How I Ended This Summer

This is the film that received the Best Film award at the London Film Festival. It had already received two awards at the Berlin festival (Best Actor and Outstanding Artistic contribution) so I know I'm not saying anything new when I say it is a very good film.

It is the story of two men, one older and experienced and the other young, working at a remote meteorological monitoring station in the Arctic. It is their job to survive there and to send back by radio the readings of the instruments. On an occasion when the older man is absent fishing the younger man, played by Grigory Dobrygin, who received the best acting award in Berlin, receives by radio an important message that he must pass to his older colleague. Some sort of dread prevents him from passing on the message and slowly things start to go wrong between the two men, leading to disaster.

I was on the edge of my seat throughout this film, which is outstanding in all departments. It didn't look as though it was much fun to make in such a demanding location. Without fetishising the beauty of the location there sre many feasts for the eyes, and we feel with much immediacy the rocky coldness of the place, and there is usually the howl of wind to be heard on the soundtrack. In fact, as I watched it I was struck by the subtlety of the acting, not by the younger actor, who won the award, but by his older colleague, played by Sergei Puskepalis.
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The narrative is unfolded with subtlety and sure control so that tension is maintained throughout the film.

Afraid of the Dark (Bruises)

This is one of those films.

It is an Italian film about a Romanian woman, Eva, who, when the factory where she works closes down, abruptly leaves Romania, giving all her stuff to her neighbour, who is pretty unenthusiastic about it. She goes to Foggia in Italy, an area without much more to recommend it than Romania. When she arrives in Italy she imposes herself on a family who accept her, and she joins in the life of the family.

It is one of those films where one is always struggling to know what is going on. There are many abrupt cuts, often there are no establishing shots and the camera is often in too close to see enough to understand what we are seeing. For instance; suddenly we cut to a mouth eating a burger but we can't see enough to know whose mouth it is.

Eva often behaves strangely. For instance the first shot of her in Italy is of her trying to sleep in a station waiting room (I think). Then we cut to her handling the steering wheel of a car. Confusing, I thought she was traveling by train. Then a woman speaks to her through the window of the car "what are you doing here?". Eva explains she was sleeping. The woman says she needs to go to work, so Eva says she'll come with her! No apology. No apparent contrition. Bizarre. Generally the people in this film don't behave like human being I recongnize. They don't say enough, they don't explain themselves, they don't smile and they don't have warmth. They are cryptic and they leave me with the impression that their creator is trying to be clever in a not very clever way. I've read novels populated by people like this (the first half, anyway). I don't think making things difficult necessarily makes them profound.

There is a pivotal scene where Eva speaks to her mother and we learn, belatedly, a lot of Eva's back story.

The film has good cinematography, which is uniformly dark. It is a first film by director Massimo Coppola. It is not a bad film but the central character is not very appealing and it is hard work and not much fun.

3 Seasons in Hell

This is a Czech film, set mainly in Prague in the period between 1947 and 1949, embracing the period from the euphoria of the allied victory to the embrace of the communist system.

We follow a young aspiring poet, an arrogant, supercilious and self-confident young man, as he joins bohemian circles in Prague, meets a woman similar to him, and together they are slowly dragged down by the demands of surviving as communism closes in on them.

This is an historical drama shot in beautiful colour tending strongly to the brown part of the palette. It vividly recreates the atmosphere of post-war Europe with strong and expensive production values. We may initially dislike the main character, Ivan Heinz, in his arrogance and self-confidence, but he shows steel as he encounters the challenges that await him, and finally retains his integrity.

The film, which is inspired by the life of the Czech poet, writer and philosopher Egon Bondy, manages to be a reflection on history, poetry, courage and self-realisation.

A film called Poetry

This is a South Korean film. It is about an elderly woman, played by a very well established actress, Yun Junghee, who hadn't made a film for sixteen years.

The film-maker, Lee Chang-dong, has worked in the theatre as a writer and director, has written a novel, and has served as minister of Culture and Tourism in the South Korean Government. With Poetry he has made five films. His films have received awards and prizes at international festivals too numerous to summarize here.

Poetry is, in fact, a very poetic film. Very interestingly there is, at the centre of the narrative, a terrible event which, like an elephant in the narrative room, no-one properly acknowedges. Yun Hunghee plays Yang Mija who is alone bringing up her uncooperative teenage grandson. There is a pre-credit scene where the body of a sixteen year old girl is found in the river. This girl went to the same school as the grandson, and she has killed herself because she was being repeatedly gang-raped by a group of six boys. Yang Mija is traversing a life-changing phase: she has just enrolled on a poetry course for which she must write a poem by the end of the month, and she has just discovered that she has the onset of Alzheimers disease. She is called to a meeting of parents at the school to discover that the parents of the raping boys and the headmaster of the school are negotiating a compensation deal with the mother of the dead girl, and that her grandson is one of the boys.

