Omar’s Film Reviews
Omar loved cinema. During lockdown he lost himself in film and in the summer of 2021 when cinemas reopened, he went as often as he could. He enjoyed writing reviews of his favourite (and not so favourite) movies, which he posted online. Some of those reviews, written when he was 19, are now here.
Three Colours Blue Krzysztof Kieslowski 1993
★★★★½
A beautiful study in grief, isolation and the power of human connections.
The Battle of Algiers Gilo Pontecorvo 1966
★★★★
A sympathetic verite lens probing the Algerian people’s struggle for independence and self-determination, and the collateral damage borne both out of their brutal oppression, and the subsequent, tragic necessity of (anti-colonial) violence. But whilst the tragedy of civilian casualties on either side, even as a means to a righteous end, will invariably provoke moral conflict - best portrayed in an incredible sequence where three Algerian women pose as French in order to plant bombs in the European quarter of the city, and the settlers for the first time, in their final moments, are individuated in humanising close-ups, and thereafter mourned with the same musical cue as the Algerians who suffered the same fate - the film’s heart lies with the insurgents, and its lens never forgets that it’s the occupying states which initiate these vicious cycles. The quasi-documentary style, often emulating newsreel footage, lends the images a real verisimilitude, particularly in its powerful final images of collective resistance.
Nostos The Return Franco Piavoli 1989
★★★★
The gods are present in Piavoli’s dreamy, poetic, and near wordless depiction of the Odyssey; not as mythologised beings, but present within nature. Unlike the poem, this film is not an epic. It is highly ambitious, but its scale lies internally. In contrast to the poem, where Odysseus risks forgetting, here he cannot break free of the memories which define him, (“memory is not the opposite of forgetting, but rather its lining”). The sounds of war haunt him in his sleep and as he finds himself lost in the world and lost at sea. But far more than his experience with conflict, it’s his nostalgia for home and his memories of childhood which he carries with him, and which ultimately carry him back. Hypnotisingly elemental cinema.
Wendy and Lucy Kelly Reichardt 2008
★★★★
The first time I saw the poster for this I assumed it was going to be a cheesy dog movie, but that was before I realised it was by Kelly Reichardt. This isn’t melodrama, it’s neorealism. It’s a tragic film about a cruel society. One moment that stuck with me was the brief shot revealing that the money the security guard generously gave Wendy, added up to just six or seven dollars - a reminder that, despite at points feeling like her saviour, he too was someone who had slipped through the cracks. The money totaling less than it appeared rendered the small act of generosity all the more poignant. Capitalist society holds such contempt for the poor that often the people at the bottom of the ladder can only find support from each other. Compassion only goes so far when the odds are stacked against you, but it’s still better than nothing.
Contempt Jean-Luc Godard 1963
★★★★
The opening scene, in which a long tracking shot ends with the on-screen camera pointing into the filming camera, indicates that Contempt will be both meta referential and self-reflexive. The film sees Godard grappling simultaneously with the messy end of his relationship with Anna Karina, and with his frustrating experience of American funded big budget filmmaking. The romance of cinema and the romance of romance are often conflated, as are their failures. Commerce corrupts art; art corrupts life. The centerpiece here is an almost 30-minute sequence shot in a single location: the deftly choreographed anamorphic distortions of a marriage crumbling in real time. The dialogue can feel repetitive, but arguments often are, and the way Coutard shoots interiority, using framing to emphasise the distance between Paul and Camille within the private space of the apartment, is masterful.
Iron Man 3 Shane Black 2013
★★★
Maybe watching after the poor second instalment has painted it in a better light but this seems like a vast improvement, not least because it actually manages to be entertaining. But largely because it’s the most successful character study in the trilogy, with a focus on Tony’s post-Avengers-traumatic-stress-disorder that following MCU films would largely neglect. The self-destructive behaviors that previous films comically portrayed (like pissing in your metal suit because it might be your last birthday) are less gratuitously hedonistic here and instead manifest themselves through Tony’s obsessive tendencies - going days without sleeping, locked in his basement doing the only thing he knows how, to the point where his anxiety is amplified by separation from his armour, which he hides from the world in.
