Film

In the past two weeks I’ve seen one excellent film, one fairly good film, and one godawful film, and as usual, it’s the godawful film which inspires a blog entry.

Once you accept that House Of Flying Daggers is ridiculous, badly scripted, and incredibly self-indulgent, it’s actually a lot of fun. Perhaps if I’d taken this approach to Crouching Tiger (equally godawful) I’d have gotten more enjoyment from it.

Takeshi Kaneshiro’s character is basically Legolas, except for the black hair and lack of pointy ears. Zhang Zhiyi is Zhang Zhiyi, ’nuff said. Andy Lau is annoying and ugly, but that predates the movie.

Of course, the cinematography’s pretty enough. Lots of panoramic sweeps of landscape to the soundtrack of a gently weeping erhu. People flying, daggers which dodge and swoop like smart missiles, bamboo groves getting hacked to bits – all the usual wuxia suspects. What’s not to like?

Everyone kept bursting into laughter at bits of the movie which were meant to be dramatic, which was a nice change from when I was the only one cringing at Crouching Tiger in the Curzon Soho. An especially hilarious snippet of dialogue was at the climactic showdown between the two male protagonists:

**SPOILER WARNING**
Leo (Andy Lau): It is not I that have killed her! YOU have killed her!
Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro), looking incredulously at Zhang Zhiyi lying in the snow with the dagger in her chest which was thrown by Leo: Me??!!
Leo: YES! Because she has betrayed me for you, you have FORCED me to kill her! You must die! (Gimlet glare)
Jin: No. Because YOU have killed her, YOU must die! (Gimlet glare)
Both men, simultaneously, while rushing towards each other with swords brandished: AAAAAAAAAAAAARHHHHHH!!!

In contrast, The Return had no screen idols, no famous director (it was Andrei Zvyagintsev’s first film, to which I can only say HOLY SHIT he’s masterful), and no big budget, but it was one of the most exquisite movie experiences I’ve had lately.

In the same way that every scene in The Girl With The Pearl Earring was like a painting, every scene in this movie was like a photograph. I lost count of the number of scenes I wished I could have stills for, the number of times soundtrack and scene combined to stunning effect.

The actors (adult and children alike) took a screenplay that had already breathed depth and subtlety into their characters, and gave it wings. Not understanding Russian, I obviously couldn’t spot dumb dialogue here the way I could for House Of Flying Daggers, but I have a hunch there were no similar transgressions.

No one could call it a fast-moving film, but I was putty in its hands. As the movie progressed, I was alternately intrigued, tense, and ultimately very sad, but I was always riveted. I know next to nothing about Russian cinema, but I’m keeping my eye on this director from now on, and I’ll go to considerable lengths to watch anything he makes in future. You should too.

[I’ve talked about the “godawful” film and the “excellent” film, but I won’t bother with the “fairly good” film because that was Fahrenheit 9/11 and I’m feeling too lazy to bother with the rigour that its subject-matter would deserve in a review.]

I detest almost every manifestation of urban Japan I’ve ever seen, but Lost In Translation made even me feel frustrated with how pathetic the characters were in their boredom there. Bill Murray’s character (I can’t remember any of their names despite seeing the film only a few weeks ago) seems incapable of interacting with a Japanese person without barely-disguised derision. Scarlett Johansson’s character just stays in the hotel room the entire day, moping around in panties and looking ill-used.

In a number of scenes, she watches expressionlessly as her husband interacts with various floozy people, and I gather we are meant to feel sympathy for her, a philosophy grad surrounded by idiots. Strange then that in her own conversations with Bill, I never see any more depth in her than the average 16-year-old. Knowing Evelyn Waugh was a man doesn’t make you intellectual, it merely makes you slightly better informed than Adrian Mole when he was 13 and 3/4. There’s only so much enjoyment a film can give me when I feel no sympathy whatsoever for its characters. (And don’t tell me I don’t know what cultural disconnection is, every day in Singapore is pretty much a culturally disconnected day for me.)

Despite what I’ve written here, I don’t actually hate the film. I think it looked and sounded great. The precious 30 seconds where My Bloody Valentine’s Sometimes accompanied a jittery sweep of night and neon were quite possibly my most divine spent in a cinema since the doomed chicken sequence in the opening of City Of God, and okay, the bit near the end of Return Of The King when Legolas a.k.a. Vision Of Perfection appears in the doorway to greet the newly-awakened Frodo.

