Hiroshima, Mon Amour

Hiroshima, mon Amour (1959) directed by Alain Resnais

I wanted to see this when I learned that Emmanuelle Riva starred in it.  She's the oldest woman to be nominated for best actress, for her role in the very excellent Amour (2012 dir Michel Haneke).  This was her first film, though she was involved in theatre for many years before.

I watched some of the supporting material on the Criterion disc I borrowed from the library.  I actually watched them at the library, since I had to return the disc and didn't have time for the final interview unfortunately.

It's not like any other film I've ever seen.  It started off as a documentary project, but evolved into a meta film with elements of docudrama condemning the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima with very graphic and powerful imagery.... but mostly it's a tragic romance.

In one of the interviews on the disc, Riva said she'd never been asked to play a grown woman before, (just girls), so she was pleased to play one and and an adulteress, and emancipated woman, no less.  That her character is also put in a loony bin because she loses her mind over lost love, is perhaps par for the course for women who dare to challenge the narrow confines of appropriate and constrained sexual behaviour.  Yeah, it's definitely a feminist flick, because she's autonomous in her sexual appetites - the man she takes as her lover, tries to own and dominate her to his will, but she ain't having none of it.

I wondered about the power imbalances between them, especially in terms of racist attitudes being more pronounced and accepted when it was made.  With her being white and him Japanese, I think the idea of miscegenation was fairly ingrained and considered rather shocking and improper, never mind the fact that they were both adulterers. We've come a long way since then, supposedly, but I couldn't help question that racial aspect of their romance and if it was an obstacle to their love.  Mostly though, it wasn't addressed and actually the taboo of them getting together was likely a turn on and created more interest in the film too.  In terms of story motivations though the real roadblock to further entanglements seemed more due to the fact that she was only visiting his country and even more important, in spite of their compatibility, that they already had life partners.

I really enjoyed this one, it's got a lot going on, and it's tres tragique with that doomed love the French know how to do so well.

The Master

I really liked this one.  I expected a very different movie though.  I thought it was going to be about the formation of the Church of Scientology, detailing the scummy scammy cynical elements of the origins of the organization, and for sure it's got those aspects but more in a passing way than the straight up docudrama history lesson I anticipated.  I was captivated by what all went down - it's really a story of Phoenix's elemental man vs Hoffman's cerebral controlling man with Hoffman trying to own, tame, control, and dominate, with his bullshit religious dogma and psychobabble.  The methods might be suspect but the struggle and passion and belief are real as fuck.

Joaquin Phoenix plays a sailor, a drunken sailor, lost not so much at sea, but lost nonetheless.  He can't find his place, he's always wandering and running from himself, running from one drunken debacle to the next.  He's impulsive and wild, full of an angry passion and seems to yearn for meaning and love, but at the same time is afraid of both.  

Philip Seymour Hoffman is the guru, the man at the apex of his fledgling cult - modeled on Scientology, but here called The Cause.  He hides from everyone his true motives and I'm not even sure what he wanted aside from power.  I kept wondering whether he really believed the fantastical garbage he was forcing down the throat of his followers, but I'm pretty sure he was just using their search for meaning, and plugging their holes with his ideas to feed his ego.  I felt sorry for his duped followers eh?

I was really reminded of my father watching this.  He wasn't old enough for this to be his era, but his sensibilitiy and resemblance  to both men would be obvious to all who knew him.  He was a drunk and a smart man both.  Hoffman looked like him complexion wise and he was more similar to him in intellect, but his soul was more Joaquin's.  A sad man, a man who felt adrift and unmoored often, yet still stupidly prideful and arrogant at his part in the making of his own misery too, and so continued to hoe that row of unyeilding dirt.  Ain't gonna harvest nothing from there but sweat and pain.  

Dichotomy and despair, it's served up raw with a side of bitter sweet cynicism in this tale of thwarted love.

Django, Les Mis, and Unchaining the N Word.

So we ended up seeing Django Unchained after all, and then Les Miserables after that.  Joe and I both cried at the end of Les Mis.  He said it was the best ending of a film that he's seen this year.  I agree it was a moving moment, but the film was super long and really dragged in spots.  I think in total it only had 3 good songs in there, those songs were really good though, can you say verklempt?  At first I was all pissed off at the shaky cam and quick cut edits, but I let that go.  Also I wasn't all that impressed with the singing, except for Amanda Seyfried and the guy who played Cosette's love interest, also the daughter of the innkeepers had a nice voice.   But especially Russell Crowe was lamo - I think better voices should have been cast.  I liked Sascha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter in their buffoonish lowlife roles - they provided the comic relief to an altogether dismal and ernest affair.

Django was lots more fun.  I think what I liked best about it was how authentically 70's exploitation spaghetti western it looked and felt.  The songs sounded 70's, well they actually used 70's songs so I guess that makes sense.  In fact I wouldn't be surprised if Tarantino's inspiration for having Jamie Fox's character be called Django was because he wanted to use the theme song.

I liked the rap stuff too and the editing was sweet. There were a lot of these quick zoom reaction moments that were just great.  Like that viral gopher.

Christoph Walz is awesome in it.  I kept thinking, Tarantino really scored when he found him for Inglorious Basterds.  He's just got this super styley panache.  It's the way he talks, the distinctive cadence and precise phrasing, and how he grins and does this big eyed hand twirly oh you kinda shit just before he does something outrageous.  He's the best part of the film.  I'm pretty sure Tarantino wrote the film around him.  Yeah, yeah, it stars Jamie Foxx, and it's a slave revengesploitation, but it's such a white man's film, an apologist view of racism, that glories in racist violence too, and that the German guy is the one who frees the slave?  Well what's that if not an attempt at healing some karma and attempting cultural reparations?  Dr King!!! Schultz?  I bet QT was all giggling on that and I bet lots of black folk hate that it's such a white folk flick, but  I'm not bothered by that much.  I enjoyed it, and even though I thought it was a tasteless film to make, I think it's great that slavery is the subject, because slavery and racial intolerance and yadayada social justice human rights issues are so important to spark dialogue on.  It's got gross bits of ultra violence and the slaves are mostly weak and Jamie Foxx is the superman exceptional black man, but whatever, I don't wanna get all analytical on the flick.  It's an adventure time story and I think everyone involved had a good time making it.  I had a good time watching it.  Thumbs up.

Back to the racist stuff though...I'm reminded of this song

I was trying to figure out who did it yesterday, and I found out it's from Gangsta Rap: The Glockumentary (2007), dir Coke Williams.  I haven't seen it, but I want to.  It sounds a lot like CB4 (1993),  the Chris Rock/Tamra Davis thang, except this faux behind the scenes mockumentary is more recent.  I listened to some of the songs and they're pretty funny.  Anyhow, I think it's an important distinction that cultural commentary that could be seen as racist and mocking, that it's better if it comes from a cultural insider.  At least that cuts down on the knee jerk that's RACIST!! reactions some.  I dunno.  There's a whole lotta drama attached to the word nigger and nigga, the n word!!! Like you should't use it if you aren't black, or that it's verboten because it's an especially hateful word. I don't really buy that.  Kike is a hateful word, so are a lot of words.  Slurs are powerful, but making them taboo like that with different levels of acceptability of usage around race, while it makes sense,  it also seems silly.  I know I'm trying to simplify something complicated, but I would like it if life WERE simpler in terms of words NOT being especially imbued with power to hurt.  Let's not get rude about crudeness eh?

I wrote this about a week ago and I thought I might write more on the flicks, but I'm fine with this as it is.  I just want to get back in the habit of writing about the movies I see again.