As with every Iron Man film thus far, the villain is still less than compelling with less than compelling motivations, but even if Killian is somewhat thin and generic, and the extremis virus itself is barely explored, I did enjoy the Mandarin twist, both for Kingsley’s comic portrayal, and for the way the film flips the comic books’ racist caricature into a comment on post-911 US xenophobia. Of course, any Marvel criticism of the military industrial complex is hollow, but a military funded think tank creating an orientalist character as a decoy for their capitalist War on Terror profiteering is far more interesting than the original antagonist fans were calling out for.
The War Machine to Iron Patriot rebrand, and a Middle Eastern sweatshop being mistaken for a terrorist base are a couple of other comedic, if shallow, digs. I like how much time Tony spends out of his suit here, treating the two as separate elements while he himself struggles to, and proving that it’s his ingenuity and quick thinking which make him Super, not the metal armour he wears. It’s still scattered, unevenly paced and full of plot holes and convolutions, but it’s energetic and character driven (at least compared to the rest of the Marvel universe).
Iron Man 2 John Favreau 2010
★★
Elon Musk jumpscare
Mulholland Drive David Lynch 2001
★★★★★
Watched in glowing 35mm, as intended. Everything is blown up on the big screen; from the exaggerated, almost comically theatrical character performances of the first ‘part’ (and the heightened sense of fantasy here is met with an even more devastating crash back to reality), to the subjectivity of the (sometimes optimistically curious, sometimes nightmarishly claustrophobic) camera, to the sound design throughout. This ranges from oppressive to sublime - the Club Silencio Llorando performance in surround sound is a stunner, as are any moments in which Badalamenti’s walls of strings from the title and love themes, swell above the diegetic sound, bathing the images.
High Life Claire Denis 2018
The filmmaker fascinated by bodies finds herself now fixating on their control and on their exploitation - sexual, carceral, the stripping of their autonomy.
In some ways you can read the film as a scathing critique of the prison system: the psychological consequences and hopeless monotony of incarcerated living, the amoral finality of the life sentence and the death penalty, and the exploitative nature of the for-profit justice system. It appropriately links this carceral exploitation to the Western imperial pursuit of resources, too, and also briefly highlights it’s racialised nature in the film’s most disarmingly blunt line reading: “even up here, black ones are the first to go”.
But above all, and most affectingly, High Life is tethered to the tender relationship between a father and a daughter in desperate conditions. Paternal love whilst hurtling through the oppressive, inescapable darkness. Carrying on because you have someone to care for.
The ellipses could have been handled better, the exposition was at times clumsy (the train interview scene gets a thumbs down from me), and the focus wasn’t always given to the film’s most interesting elements, but there’s something very compelling somewhere here.
Solaris Andrei Tarkovsky 1972
★★★★ ½
Just saw this on the big screen; aptly, it was pouring down as I walked out of the theatre. I'm writing this review on the bus home now. Tarkovsky was a filmmaker who understood and spoke often of the inherent subjectivity of art, and perhaps as a result of the way he constructs his films, watching them multiple times can feel like completely distinct experiences. When I last saw Solaris, I may have come away thinking about the futility of searching for absolute truth within the unknowable, or of man’s destructive relationship with his environment, for example.
Today, it felt very much concerned with the hauntology of emotion. That is to say, the tendency of our emotional pasts to persist in the manner of a ghost, neither present nor absent, and our experience of time as out of joint. Where hauntology speaks of metaphorical ghosts, the semi-deserted Solaris station provides the vessel for ghosts of the past to manifest themselves physically, the vessel for subconscious conceptions of the past to become material. As memories of the past made corporeal in the present, the guests are inherently hauntological, and whilst Hari is the obvious example (not only a ghost of the past but a lost future too) the station itself is filled with objects from Kris Kelvin’s life; pictures, vases, books we see in the first act eerily reappear in space. Before leaving Earth, he burns his old documents and photographs, but is ultimately unable to divorce his experience of the present from his experience of the past. The score (Artemyev’s electronic interpretation of classic Bach) and other elements of the station’s ornamentation (a Brueghel painting among many other artefacts of Earthly history, including some of Andrei Rublev’s icons) reflect this phenomenon as well.
