Still Life (Sanxia Haoren) A Film by Jia Zhang-Ke (2008)

In many ways, Jia Zhang-Ke's 2008 feature Still Life is modern China's answer to Antonioni's L'Avventura. The backdrop is a flooded Fengjie, whose weathered remnants of buildings are being demolished by workers for low pay, a project deemed the Three Gorges Dam (Yung Chang's recent documentary Up the Yangtze covered the same topic). Jia creates an interesting snapshot; workers are being rewarded to destroy the city of their past lives - thus contributing to China's rapid industrialization - to allow for a new neighborhood to be built. Like L'Avventura, the environment is one that is jostled and undergoing inevitable modernization.

Jia introduces a coalminer from Shanxi who is in search of his past wife and eventually his daughter. His pursuit begins with motivation, but is diverted by the demands of the scrambled climate and the rich social fabric that Jia presents. About one quarter through the film, a nurse, also from Shanxi, arrives with her own set of goals: finding her more immediate husband. Amidst these catastrophic times, there is a noticeable decline in human values and an unfortunate inability to establish an identity and mold past relationships. Antonioni's film dealt with similar thematic ground: the failure of personal identity and by extension, the advent of isolation in a changing world. When the coalminer and nurse do finally meet, there are no fireworks. Each of them realize what has been lost and cannot be salvaged; the result is an uncomfortable vow for remarriage between the coalminer and his ex-wife, and a sad agreement to divorce between the nurse and her husband.

Jia typically refrains from deep characterization however to revel in the awesomely beautiful setting with HD video. In fact, scenes involving an influx of characters are often shot in deep focus to dissolve the protagonists into the anonymity of their surroundings, making them just one in the crowd. Such interiors, which often involve a crowded grouping of people in anguish, are shot quite spaciously, allowing for the viewer to almost feel the breeze coming through the broken walls. One calmer shot fantastically composes five shiny bare-chested workers seated closely eating bowls of noodles. Still Life succeeds the most however when the camera quietly observes the deconstructed landscape with a splendid use of natural light. Immense pan shots reveal ravishing juxtapositions of foreboding mountains adorned by fog, decrepit buildings inhabited by ghostlike silhouettes of men hammering away at the bedrock, and a glistening Yangtze river. Jia's perceptive attention to detail is exhibited in these fine pieces of photography and in the rhythmic sound design of the workers' clanking.

Unfortunately, the dazzling fiction/documentary fusion is interrupted occasionally by the surreal: a UFO speeding by the vista or a building's infrastructure lifting off like a space shuttle. Jia discusses how the setting seemed to him like it had fallen prey to an alien attack, but if these images are some puzzling result of mass dementia, I feel they are not aptly suited (not to mention they are distractingly digitized). This minor flaw unfortunately feels like vital punctuation and not simply visual flair. Without a doubt though, Still Life, like L'Avventura, displays with eloquence the personal effects of a wavering environment.

Citizen Kane (1941) A Film by Orson Welles

The opening sequence of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane introduces a myriad of striking detail shots around a cryptic mansion. A fence standing before fog, a cat seated slyly by a creek, a man's mouth whispering the word's "Rosebud"; each lends itself to a rather bold noir atmosphere, especially given the fact that they were indeed the first frames being committed to film under a studio agenda by a writer/director who came to be one of the most exemplary cinematic practitioners of sound film. Welles transitions from this cryptic style frenzy to a news montage covering the life and death of Charles Foster Kane, the heavyweight of New York City press. The two scenes are remarkably dissonant, and such a decision is certainly an audacious one for Welles. Once the film finally snaps into reality (that is, in relation to the remaining conventions of the film) in a small screening room, the sheer tenacity of the image's willingness to play with a Godly slice of light officially signals the coming of a truly grand film.

Welles, who assembled a band of Hollywood experts to work with on Citizen Kane, including scriptwriter Herman Mankiewicz, cinematographer Gregg Toland, and quintessential Hitchcock composer Bernard Herrmann, must still unavoidably be deemed the one man wrecking ball for the film. His portrayal of Charles Kane, the massively successful press tycoon based loosely on the real-life William Randolph Hearst (who attempted to block the film's release because he found it offensive), is charismatic, hilarious, and believably varied. The film covers his whole life in flashback, however the chunk of material surrounds his entrepreneurial adulthood, rising to power in the news industry and carrying his power spontaneously to new heights, such as the creation of a prestigious theater to showcase his not-exactly-prima-donna-material mistress. A reporting crew in the present (after Kane's death) is on a mission to decipher the seemingly immortal last line of Kane: "Rosebud".