The  meeting with the parents and the headmaster, and a subsequent meeting with the mother of the girl, are all conducted in a very sociable and 'civilized' way - drinking beers, making small talk - not at all reflecting the horror of the events that they are about. Yang Mija, nevertheless, becomes preoccupied by this knowledge but when she tries to confront her grandson he avoids her.

In the course of the film we see Yang Mija at her poetry lessons and attending a poetry group where people read their poems. She always dresses very well and looks very good. She is finding it very difficult to write a poem by the deadline. The still above shows her studying an apple, something her poetry teacher has urged her to do.

The film moves to an extremely moving conclusion as we hear her poem read on the soundtrack of the film.

I can't wait to see this film again. Among the films I've seen recently it stands out.

Manila Skies at the the London Film Festival

 Manila Skies starts as a solid dose of social realism, walking us through the grim reality of surviving without position or qualifications in Manila. We follow Raul after giving up his job as a dockside loader, as he initially tangles frustratingly with Philipino bureaucracy to escape from his situation then falls in with a group of petty criminals and participates in one of their exploits. Finally, at the end of his tether and no longer coping, he resorts to an extreme measure. As the film ends we realise that we have been led through a nifty and moving flashback structure.

The film-maker, Raymond Red, has been making films since he was 17, and involves himself in all aspects of it. This film is beautifully shot in attenuated colour at the brown end of the spectrum, almost sepia, and slowly builds to a tense, moving and exciting ending. It shows Raul to be a kind, gentle and good man who is damaged and finally destroyed by the harshness of life in Manila.

The Social Network

I saw this last Thursday at the Fulham Road Cineworld. Long story short, I was a bit disappointed by it. I want to like David Fincher films but I thought the screenplay lost its way in places.

It is the story of the guys who started Facebook and is told in flashback. If I had been watching it at home on DVD I would have switched on the English subtitles, because I was struggling a bit in the initial scenes to understand what was said. The cinematography is beautiful, occupying parts of the palette from gold through yellows and beiges to black, and the image quality is stunning. The main actor, Jesse Eisenberg, who plays Mark Zuckerberg, is very good. I thought that from the outset his partner, Eduardo (played by Brit Andrew Garfield), always looked like a looser, which he was, and there was never any plausible dramatic tension between them. When Sean Parker (played by Justin Timberlake), who set up Napster, appears on the scene some dramatic tension builds. At the beginning of the story Eisenberg did some fancy footwork with Vinklevoss twins (both played by the same actor, Armie Hammer!), and there are several scenes where the Vinklevosses, with their cherub-faced friend, sit around complaining to each other that they are doing nothing to stop Zuckerberg outsmarting them. This plot strand becomes tedious, repetitive and over-long. In addition the story decamps to the Henley Regatta, or all places, because the Winklevosses are rowers, and there is a clubhouse scene with a British prince. This may amuse Americans, but all it seemed to bring of relevance to the film was the information that Facebook usage had spread to English universities. There was some bizarre photography of the Vinklevosses rowing, using excessive prespective to make them seem even more clownish than they already did. I think that three clowns in this film (the Vinklevosses and their friend) were too much.

I know that most critics have given this film four stars. I would give it three or three and a half tops.

Chongqing Blues at the London Film Festival

I made a last-minute decision to see Chongqing Blues and I'm very glad that I did. I thought the film is very good and now I wonder whether all the other films I see in the festival might be cast in its shadow.

The film uses the simple story of a father trying to understand the circumstances of his son's death in a police incident to rake through the gravel of Chinese society, as the father seeks out his son's friends, girlfriend and others involved in the incident. The film has lovely cinematography centering on blues through greys to dense, black shadow and the acting is minimalist and excellent, of the 'less is more' school of acting. Only once does the father show emotion when, trying alone in his hotel room to perform a simple task using string, he suddenly loses his temper and then breaks down, weeping. For the rest of the film he seeks out people who might know something; and their responses tell us quite a lot about how things are in China.

In the course of the film, as we follow the father along alleyways, streets and through various grungy interiors, we slowly form an idea of how his son was and what were the issues in his life that led to his death, using only some CCTV footage of the incident, and some flashbacks fleshing out the accounts of the various witnesses. All this takes place in a large port city of Chongqing, and there is plenty of urban background detail to feast our eyes on. The narrative and direction are finely-judged and never put a foot wrong.

If this film is released in the UK I hope to see it again.