Unable to escape his guilt, and unable to live with what he cannot understand, Kris responds to Hari’s initial appearance with callous rejection. As she returns and returns again, through his memories and perhaps the projection of his emotional needs, she becomes more vulnerable, more human. However, it becomes increasingly apparent that she is not a manifestation of the real Hari, rather a manifestation of Kris’ subconscious; of his subjective perception of her, but he refuses to acknowledge this, and his rejection turns emotional attachment, seeing the ghostly Hari as his wife rather than a guest, and as his opportunity at a second chance. When we meet Kris he sees himself as a logical man who doesn’t let emotion influence his decisions, but after being confronted by his conscience, those are the only decisions he can make.
The past haunts the present until they become indistinguishable, as happens here between memory and reality. Even when Kris finally surrenders himself to his duty on Solaris, he is unable to do so without projecting nostalgic images of the familiar onto the alien. “We don’t need new worlds. We need a Mirror.”
Tenet Christopher Nolan 2020
★★
Exposition heavy dialogue, poor sound mixing and an obnoxiously loud soundtrack, incredibly thin characters, confusing physics (although nowhere near as hard to understand as I’d been led to believe, and there are actually some pretty cool payoffs that come with the temporal manipulation stuff, although they’re rendered less cool when I imagine how smug Nolan looked writing them), lack of discernible narrative shape, a bad guy who’s Russian because bad guys always are, and commitment to spectacle over… pretty much everything else. Also, something which made me laugh was when JDW and Robert Pattinson are talking through their plan, each time the film cuts to a new location they continue the next line of the conversation as if they got on a plane and just stopped talking for a few hours lol.
This is a bland, hollow, mechanical film which wants you to “feel” rather than “understand” it, then gets scared you won’t understand and stumbles to explain it anyway
Celine and Julie Go Boating Jacques Rivette 1974
★★★★★
Pure magic: Mulholland Drive meets Alice in Wonderland. A post-postmodern mobius strip of a film; Rivette deconstructs the nature of the consumption of cinema and challenges viewers to become active participants in narrative. A feminist tale of two women who find kinship in liberating themselves from the male gaze, and who, through hallucinatory Criterion Channel free trial cough sweets and reality shifting witchcraft, seek to liberate the young girl of a ghostly melodrama from her fate of authorship. It's chaotic theatre and everywhere's a stage.
Beau Trevail Claire Denis 1999
★★★★★
Denis turns her lens to the fragile, sculpted male body. Military drills as performance - ritualistic preparation to combat an enemy who doesn’t exist. Dance as liberation - surrendering control in a kinetic release from a lifetime of conditioned repression. Galoup’s veins pulse with the rhythm of life, but he doesn’t allow himself to feel the beat until it’s too late. Sert la bonne cause et meurs [serve the good cause and die]. Under the oppressive, arid heat of the Ghoubbet, Denis explores the rhythms of masculinity with almost balletic grace.
The Phantom of The Liberty Luis Bunuel 1974
★★★ ½
Bunuel does hyperlink cinema, but there's no consistent narrative - instead a series of surreal, tangentially connected scenes dripping with his odd wit. The police academy speech serves as the most direct explanation of what's happening here: the challenging of our pre-conceived notions of social norms and customs, and their often arbitrary or illogical nature. expectations are constantly being flipped on their head through absurd images; guests embarrassedly excusing themselves from the toilet to go and eat, strange men handing out erotic photographs of 20th century French architecture to children in parks, monks gambling away religious artefacts, a doctor offering a cancer patient a cigarette, etc. there's a lot of commentary to unpack, but I'm not sure that's as fun as just basking in the absurdity of it all.
Come and See Elem Klimov 1985
★★★★★
What can you say about Come and See that hasn't been said a hundred times over? Just a brutal depiction of the atrocities of war and mankind's capacity for evil, presented through the eyes of a child who's innocence we see eroded throughout the course of the film. Despite being shot with devastating realism, there is also an almost hallucinatory feel to some of the camerawork here, and the sound design is at points suffocating, as is the entire picture. as Flyora, having seemingly aged a lifetime under the weight of his experiences, wanders over to a young boy the mirror image of himself before the war, we are reminded of the inescapable cycles of violence that pervade us. as he opens fire at the portrait of the Fuhrer, attempting to erase him and his war from memory, but can’t bring himself to shoot the imagined image of baby Hitler, we are met with a depressing, bitter irony. Maybe Florya has somehow retained his humanity, but he can never kill Hitler. Although the haunting final montage plays in reverse, he can never undo history.