The film cycles in between the story of Kane's life and the quest of the reporters with faint urgency. Nearly every stretch of fine tuned pacing holds its parallels with the ensuing 67 years of Hollywood movies. Each newspaper montage created since most certainly has a tiny place in its heart for Citizen Kane. This doesn't necessarily excite me, for I find that the newspaper montage has become an insanely banal technique, but rather cements my belief in Citizen Kane's influential nature. The culmination of the film is shattering; Kane retreats to an almost cumbersome palace (these interiors are the high points in the film visually) with his singer wife Susan Alexander only to discover what his success and money have really brought him. Pluck out the simple but universal message and witness how so many films since have reworked it, but never to such a virtuous degree.

Wavelength (1967) A Film by Michael Snow

Michael Snow's cardinal avant-garde short Wavelength is a 45 minute zoom in on a photograph on a wall in a dank domestic space, interspersed with an occasional foray into a crime scene (or is it just a death?) that occurs immaterially inside of the room. This is no zoom in the conventional sense however; it's as if Snow hunted down the worst possible zoom lens, assembled it onto a grainy Super-8 film camera, and anchored it down precariously on a rickety tripod. His film begins on a wide shot of four tall windows in the back of a poorly lit interior and proceeds to hug and chug along sluggishly towards the middle panel of the wall, which after about 35 minutes, appears to hold a photograph. It is not until the final 5 minutes that it is evident what exists inside the photograph, yet there is still a grainy, indiscernible look to the image; there is no certainty as to whether it's an overhead view of calm waves, rigid rock formations, or the surface of the moon.

Perhaps this was Snow's intention, an ode to the zoom technique as a distorter of perspective. His films, often times meant more as statements than as fully realized pieces, are constant structuralist exercises. He works habitually with the long take, investigating one setting for an obnoxiously lengthy amount of time, frequently exhausting different means of camera movement: zooming, panning, tilting, or dollying like a kid who just received a film camera for Christmas. His heavily stylized work should not be written off as a haughty amateurism though. Wavelength is truly a transcendent, spooky experience. Throughout the camera's trip towards the wall, Snow trifles with the image psychedelically by adding mesmeric filtered flashes and subtle superimpositions. When a woman enters the room, first by shadow and then in physical form, and calls the police, she is flickered on the screen like a ghost, speaking nearly inaudibly to disorient the viewer from the bare story that unfolds. After about 15 minutes, the soundtrack settles into an intoxicating high-pitched whirring and never hints at stopping, until it finally terminates in the final minute, just in time to leave a nauseated viewer's ears ringing.

It seems that one of Snow's goals is to yank as many negative emotional responses from the audience as possible, such as fear, boredom, annoyance, comatose, and discomfort. It's likely that you'll want to punch someone by the end. Nonetheless, the experimental film is worth viewing because of it's critically groundbreaking nature and for its genuinely mysterious examination of a room. The image does not change, so its inevitable that you'll find yourself thinking "is that the same white bus that runs by the windows continuously?", "what exactly is that yellow blinking ball down on the street?", or finally "what exactly makes up this photograph I am staring at?". If you're interested, check out this radical 1960's avant-garde film here.

The Prestige (2006) A Film by Christopher Nolan

I've awoken myself from my week and a half long post-Satantango trance in a rather contradictory manner: the former film relishes the concrete with masterful minimalism and Christopher Nolan's The Prestige relies heavily on narrative devices and artifice. Nonetheless, Nolan's tale of rivaling magicians in turn-of-the-century London devises an entirely distinct spell that has helped to cease my relentless trips to the blogosphere candy that revolves around Bela Tarr (if only for a month or less). However, I am not attempting to analyze The Prestige's lopsided tricks, but instead to find someone who shares my opinion on the film's confusing blemishes. For a film that is meant to be an odyssey towards the punchline, as much of Nolan's work is (his transfixing Memento is a telling example), the punchline is largely unsatisfying and fishy.

Before I get to such oddness however, I'll summarize the film. Utilizing a hyperlink method, Nolan reveals bits and pieces of the competitive relationship of Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) and Richard Angier (Hugh Jackman). The two ostensibly begin as allies and following the tragic death of Angier's wife at the hands of Borden, they slowly descend into a malicious magician rivalry. Borden's magic is of greater talent but less showmanship, whereas Angier is the man following in the artistic footsteps of Borden's fascinating tricks, namely "The Transforming Man", which involves the apparent transformation of Borden from one box at one side of the stage to another at the other side. Early in Borden's career, Angier makes an appearance at one of his smaller bar performances, acts as a volunteer, and shoots three of Borden's fingers off, so there is bad blood fueling from both sides. Angier's lovely assistant (Scarlett Johansson) becomes fed up with his ambitiously combative ways, and when he sends her on a mission to work with Borden in an attempt to steal his secrets, she takes the opportunity to hop on Borden's train officially.

