, including the classic narrative device of a wooden Virgin Mary dildo, the film erupts into a third act that’s easily the highlight of the film. It is a masterclass in screenwriting and casting, using its buoyancy to create an ebb-and-flow narrative. It’s never enough to see our protagonist suffer, but to see other characters suffer at the expense of our protagonist’s delusions. The film plays on the line of “Does God want us to suffer?” And “doesn’t God want us to truly be happy?”

Going into this film, this writer has to admit that they were a bit skeptical: a religious drama, a period piece, with a lesbian sub-plot… it all seemed like homework to me. Benedetta, however, is not one of those films. Every story element of the film adds to the plot, making it an enjoyable, tense, and easily digestible film.

Rounding off his “Oslo Trilogy,” Joachim Trier introduces The Worst Person in the World, a film about steadiness and vulnerability. It follows Julie (Renate Reinsve), an indecisive woman in her 20’s, as she struggles to find her purpose and place in the world. She goes from med-school dropout, to psychology student, to mediocre photographer, and meets the men that come along with these fields. She constantly rejects steadiness and stability, always in search of a satisfaction she damn well knows will never exist. But along with that come her male partners, with whom she also does not know what she truly wants in terms of a relationship, but knows what she currently has is not enough. She’s a girl who doesn’t know how to be vulnerable – vulnerable in what she wants, and vulnerable in her honesty, as proven by the near-affairs she has with other partners.

What works so well is the conflict that’s always worn on Julie’s face. She has a bone structure and piercing glare that one can tell, just by looking at her, she feels something is off, despite her words being different from how she feels.

There’s an omniscient voiceover throughout the film that’s used to convey these inner thoughts and desires of Julie which she is too afraid to speak out loud herself. It’s a constant counterpoint from what’s going on screen, that is, until midway through the film, where the voiceover overlays on top of and matches the dialogue as a result of Julie finally embracing her vulnerability.

The film dares to convey how we blame ourselves for the punishment to come as a result of our selfish acts and desires, and how it can very much feel like the end of the world. It’s called The Worst Person in the World for a reason, because that’s the very feeling we have when we feel like we’re betraying the trust of the ones closest to us. Are we bad people for what we want at the expense of others’ suffering? Trier continues his cinematic language of intimacy here through character relationships, brought to a higher, more poignant, and ethereal level.

Going into this documentary, one should know that Todd Haynes never does anything conventional. The Velvet Underground is a project he’s been gestating for some years now, and when the film was announced out of competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, it immediately became our most anticipated film of the fest.

The documentary takes an in-depth, yet idiosyncratic look at the rise and fall of Lou Reed and the band, featuring interviews of the individuals that were closest to them, such as Jonathan Richman of the Modern Lovers, Jon Waters, and various members of the band who are still alive today. The result is a Citizen Kane-like frame narrative, where only the people closest to Reed give detail to what he was like, only giving moments of opportunity for him to speak for himself via archival footage.

Todd Haynes has found a way to flip the music documentary genre on its head. The Velvet Underground is just as psychedelic as the music is idiosyncratic. The entire documentary is shown in split screen, offering opposing views and constantly bleeding over into the next subject. The split screen then dissolves into more split screens within the frame, then again, until you have 16 heads on the screen all offering their views of the early days of the Underground, accompanied by a loud, engrossing, sonic soundscape that makes it necessary to be seen in a theater.

Despite being geared toward musicians and music geeks as its focus audience, the documentary could at times be a littler more coherent. It’s fragmented in that it doesn’t give the details of the speakers, who they are, and what their relationship was with the band; you’re expected to fill in those details yourself, making The Velvet Underground feel like it’s merely surface level. It lacks the emotional weight their music embodies. It’s heavy on the topic of improvisation, as if that was their claim to fame and what separated them from other contemporary artists, but it’s not the reason why audiences love the band so much. Maybe it’s the documentary Reed would have always wanted for the band, but it doesn’t function in the way for this writer to be drawn to it emotionally. But much like The Velvet Underground, it doesn’t oblige itself to be a crowd pleaser. Despite all this, it will be a hit for musicians, music aficionados, and historians.