After 142 minutes of bleakness, perhaps the most harrowing image of all is the final title card: “628 Belarusian villages were burnt to the ground with all their inhabitants”. It is the knowledge that this surreal nightmare was, for some, an ineliminable lived experience, that stays with you long after the lacrimosa fades and the credits roll.
The Face of Another Hiroshi Teshigahara 1966
★★★★
Teshigahara's meditation on identity, perception (both inwards and outwards), anonymity and self, is a fascinating work. It's technically superb and visually compelling throughout; meticulously composed with depth and texture (the scenes in the psychiatrist's office make particularly creative use of framing, rack focus, and the highly symbolic mirrors / glass / doubles). The film constantly raises questions about the way we see and present ourselves and how that influences, and is influenced by, the way others see us.
Another Round Thomas Vinterberg 2020
★★★½
At times heavy handed and perhaps predictable but mostly balances comedy and introspection well in its effective demonstration of the scarily easy slip into unknowing dependence, the social pressures surrounding alcohol and the internal denial that you might not be completely in control. This isn’t a pedagogical vilification of the substance, though, and the film gives as much time to the intoxicating liberation that comes with the substance as it does the sobering and potentially destructive consequences - without judgment (although it handles the transition between the two states rather abruptly). The ending is effervescent.
Never Rarely Sometimes Always Eliza Hittman 2020
★★★ ½
The titular sequence is highly affecting and powerfully acted, playing as almost the equivalent to the HR scene in The Assistant (another minimal picture of the routine struggles of simply being a woman in the real world, which this would make a solid double bill with), although the interviewer here is highly compassionate and forces Autumn to confront buried trauma, if only briefly. But she carries the baggage everywhere with her - literally.
Whilst the film generally avoids overt symbolism, it pays attention to the details. Hands are a motif throughout, first as the store manager insists on kissing the girls’ hands as they hand him the totals from the till at the end of each shift (presenting almost every man here as a creep is the least subtle way in which the film explores the female experience but is still an effective, if blunt, tool in conveying the omnipresent assault of the male gaze), then as the guy on the bus’s hand lingers on Skylar’s arm just long enough to become uncomfortable, as he attempts to catch her attention. Later, the counsellor comforts Autumn by holding her hand through the invasive first stage of the abortion, and this is mirrored when she in turn discreetly holds Skylar’s hand through her own invasive experience. The cut away to the ATM is my favourite edit in the film, emphasising the transactional nature of the kiss.
Political context lingers in the background; a brief shot of anti-abortion activists outside the clinic, a brief shot of an anti-abortion video Autumn is shown, and a brief shot of the legislation she is reading all remind us of the structural injustices and regressive mentality surrounding female autonomy in the United States. But the real focus here is on the characters. Louvart‘s handheld camera imbues the film with a necessary naturalism, as do the long silences which reveal so much.
Twin Peaks David Lynch 1989
★★★★ ½
Figured I'd give the pilot another watch seeing as it was the show's 31st anniversary the other day. Some real comfort tv here - from Agent Cooper's almost childlike enthusiasm for the small things, to Badalamenti's warm, nostalgic soundtrack (I was actually a fan of the album long before I'd seen the show), to the general singularity of Lynch's universe. But given that my memory of early Twin Peaks is so wrapped up in the mystery of finding Laura Palmer's killer, I'd forgotten how much of it was a meditation on the collective grief felt following her loss. There were some real moments of emotional resonance here. Other than that, this does a great job at characterising all the players and setting up the rest of the series, kinda want to rewatch the whole thing now.
Nausicaa of the Valley of The Wind Hayao Miyazaki 1984
★★★★
Nausicaa is a wonderful character; fierce and strong willed, but ultimately defined by her uncompromising empathy. It is only through her determinedness to understand and coexist with nature (and each other) that we find hope in her world of toxic ecological collapse.