This stirring drama is stamped with Nolan's endless attempt to extract spectacle from every scene, and surely he has the ability to do so, but his decision to tell a fragmented story is detrimental. The experiment was fruitful in Memento because of the fragmentary nature of the protagonist, but here it feels like a tricky cinematic device with no inherent purpose. I believe I would have loved this film much more had it been told in a linear fashion. Nolan's willingness to challenge the audience is respectable, but the film could have been sharper without such a manipulative ransacking of time. The climax makes use of Hitchcockian thrills with great deftness, suspending vital moments with eerie orchestra sizzles. Wally Pfister's moody cinematography is extremely compelling, exploiting the magnificently designed Victorian sets with mysterious lighting. The Prestige of the film, or what's described as the third act of a magic trick where the twists and turns are revealed, is either so obvious it's dumb, or it's so ridiculous that it must be a puzzling mishap. I don't want to ruin Nolan's signature twist, but let's just say that the film is more interesting during its tenure than during its revelation.

Satantango (1994) A Film by Bela Tarr

Have you ever gazed at mud so long that you begin to realize an intricate beauty in it? Do you perhaps come to appreciate its consistent texture or its effervescent gleam? At some point during the 7 hours you'll spend inside the filthy world of Bela Tarr's 1994 epic Satantango, you'll be able to answer "yes" to either one of these questions. I spent a large portion of the day yesterday watching this film after striking gold when it was finally released with English subtitles this year, eliciting one simultaneous roar from cinephiles worldwide. The film, yet another one of Tarr's antitheses of corporate cinema, is one of the most hidden of treasures in the movies. In his distinctive style, he weaves together multiple documentations of the miserable inhabitants of a farm collective. As a pure mood piece on entropy and desolation, few films surpass it. Tarr's mise-en-scene is drab and beautiful; the shots stall most times for up to 10 minutes and the camera is slowly orchestrated yet versatile. The actions of characters are focused on in their entirety, to the point that it is riveting when we see a man pour a glass of brandy. Off-screen dialogue, pensive glances, and elongated trudges are ubiquitous. With Mihaly Vig's unusually hypnotic accordion music, this peculiar atmosphere is heightened to a haunting degree.

However, Satantango should be seen not only for this admirable destruction of filmic norms, but also for its coherent, devastating subject matter. A mesmerizing tone is built once we begin to realize that the stories that are being told are unfolding in real time and during the same time. The four parts - a man named Futaki discusses cashing out and leaving with a friend whose wife he is having an affair with, a crumbling doctor stares from his living room window at the uneventful village and records his thoughts in a journal, a young girl contemplates with a cat her lonely and neglected life, and a group of stubborn adults drink to the coming of a conman - are connected by the fact that they overlap. This method has never been less tiring, as it establishes a plausible rhythm rather than advances some hackneyed plot. The rumor of the arrival of Irimias and Petrina, the two conmen who were thought by the village to be dead and gone, curiously recalls the confounding entrance of the circus in Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies.

It seems Tarr has a fascination with the piling on of confusion during already miserable times. However, in Satantango, Irimias turns out be an unsung hero that woos the stubborn drunkards of the village into a trip to the outskirts of the pancake terrain. This turns only into more dissatisfaction assisted by poor weather. Whereas in Tarkovsky's films, the rain seems to have a spiritual presence, in Tarr's films, the rain simply acts as an internalized motif: the characters are miserable and therefore the rain adds to or reciprocates their misery. Perhaps this description makes Satantango sound extremely undesirable, but to reference the mud analogy again, it's actually beautiful and tragic, containing some incredibly moving sequences. It's also the ultimate summit of serious film viewing.

Times and Winds (Bes vakit) A Film by Reha Erdem (2006)

Two years ago, Reha Erdem's film festival contribution Times and Winds, only his fourth feature film, was met with assured praise. This September, Nick James of Sight and Sound took into account the triumphant nature of the film and declared Erdem as one of the emerging talents of Turkish cinema, along with Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Thankfully, Times and Winds deserves the credit it has been given.