Er, where was I? Ah, Lost In Translation, and the reasons I don’t hate it. It’s got great cinematography, and I love the soundtrack because I am Kevin Shields’s bitch for life. To their credit, Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson also do their best with the shallow characters they got stuck with. But none of that affects the basic point that the screenplay is far and away the weakest component of this film, which means the Oscars voters that just gave it Best Original Screenplay must have got something that I didn’t.

I haven’t seen all the films that it beat to this award, but to the writers of Dirty Pretty Things and even Finding freaking Nemo, I say this: you were robbed.

[By the way, if you feel like watching a better movie about lonely souls thrown together by circumstance and forging an unlikely bond, please watch Last Life In The Universe, which is just as beautiful if not more beautiful to watch, and manages to deliver much more likable characters despite both its characters barely being able to communicate with each other in the same language, but which of course wasn’t nominated for any Oscars, given that its director is not Sofia Coppola.]

I was going to a movie with Luke, and we were trying to decide what to watch.

Me: Okay, I’ve done a little checking and I have two preferences. Swimming Pool or The Magdalene Sisters. Swimming Pool is described as an erotic thriller set in France, and features two female protagonists and a lot of nudity. The Magdalene Sisters is about these unwed pregnant girls in 50s Ireland who get hauled into nunneries and abused by nuns.
Luke: The one in France.

So Swimming Pool it was, and it was certainly worth watching. Excellent acting, interesting storyline with a novel twist at the end, and lots of tits and ass. Just what we all need on a Saturday night. I’m going to see the mean nuns tomorrow though.

After a fairly long dry spell there are finally some movies out worth watching.

Etre Et Avoir is ridiculously, wonderfully sweet, probably the best thing I’ve seen this year since City of God, and certainly the best film I’ve ever seen about the teaching profession. You know how you can be fairly cynical, and rather wary of the ubiquitious attempts of various segments of the media industry to use sappy moments, pretty flowers, soaring Enya music, fuzzy animals, and cute kids to manipulate you into some particular emotion, but sometimes a moment just gets you with its overwhelming adorability and you catch yourself in an unreserved “AWWWWWWWW!”? Etre Et Avoir is two hours worth of those moments, mostly involving cute kids and a lovely, lovely teacher who we couldn’t believe could possibly be single (as he appeared to be), given that he was intelligent, sensitive, good-looking, and actually a real person rather than some perfect teacher a scriptwriter made up. Unless you detest being reduced to a puddle of utterly endeared goo, and are unwilling to have your faith in the nobility of discovering and realizing vocation reawakened, watch this – and bring a teacher you love with you.

Whale Rider involves a simple, touching story told extremely well, excellent actors, an appropriately evocative Lisa Gerrard soundtrack and lots of shots of whales. What’s not to like? If the last film about Maoris you saw was Once Were Warriors, rest assured that this one is considerably less harrowing, although it certainly does have its tearjerking moments. (And if you’re Singaporean, please try not to crack up when you learn the name of the ancient saviour of the tribe is Paikea. I’m sure it means something in the Maori language that isn’t juvenile delinquent.)

I’m also curious about Buffalo Soldiers, but probably only because the whole Saving Private Lynch myth tends to annoy me, and watching a film that does actually dare to portray the US military in a bad light would irrationally soothe that annoyance. Then again, I could spend my £5 worth of America disgust on a Noam Chomsky book instead, which would be a rather more cerebral form of protest.

My capsule review of The Hours (movie): Felt like hours. Buy the book instead.

And now the long rambling one: I have a long-standing habit of marking passages I particularly like in books, and typing them into my computer as part of a compilation I keep of such passages. Soon after starting the book, I abandoned the exercise, because I realized it would involve typing in almost the whole book. Every time I grope around for a word to describe the quality of Michael Cunningham’s prose, I always end up with luminous, but don’t like using it because it sounds so pretentious (“Luminous, darling, an absolute triumph!”). He combines lyricism and economy of language with such success that every sentence, every page seems to take on a disproportionate amount of beauty and insight relative to the slimness of the containing volume. When I finished the book I was disappointed it had ended so soon, and seriously considered reading it again.