Some of the electronic elements of the score feel slightly dated, but Hisaishi’s signature strings hold up - from his cinematic work of the 80s-90s, maybe only Laputa (The Girl Who Fell From The Sky) reaches to their soaring airiness, whilst only Mononoke (The Legend of Ashitaka) can match their most triumphant moments.
Weekend Jean-Luc Godard 1967
★★★★
Godard’s frustration is palpable in this radical-pop-art-absurdist-comedy; frustration at meaningless, bourgeoise society, frustration at cinema itself. It's his most violent work, but it retains the playfulness of his earlier films (whilst simultaneously pushing towards the infamously esoteric and increasingly didactic intellectualisms of his later ones). I found myself less engaged as it decayed into physical chaos through the final act, but it's technically superb and incredibly provocative throughout.
Minari Lee Issac Chung 2020
★★★ ½
Really heartwarming with plenty to love, although some conflicts are perhaps underdeveloped/explored and the finale feels slightly hurried. but more importantly, first time I've seen a film in the cinema in over a year, I'd almost forgotten what it was like to watch a film on something other than a crappy laptop screen
Meek’s Cutoff Kelly Reichhardt 2010
★★★★
Shot in an almost square aspect ratio, we watch the film through the closed-off view of the travellers (specifically the women) rather than being given romantic shots of the vast, barren landscapes. However, we don’t lose any sense of expanse. Rather, the Cutoff of the peripheral provides the film with both a perpetual disquiet and reminder of how adrift these people are.
Perhaps the most immersive element at play is the meticulously detailed sound design. It’s incredibly naturalistic and also helps maintain the female perspective. The microphone, and as a result the audience, is placed with the women at the fringes of the group, often just out of earshot so we, like them, have to strain over the rustling of the wind to hear the men discussing important decisions.
This is a slow film, it's stark, precise, almost procedural at points, and it never lost my attention.
Code Unknown Michael Haneke 2000
★★★★ ½
These are indeed Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys, journeys which may only briefly intersect, but which nonetheless have far reaching effects. Social tensions have always bubbled below the surface in Haneke’s work, but here they are perhaps more evident than ever, with divisions along the lines of culture, race, class and gender ultimately underpinned by our increasing inability, or refusal, to communicate. It’s a film of vignettes and lose ends, and one which poses far more questions than it even attempts to answer, but…
Last Year at Marienbad Alain Resnais 1961
★★★★ ½
Watching this film is like waking up from a dream where you feel like you know exactly what happened, but the more you try to remember, it the more it slips away from you. What begins as something elusive and dreamlike slowly becomes dark and sinister, as you realise it's about a rapist and his victim. or was She killed by her husband last year? or are all the guests dead, and in limbo? or is this all happening in the man’s mind? I’m not sure anymore.
The Trial of The Chicago 7 Aaron Sorkin 2020
★ ½
This is a film in which the deaths of the American soldiers are seen as more of a tragedy than those of the Vietnamese they were sent to slaughter, and where Abbi Hoffman asserts that the institutions of our democracy are wonderful things. It's inauthentic and full to the brim of hollow rhetoric, the style is constantly at absolute odds with the content, and it's only a best picture nomination because the Academy loves anything currently culturally significant.
Viridiana Luis Bunuel 1962
★★★★
There's a scene here in which a man witnesses a dog, tied to the underside of a cart, being forced to run. He buys it to save it from the hardship, but as he's leaving doesn't notice a second dog in an identical situation being dragged past him in the opposite direction. and I think that's a pretty good summary of Bunuel's cynical worldview.
Ida Pawel Pawlikowski 2013
★★★ ½
This is an understated film, where context is implied. It's cold and distant - and perhaps I would have liked slightly more insight into the titular protagonist herself - but generally this works to its advantage, creating a bleak, austere atmosphere which wouldn't feel out of place in a Bresson film. Ida's primary strength lies is its visuals, every shot is stunningly framed and photographed, with Ida often banished to the borders of the screen.
Children of Men Alfonso Cuaron 2006
★★★★
Often, the key to successful dystopia is not to set the story so far in the future it feels distant. Cuaron avoids this, consciously refraining from distracting sci-fi elements, and instead grounds his film such that it feels like a plausible, exaggerated version of Britain today - a late-stage capitalist society with hateful isolationist rhetoric pushed to its extreme. Watching it fifteen years later, the political commentary feels almost on the nose.