Ahed’s Knee begins with a balls-to-the-wall type introduction where we don’t quite know what we’re looking at. We think it’s a blank white screen, that is until streetlights pass through the frame, when we see our protagonist, Y (Avshalom Pollak), on his way to a casting call for his new film, Ahed’s Knee, inspired by the real life Palestinian activist who was arrested for slapping an Israeli soldier in front of news cameras, with the tone properly set by Guns n’ Roses Welcome to the Jungle.

As he’s en route to a screening of his previous film in rural Israel, we see his disdain for his homeland and the censorship that comes along with it. His host is Yahalom (Nur Fibak), Deputy Director of the Ministry of Culture Library Department, who is in charge of making sure his film obeys the country’s censorship rules. The film plays with subjectivity throughout, as proven by his very western clothing, interest in western music, even his black Jordan Air Force 1’s and leather jacket, aiming to show no biased color whatsoever. He can’t seem to get out of his head, as the line between objectivity and subjectivity blurs. When the frame is subjective, we tend to see his interiority from the outside. However, when it turns objective, we see the surroundings he’s been thrusted into.

The landscape is very much a character in the film, as counterpointed by the protagonist’s affinity for the western world, interpreting it as his own. Every element of the film tends to act against him: the depth of field plays a character, the music choice plays a character, even the color temperature plays a character, all aiming to separate the protagonist from his homeland. The duality is present in the film as he acts against laws of restraint and censorship in order to speak the truth of his country’s oppression. He stands on the outside of brainwashing, daring to prove the inhumane acts his country has brought upon itself and its citizens.

Much like Nadav Lapid’s previous film Synonyms, Ahed’s Knee is another assault on Israel. It is a study of assimilation, where the western world is interpreted by our protagonist as his own, but still lies just out of reach. However, unlike the protagonist in Synonyms where he tries to escape his heritage, Ahed’s Knee tackles the disdain of heritage head on, as Yahalom says in the film, “At the end, geography wins.”

Despite what you may have seen from Leos Carax, Annette is not what one would expect based on his practice of not having any rules at all. In his films, anything goes. But Annette actually tends to follow a conventional, digestible plot, which, of course, Carax makes his own interpretation of what “conventional” means. The U.S. band Sparks (writers and composers of the film) are treated as second directors themselves in this film, which brings about a molding of sight and sound from two opposite angles. Music and vision are very much treated as two different mediums in Annette. It’s an assault on the ears, yet bears the vibrant images of a Leos Carax film.

The film centers around a vulgar stand-up comedian named Henry (Adam Driver) and his opera singer wife (Marion Cotillard), as they give birth to a child that is a marionette puppet. But as Henry embraces fatherhood, he loses grip on his humor and career, fearing he has nothing to prove of himself. Originally developed as a touring stage performance by Sparks, it is theater brought to cinema. A la Umbrellas of Cherbourg, music is used as dialogue, and dialogue is used as music, and the film dares to blur the line between the two. Much like any of Carax’s recent work, Annette begins by featuring Carax himself acting as a recording producer in a music studio with the band. To some, this might take the audience out of the film. To this writer, however, it’s used as a palette cleanser: an indication that this film will have no duality, but exists in between barriers. The film, at its heart, is about fatherhood and the conflicts that stem from the birth of new life, as represented by the fruits the two leads eat throughout the film – Henry with bananas and Ann with apples. In fact, as this writer write’s this very review, this might just be his most accessible film, and second best (only behind Holy Motors, naturally.)

However, the film’s faults are apparent despite the tread that carries the viewer though the film. Henry is supposed to be an “Ape of God” – an obscene, vulgar, and extreme stand-up comedian. Adam Driver, however, is not that. If you’ve seen his performances, one can tell how affable he is as a personality. In that respect, the character of Henry could’ve been casted better. Despite what was said at the press conference, the film fails to avoid musical clichés, as the music sequences are not impulsive (it should be treated as its own separate dialog, no?) In addition, the story takes too long to kick in. It isn’t until when the couple bears their marionette child when the conflict finally takes shape, which appears far too late in the movie. Despite all this, however, the film is an exuberant melding of sight and sound, one that traverses such an arc that it almost feels like a whole greater than the sum of its parts, making the film all the more digestible.