A work of striking cinematographic beauty, it depicts a group of children freely growing up in a village divided by five time zones that shift with each call to prayer. The film pulses with the rhythms of a life that is unique to most, even ethereal to some. The forays into schoolhouse montage and voice-over establish a disassociation with the grounded schedules of common life: the young girl recites a lesson on the celestial movement that seems fundamental yet secondary to the procession of life in the Turkish village. Adults carry out routine jobs among the livestock while the children prance spontaneously around the pastoral vistas. Amidst this quotidian simplicity, there is the steady driving force of the Islamic prayers. Erdem portrays the fathers of the village as being one-sided and unfair, always preferring one son over another. This attitude has a direct effect on Omer, the boy who hopes clumsily for his father Imam to die. He shares his wishful thinking with his friend Yakup, and eventually decides that death will not present itself and he must take action himself. Yakup strongly lusts after his school teacher in a childish way that seems inescapably tied to that sexual confusion that exists only during the brief transition from childhood to teenage years. Another boy named Yildiz steals goods from a tree and is whipped repetitively in return by a gruff farmer.

Times and Winds evidently unfolds in an episodic, lyrical manner. These vignettes are paced slowly and assisted by composer Arvo Part's persistently mysterious score. (It's beautiful music, but I believe it's used too often.) In an attempt to familiarize the audience with the village, Erdem takes obvious pleasure in the protracted Steadicam shots that trail the kids through the rock wall alleyways adorned by airy bushes and bundles of sticks. The cumulative mood of the film is rather sobering, but its tendency to toss you around plot-wise doesn't help to create a relationship with its characters, whom are mostly non-actors. Instead, the film just washes over the viewer with all its photographic flawlessness. The sunny hills are irresistibly gorgeous and the versatile crane shots are a welcome upgrade to the usual low budget undertakings of Turkish cinema. While it could use some directorial polish and poetic refinement, Times and Winds is a worthy experience to seek out.

Father and Son (Otets i syn) A Film by Aleksandr Sokurov (2003)

In art film, Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov is an island. Although similarly contemplative to current Asian directors like Hou Hsiao-hsien, he has the clairvoyance of a wise historian crumbling to dust on his final days. Just when one believes that they have seen the most furtive celluloid oddities available (such as myself), Sokurov drops another one of his nostalgic tedium bombs. The films he creates feel like they have fallen from cinema heaven, yet in some nook that was never ventured to by other deceased films. Russian Ark flabbergasted me with its technical feat - one that I can't say has ever been accomplished to such an awe inspiring level and therefore earned an otherworldly quality - and now Father and Son has simply puzzled and discomforted me with the elliptical dream world that is presented.

While not jointed enough to be considered narrative cinema and with too much dialogue, music, and camera involvement to be pegged as minimalism, Sokurov's second addition to a trilogy about family evokes, as the title states, a tender father/son relationship. The opening sequence invites us suffocatingly into masculine body contact, an introduction that is sure to nauseate most audiences of the Western world. I wasn't necessarily turned off by this scene, in which the father is perhaps comforting the son who is telling him of a dream, but it certainly had me prepared for an oedipal homoerotic plot. It turns out this is nowhere close to Sokurov's intentions. Like many acknowledged philosophers and artists have sanctioned, he sees love as a universal, even spiritual event that transcends the societal trappings of gender and age. The son Aleksei is a military student living with his father in an angelic apartment where the rooftops are akin to front yards. He has a girlfriend and is interested in his increasingly present masculinity, but the film's attention is solely spent on the holy relationship between parent and child.

Their age gap is meager, causing Sokurov to prod their congruous souls through lingering close-ups. An aura of light is reflected off them and their surroundings throughout the film's entirety, and they seem as likely to vanish into thin air as the clouds in the sky that wisp away to muted blue nothingness. Similarly dreamy are the few wide shots in the film, which are shot with an anamorphic lens to generate dimensionally contorted imagery that will have viewers searching for a remote to correct the picture settings on the television set (i know i did). Father and Son contains very few establishing shots, and it is precisely this setting ambiguity that I have found to be at the heart of Sokurov's films. The father and son appear to live in a dream where only their faces and immediate surroundings are perceivable. As for Russian Ark, despite the fact that it was set in the vast hallways of the Hermitage, there is never an inkling as to what is around this museum. The denizens and locations of Sokurov's films function in a space that is absent of any time periods, or even worldly relations for that matter.

Despite all this spiritual presence however I feel that Father and Son is a tad too spasmodic. Sokurov doesn't ever prioritize one specific image or devise one specific rhythm. The conversations between the father and son are rather illogical and forgettable, and the slight narrative offers up one too many diversions, winding up unsatisfying. Instead there is only one thing to do: dream and soak up the atmosphere, which is magical. However, for all I know, Sokurov is yet another filmmaker whose greatness is difficult to catch.