As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty Jonas Mekas 2000
★★★★★
How is it that we find such universality in something so specific as an intimate personal memory?
The Virgin Suicides Sofia Coppola 1999
★★★ ½
The short lives of five adolescent girls trapped in melancholy suburban amber, consigned to mythology and memorialised by the male gaze as dreamy, unknowable artefacts; puzzles to be solved. A mystery worth deciphering after the fact, but not worth understanding before it.
Benny’s Video Michael Haneke 1992
★★★ ½
Media saturation, desensitising youth to violence and the disturbing consequences when the detachment created by the barrier of the screen blurs into real life. Prescient as always, but perhaps not as impactfully realised as films such as Funny Games, Cache (which masters the distant surveillance style static camera which is so effective in this), or Code Unknown.
The Fountain Darren Aronofsky 2006
★★ ½
Aronofsky bit off more than he could chew. I respect the ambition, however, this struggles to effectively realise its intentions, and the result is an over complicated, unfocused narrative – it almost feels more concerned with threading the three storylines together than with developing them individually. It’s convoluted and self-indulgent, with fantasy elements which are hard to take seriously. It's trying really hard to be profound but ends up feeling gimmicky, not least in the way it shoehorns in philosophies and iconography from various religions. Melodrama eclipses what should have been emotional immediacy. The female love interest’s struggle exists purely as a motive for the male lead, which felt tired too. All of this said, it has a strong central conflict and core ideas, even if, for me, it mostly failed in exploring them.
Harakiri Masaki Kobayashi 1962
★★★★★
Kobayashi dismantles the Samurai’s claims to honour, and lays bare the hypocrisy of that facade - but more universally, that of any dogmatic adherence to codes and traditions. Relevant far beyond feudal Japan.
The Assistant Kitty Green 2019
★★★½
Bureaucratic patriarchy and the abuse of power. The expectation that all your agency be for others. Oppression via office tasks and microaggression.
Marketa Lazarova Frantisek Vlacil 1967
★★★★ ½
This is almost like the Czech Andrei Rublev; the cold, harsh medieval landscapes mirroring the barbarism of man, the conflict between paganism and Christianity, the dreamy poetic sequences juxtaposed against brutally real ones. Even the choral soundtrack could quite easily be an amplified extrapolation of the voices which score Andrei’s Passion. One thing I found interesting in a technical sense was that, whilst both films are composed and shot with confidence and lyricism, Tarkovsky’s is largely dedicated to precise formalism, but in Marketa Lazarova there exists a tension between that and the more experimental, frantic camerawork and editing - which reflects the turmoil of Vlacil’s work. The penultimate sequence in particular, alternating between Marketa taking her vows and Mikolas leading an attack on the prison, is mesmerising.
Alice in the Cities Wim Wenders 1974
★★★★
A dreamy, existential travelogue documenting the homogeneity of the urban, the alienation of the city, and the bright moments that come around if you let them.
A Quiet Place John Krasinski 2020
★★
This franchise already feels pretty formulaic for something which was lauded on release for being exciting and original (which I never really got, Krasinski isn’t actually doing anything innovative here is he).
So, I generally had similar issues to the first, although this feels even clumsier, but I don’t want to just repeat myself. The final shot of the first Part - Evelyn picking up the shotgun - implied we’d see her assume a more active role as physical protector of the children, but the complete opposite happens. She’s reduced to an even more passive, domestic function while another man takes over where Lee left off. These movies are patriarchal nuclear family reinforcing, which aside from the obvious complaints, is also simply to their detriment, filmmaking wise. The strongest actor in the cast's entire narrative arc is a) begging a Strong Man to help her, b) visiting her kid’s grave on the way to the pharmacy in a copy paste repeat of beats from Part 1, and c) wait that’s basically it.
The film is paced poorly and unevenly. The little drama it has to offer is given to the Emmett and Regan side of the story whilst the other is sidelined and insipid. The first two acts are meandering whilst the third is awkward and abrupt. The film’s constant bouncing between average set pieces and bland family drama, between predictable outcomes and convoluted plot convenience, becomes tiring.