In contrast, at certain points during the movie I was convinced Virginia Woolf’s longing for death couldn’t possibly exceed my own. I was annoyed by its lack of subtlety, bemused at the poor quality of acting, and generally b-o-r-e-d. Julianne Moore was flaccid and one-dimensional and Meryl Streep was slightly better but laid on everything way too thick. Strangely though, I thought Nicole Kidman looked more attractive in prosthetic nose and frumpy dresses than I’d ever seen her before, and Claire Danes was so gorgeous I momentarily questioned my sexual orientation. Alison Janney was fine but shouldn’t even have bothered getting out of bed for a movie role that so grossly underused her considerable talent.

Fun moment: when Leonard finds Virginia at the train station and she pleads with him to move back to London. They’ve been staying in Richmond, a peaceful suburb, since they’ve been advised that London destabilises her and was apparently behind her previous suicide attempts. The problem is that she loves London and is bored out of her skull in Richmond. She says something to the effect of “If Richmond is life, and London is death, then I choose death. Between Richmond and death, I choose death.” Everyone in the Odeon Covent Garden cinema chuckles smugly.

Later, we walk home along the same streets of Bloomsbury where Virginia Woolf lived and loved and went slowly mad all those years ago. Hopefully I will leave these years in London having done only the first two.

We settled down on Monday night to watch Chungking Express, which I’d been wanting to watch for the longest time, firstly because it was critically acclaimed yadda yadda yadda, secondly and quite importantly, I admit, because it featured Aniki Jin, holder of the dubious honour of being the only Oriental celebrity I’ve ever found remotely attractive. Disappointment on both fronts, unfortunately.

The men were either pathetic (recently heartbroken guy buys a tin of pineapple every day which expires on May 1st, because his ex-girlfriend was called May, and she liked pineapple, and his birthday is May 1st. On his birthday he eats the 30 tins of pineapple he’s accumulated since she dumped him on April Fool’s Day) or, er, pathetic (second recently heartbroken guy talks to his flat, which is apparently also heartbroken in the wake of her leaving. When he comes home and it’s flooded, he tells it he understands why it’s crying). The women are either criminals (in both the legal and fashion senses) or, you guessed it, pathetic (girl who is probably meant to be quirky and cool since she’s played by Faye Wong falls in love with latter heartbroken guy. She shows him this by secretly entering his flat and cleaning it for hours every day).

I was so nauseated by Aniki’s character (pineapple guy) that I couldn’t even appreciate his gorgeous face. The only redeeming quality of the movie for me was that I’d never seen Faye Wong before despite her superstardom, and I did finally realize what some of the fuss is about. She’s got fascinating, if not conventionally beautiful, features, and I support girls with adventurous short haircuts on principle.

At this point I must mention that I am far from an authority on Chinese/HK films, given that the only ones I’ve watched that I can even remember well enough to name are Mr Coconut and All’s Well Ends Well (quick conversion for Western readers: this is like saying the only Western movies I’ve ever watched are American Pie and Dumb And Dumber). I therefore appeal to readers better versed in such films than I am to tell me what the hell was meant to be so great about Chungking Express.

[Some Faye Wong song recommendations would be good too. I only know Tian Kong and that horrible cover of the Cranberries’ Dreams. Our three-girl flat has the amusing tendency to burst loudly into song on whims, depending on what song is in what head. Unfortunately, right now Tian Kong is in all our heads, but we only know four words (wo de TIAN KONG!), which makes for somewhat repetitive listening over time.]

Believe the hype. City Of God really is that good. I almost wish I hadn’t started the year by watching it, because I don’t know if any movie I see this year will be able to match up.

Even if, like me, you’ve never seen GoodFellas or want to see it. Even if you didn’t think much of Amores Perros (hello, John!), or if, like me, you thought the first story about the dogfight was brilliant even if the next two were ho-hum and the model searching for her “Reeeeeeky!” incredibly irritating, then I tell you City Of God is as good as that first story, all throughout the film. Even if you’re skint, and were thinking of waiting for the video – sell a younger sibling, or a kidney. Be resourceful. Seriously.