Tropical Malady
(2004, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand)
[75 out of 100]
A week earlier, at the Anthology Film Archives, I got my first taste of the supposedly unpronouncable master of Thai surrealism, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, with his 2002 film, Blissfully Yours. That film was an esoteric double entendre hidden in the politically-charged landscape of the Thai/Burmese border dispute - and if Blissfully Yours was the Yin of that world, then Tropical Malady is the Yang. Weerasethakul's third film, Malady plays out in the same style of set-up as his previous film. The first half (of both films) being the more 'urban' setting and the second half going into a more etheral, primal world - that may or may not be reality. We start out by seeing the burgeoning relationship between Keng, a soldier who probably doesn't really want to be a soldier, and Tong, a country boy who probably doesn't know what he wants to be. Although there is no sex in this film (as there was in Blissfully Yours), Malady was still banned by the ultra-conservative censors in Thailand - mainly for its gay content, which is highly illegal in Thailand. But Malady is much more than just a gay love story - played out in a beautifully-malaised woeful crawl, Weerasethakul (an Art Institute of Chicago graduate, with both a Fine Arts and Architectual degrees, who likes to be called 'Joe'), experiments with basic cinematic genres, taking them in unexpected and usually previously unexplored directions. After the trepidation of these two young men, in exploring their sexual awakening, the film suddenly shifts into a hazy netherworld of Asian mythology. Taking a Thai folk legend about a shaman who can transform himself into different animals, Weera...I mean 'Joe', deepens and darkens his film into the jungles of the Thai/Burmese border - which is also where Blissfully Yours finishes out it's second half. Keng, who started it all by opening a book in Tong's bedroom, is now deep in the forest, hunting a ghost tiger, that may just be undestroyable. With the best cameo of the year - a philosophically-waxing talking monkey, subtitled in Thai and in turn, English - Weerasethakul has opened a door of neuvo-surrealistic Cinema that goes even further toward the realm of artistic insanity than anything Tsai Ming-liang or Michael Haneke, both harrowingly pulchritudinous minions of subjective and suggestive imagery, have gone.
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Vera Drake
(2004, Mike Leigh, UK)
[76 out of 100]
Mike Leigh has managed, in his past films, to bring out the inner-most despair from his Actors. David Thewliss in Naked, Brenda Blethyn in Secrets & Lies and Timothy Spall in All or Nothing - and now, the miraculously minimilistic Imelda Staunton as Vera Drake, the title character in Leigh's newest blaise cornerstone. The true story of an English woman, who in the early 1950's, goes about her business, looking in on sick friends and neighbours, helping out with the less fortunate around her, putting food on the table for her family, performing illegal abortions in small secret rooms - yes, you read that right. Vera just wants to help these women, who society said were not allowed to be helped - a courageous and proud woman who wants nothing more than to help people - even after her arrest and trial. Scorned by some, Vera becomes a near outcast in her small community and even though she may spend the rest of her life in jail, she never wavers on the knowledge that she is doing right. A tragic masterpiece of acting, Imelda Staunton, as Vera, gives one of the most hauntingly harrowing performances ever put onto film and Leigh has captured the tragedy (as well as the socio-economic climate of the times - the rich can go to doctors, the poor are left alone and helpless, until Vera helps) with the forlorn poise that has permeated all of his films. Just watching Staunton's face as the charges against her are read aloud in court, shows that this is easily the best performance of 2004, and hopefully it will not be forgotten come awards season.
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Cafe Lumiere
(2003, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Japan)
[57 out of 100]
Take the cool, unencumbered filmmaking of Hou Hsiao-hsien, creator of the masterfully melodic Flowers of Shanghai (1998) and combine that with the artistic hero-worshipping tributations of the 100th anniversery of the birth of Yasujiro Ozu, creator of the zen-esque multi-layered masterpiece, Tokyo Story (1953), and you should get one of the most poetically beautiful pieces of cinema ever created. What we do get though, and this may be construed in part by my overzelousness toward the coming of this film, is a rather ordinary motion picture, full of all those things that made Ozu great and all those things that make Hou great, but nevertheless, quite mundane in its presence. Sure, Ozu can be left off the hook, after all he is merely the homagee to Hou's homager, but the fact that Hou himself, one of the most lyrical poets of cinema since, well since Ozu, has handed us his most pedestrian picture to date. Of course to call this film pedestrian, when compared to the rest of Hou's ouevre, is a little like saying Beethoven's 4th symphany is his worst piece of music. Yeah, it's lesser than his 5th, 3rd and 9th, but damned if it isn't greater than pretty much every other piece of music out there. And that is what Hou has given us. A film that isn't as epic as The Puppetmaster, isn't as charming as The Boys from Fengkui (aka. All the Youthful Days), isn't as rhythmic as Flowers of Shanghai, or isn't as sharp-tongued as Millennium Mambo (Hou's most under-rated film), yet there it is, still a shining (if not sparkling) beacon of cinema surrounded by the mundaneness of modern movie-making.
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Moolaade
(2004, Ousmane Sembene, Senegal)
[56 out of 100]
As bright and garish in its use of colour and light as it is harrowing in subject matter, the great Senegalese Filmmaker, Ousmane Sembene, brings us the story of the ritualistic so-called "female circumcision" that is a twisted right of passage for some African Muslim communities. Six girls have run away from the priestesses and have asked for sanctuary (or Moolaade) from a local tribal woman with a reputation for social protest. The girls exclaim that they don't want to be "cut" (literally and/or figuratively) and are promptly hastened away into safety. What follows are everyone from the tribal elders to the evil-played Priestesses attempting to lure the girls back to their supposed God-given duty as burgeoning womanfolk. Moolaade is a breathtaking crimson-hued film, filled to the very top with the usually overlooked ideas of unfair attributes of social anxiety and gender-biased history. Although somewhat too preach-over-teach in certain areas, and silly when it should be serious, Sembene has still created a film that, more than should be seen by the world - needs to be seen by the world.
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Saraband
(2003, Ingmar Bergman, Sweden)
[84 out of 100]
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