La Belle Noiseuse Jacques Rivette 1991
★★★★★
The painter - muse relationship as ostensibly one sided and hierarchical, but inevitably a dialectic through which true art is discovered.
Thoroughbreds Cory Finley 2017
★★★
I never thought I’d be drawing parallels between Michael Haneke's commentary on the corruptive detachment of bourgeois privilege and a horse girl comedy, but here we are.
Le Trou 1990
★★★★ ½
Slick, detailed, original. Builds tension super well, uses the diegetic nature of the soundtrack to its full advantage, and the twist caught me way more off guard than it should have, given all the warning signs planted throughout. A real benchmark for procedural cinema.
Pather Panchali Satyajit Ray 1955
★★★★ ½
Humanistic, heartfelt and heartbreaking neo-realism that manages to find moments of warmth in the smallest places.
Kwaidan Masaki Kobayashi 1964
★★★★
More an homage to Japan’s rich folklore than a horror anthology. This must have been a huge influence on Schrader’s Mishima; astonishing production design, super detailed and highly stylised. The sets are ornate, decadent and often visibly artificial. It is through this lens of ghostly unreality that Kobayashi spins his tales. The second story, “Woman of the Snow”, is a real vivid highlight in that sense, and its opulent use of colour is striking - it’s honestly worth watching all three hours purely for that forty minute chapter (some are stronger than others, and I thought the final one was just ok).
Barry Lyndon Stanley Kubrick 1975
★★★★ ½
True visual storytelling. Brilliant use of natural lighting (especially through the often brightly backlit windows, and also by soft candlelight), it's almost like watching a three hour painting.
Andrei Rublev Andrei Tarkovsky 1966
★★★★★
So epic in scope, so richly textured, so deeply spiritual. Transcendent images.
On the Silver Globe Andrzej Zulawski 1988
I wish I’d loved this and I went in certain that I would, but it felt a bit of a self-indulgent and at times, ridiculous mess. Performances are super melodramatic, and the dialogue is almost exclusively pseudo-philosophical monologue shouted at the top of the actors’ lungs, which at points I found exhausting. The biggest crime of all is the cheesy rock guitar needle drops in the third act and the weird subplot in that act is jarring and extremely thin too.
That said, it presents some compelling ideas about the development of civilisation, the mythologisation of the past, the inevitability of human conflict and religious and totalitarian oppression, amongst other things. The visuals can be arresting, too; the desaturated colours and ultra-wide lenses create the impression of a truly alien world whilst the frantic editing imbues the film with a perpetual anxiety.
I just wish everything was a bit less hysterical and this strange universe was allowed space to breathe, because it certainly had the potential to be a sci-fi masterpiece, but just ended up frustrating.
The Human Condition Masaki Kobayashi 1961
★★★★★
fuck
The Sacrifice Andrei Tarkovsky 1986
★★★★ ½
Contains spoilers for all 7 Tarkovsky films!
In Andrei Rublev’s penultimate scene, the titular artist breaks his years long vow of silence to console the son of a recently deceased bell maker: “you will make bells, I will paint icons”. He concurrently breaks a second vow, the vow - driven by his spiritual crisis and paralysing disillusionment with the world, with his fellow man and with himself - to never paint again. He had turned from creator to observer, wandering 15th century Russia, living between forgiveness and torment, until he bore witness to Boriska, the young boy, casting a grand church bell from nothing. A triumphant act of creation which seemingly restored Andrei’s faith in the power of art. For the first time, in a glorious shift from grayscale to colour, we see Rublev’s own icons on screen.
In The Sacrifice, Alexander is similarly disillusioned. He faints after monologuing resentfully about the contemporary man and his lack of action, and the film cuts to a gliding, aerial vision of a trashed, trampled street - fallout from the chaos of nuclear panic. Back at the house, he pages through a book of 15th century Russian icons, marvelling at their refinement and spirituality. “And such pure childlike innocence as well. At once profound, yet virginal. It's unbelievable. Like a prayer.”
In Stalker, three men lie on the ground of The Zone; a forbidden area, cordoned off and overgrown, said to contain a room with the power to grant one’s innermost desires. As the Stalker puts his ear to the earth, almost listening to its heartbeat, he falls asleep and dreams. The camera, slow and sepia, tracks over the surface of a canal, observing the debris lying beneath the water. Coins, syringes, eventually a religious painting. Material relics of humanity and of civilisation.
In The Sacrifice, Alexander’s second vision comes following the film’s central scene in which he offers to God - a god with whom his relationship is “nonexistent” - to Sacrifice all that he loves, and to take a vow of silence, in order to save the world from an impending nuclear holocaust. In this vision, stripped of warmth and colour, he dreams of finding a bag of coins buried on Maria’s (his maid’s) farm, to the soundtrack of flowing water. The camera again pans over debris, coins and newspaper, submerged and lodged in the mud.
In Solaris, Kris becomes feverishly ill and dreams of his mother; one of two women who he loved and left, the other being his wife who killed herself after he moved away. In an almost oedipal vision, the two of them, dressed identically, circle his bed until they become indistinguishable. He imagines his mother as his caregiver once more, pouring water from a vase over his dirty arm and gently washing the mud off. He sits there in silent tears, reduced to a childlike state as he realises how abandoned he felt by her passing.
In The Sacrifice, Alexander cycles over to Maria’s home, believing that she is a witch who he must sleep with in order to save everything. Noticing his hands, dirty from a fall off the bike, she pours water into a bowl so that he can wash them. This perhaps triggering a memory, Alexander begins to talk about his mother and emotionally recounts how he once spent weeks tending to her garden. By the time he was finished, she was bedridden with illness, and unable to see what he had created for her.
In Mirror, Alexi dreams of his mother levitating above her bed, suspended in the air.
In The Sacrifice, Alexander and Maria lie with each other, wrapped in sheets, floating and rotating above her bed as she comforts him. “Nothing to fear. Everything will be fine”.
In Nostalgia, Domenico fears the apocalypse, keeping his family locked inside for seven years in an attempt to protect them. He tells Andrei that he believes that crossing the waters of St Catherine’s pool with a lit candle will save the world, but he has never been able to make the journey. After giving an impassioned speech in front of a crowd of people about freeing themselves from isolation and treating each other like brothers and sisters once more, he sets himself on fire. No brother or sister tries to save him as he writhes around, engulfed in flames. In the film’s second to last scene, Andrei succeeds in carrying the candle across the, now drained, pool, before collapsing.
In The Sacrifice, Alexander wakes up at home following his visit with Maria. The world appears saved. Colour has returned, and his family sits eating breakfast as if the war was just a dream. Even so, he keeps his promise with God, setting his home ablaze and running around frantically until he is taken away by two paramedics.
In Ivan’s Childhood, we follow a young, orphaned boy during World War II, whose family has been killed by the Germans. The opening shot sees a camera slowly panning up the trunk of a tree, with Ivan standing at the base. It’s an idealistic dream-memory of his childhood; he runs through fields, chases butterflies, laughs, smiles, and is eventually greeted by his mother, until being suddenly woken by the sound of a wartime explosion. The title “Ivan’s Childhood” is ironic because, by the time we meet Ivan, his childhood has already been cut short. The juxtaposition between his escapist dream and harsh reality emphasises his abrupt loss of innocence.
In The Sacrifice, the final shot of Tarkovsky's final picture, mirrors the initial shot of his debut feature; the camera pans up the trunk of a tree as Little Man, Alexander’s son, lies underneath. Unlike in Ivan’s childhood, the shot doesn’t end with a crash back to materiality, it maintains its transcendence. The final title card reads: “To my son, with hope and consolation”.
At the start of the film, Little Man’s father planted the dead tree and told him the story of a monk who did the same and instructed his pupil to water it every day until, three years later, it blossomed. He believed that if every single day, one were to perform the same single act, like a ritual, the world would be changed. And so, Little Man begins to carefully water the barren tree, dedicating himself to that small act of faith. As Alexander enters into his vow of silence, his son breaks his: “In the beginning was the Word. Why is that, Papa?”. Planting a tree is, in a sense, recognising your own finitude, it’s giving life to something which will most likely far outlive you.
Tarkovsky’s cinema is his tree, his sacrifice to us. With hope and consolation.