The Saddest Music in the World (2003) A Film by Guy Maddin

The 1930's were home to some great oddball studio films such as Freaks or Bela Lugosi's pictures, but none ever reached the lunacy of Guy Maddin's contemporary throwback films. He manages to input a modern sensibility to the rudimentary approaches of the 30's, spicing up his films with a myriad of obtuse elements that would not have been given a second thought in the era, unless perhaps they were seen through the lens of Luis Bunuel. The Canadian personality's 2003 superproduction, The Saddest Music in the World, takes off from a preposterous premise into utterly brilliant, amusing territory. In Depression-era Winnipeg, a legless beer baroness, played as a Goddess of sorrow by Isabella Rossellini, announces a contest to bring the saddest music from around the world to the world capital of depression for a prize of $25,000. In a zany, expressionistic theater, which has shades of Robert Weine's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, different countries showcase their music in front of hordes of drunken audience members, their competitions decided by both the bellowing sound of a horn, the raucous audience, and the final say of Lady Port-Huntley's (Rossellini) thumb.

Along for the ride are several of Maddin's memorable characters, tangled in a melodramatic web of uncertain pasts: Chester Kent, a Yankee theater producer who recruits nearly every country's musicians by the culmination of the event; Fyodor Kent, Chester's war veteran father who hopelessly lusts after Lady Port-Huntley, Chester's ex-girl, and has an infatuation with legs, manifested in his basement by glass legs filled with Port-Huntley beer; Roderick Kent, another of Fyodor's sons, as a laughable depressive from Serbia who illogically takes blame for Gavrilo the Great's launching of the Great War and the death of 9 million; and finally Narcissa, Chester's present lady (Maria De Medeiros from Pulp Fiction recognition), an amnesiac nymphomaniac who may or may not be Roderick's inexplicably lost wife. Maddin steeps his characters in bizarre histrionics, making it no surprise when Roderick discusses the jar he holds in his pocket, which contains his dead son's heart encrusted in his own tears. It's a kind of comedy that is strictly esoteric, but for me it worked perfectly.

The film evolves inside a kitschy artificial set that was constructed completely inside a frigid Winnipeg studio. Houses look as if they've been expanded from those inside snowglobes and are subsequently bent in unusual directions. A paper snow flutters around the action throughout most of the film, fusing into one with the grain that sits relentlessly over the super 8 footage that makes up Maddin's personal aesthetic. To achieve a hyper-foggy effect, vaseline was smeared on the lens in concentric circles, allowing for the bleached out faces of the actors to wisp away into the edges of the frame. Thematically, Maddin shoots for a scathing, unsubtle satire of a stereotypically depressing Canada. The dull angst of Rossellini's character is very humorous when paired with Chester's stupid optimism. The motif of beer as a method for drowning out sorrows is also hilariously overdone, so much that the winners of the musical duels shoot down slides into tubs of it and Lady Port-Huntley winds up putting a pair of Fyodor's basements souvenirs to good use. The Saddest Music in the World cements Maddin as a visual innovator and a clever veteran of magic realism.

Slumdog Millionaire (2008) A Film by Danny Boyle

The decision that the Academy makes on "Best Picture" has always seemed to elude my understanding, so I was not necessarily surprised when I found myself scratching my head at the end of Danny Boyle's latest film, Slumdog Millionaire. Last year I watched Paul Thomas Anderson's magisterial There Will be Blood get snubbed, and this year, I could have taken Clint Eastwood's Changeling (which was not even nominated) or Gus Van Sant's Milk over this melodramatic underdog story set in the slums of Mumbai, India. Up to this point, Danny Boyle has not proved his seriousness as a filmmaker, no matter how much he delves into weighty subject matter. Slumdog Millionaire, though, at least showcases Boyle as a kinetic entertainer, which even escaped me in his earlier hit Trainspotting, a film that was rambunctiously stylized but ultimately airless.

The "Best Picture" winner details the improbable story of a "slumdog" named Jamal Malik who triumphs on the Indian version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?", only to be accused of cheating. We discover through jittery flashbacks that his goal in participating in the show was to be seen on the television by his childhood love, Latika. He insists that money is not his incentive, although once the show's air time is pushed to a second night, you'd think he'd be satisfied. Instead he clings to flashbulb memories from his youth, which always conveniently provide him the answers to nearly every question that gets thrown his way by the slimy host. Through his teenage years, we see the days leading up to his unlikely chance to cooperate on the show (a bit that teeters on explanation but eventually is dismissed altogether), where he discovers a lovelorn Latika after several years under the wing of a malicious, womanizing executive.

The social realities of poverty-stricken India are only skimmed over in Jamal's youth, but nonetheless provide the hard-nosed substance of most of the film. Jamal and his brother Salim sprint from street to street in a perpetual escape from danger, but frequently can not avoid it: in one gritty scene, we see the two with friends captured by frightening men who blind them in a dark forest. As they kneel above the flames beside them however, one cannot help but recall a visually congruent scene in Fernando Meirelles' City of God involving a ritual with the film's antagonist, Lil Ze. In fact, much of Slumdog Millionaire appears to have used the Brazilian masterpiece as a reference point; the frenetic, highly saturated visuals - which frequently use the teeming neighborhoods as abstractions from bird's-eye views - are rip-off material, and whereas City of God lingered on this style as a means of rubbing your face relentlessly in the squalor, narratively necessary or not, Boyle's film only undermines its bouts of realism with consistent impossibilities and a nauseatingly fantastical ending.

How is it that each question happens to trigger a minor memory of Jamal's youth? How does a very minimally educated boy learn English rapidly enough to act as the tour guide for a group of Americans visiting the Taj Mahal? Where did Latika purchase a cell phone that would ring for five minutes, precisely enough time for her to watch the first few rings on the television as Jamal phones a friend and subsequently dash the long stretch back to her car where the phone sat? Everything is too coincidental, which is fine in a Bollywood film, but not in a film that attempts to use realism so heavily. Fortunately, after so much misfortune, Jamal finally embraces Latika in a subway station and kisses her to yet another pseudo-moving Indian pop song. The camera freeze frames on the two before the credits roll. Sounds just like Disney, and it kills to see such a sentimental ending spoil an otherwise exciting, if implausible, film. Not to mention I prefer directors who refrain from bathing their characters from film to film in fecal matter.

Zlateh the Goat (1973) A Short Film by Gene Deitch

Zlateh the Goat is a gently thought-provoking little super-8 film based off of a children's story of the same name by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Lucid and dialogue-free, Gene Deitch, a Prague-based illustrator, animator, and filmmaker (who has directed several Tom and Jerry episodes), directed this parable about a Polish family who is forced to sell their goat to the town butcher on account of the need to purchase holiday supplies such as candles and food instead. The setting is an austere Polish village before the onslaught of a late winter, and is cushioned within the economic and cultural strife of pre-World War II. It's not easy to write the film off as simply a juvenile piece. Besides the typically instructive narration which bookends the film (and which is clearly suited to children), Zlateh the Goat approaches the plain poeticism of Albert Lamorisse's structurally and thematically similar White Mane.

Deitch introduces the short with images of familial comfort, first capturing a cozy shot of the small wooden cabin and then entering the house to surround a family who wears their worries as blatantly as a bad toupée. They decide on sending their eldest son on a voyage to town to greet the butcher, who is familiarized in an uneasy image beside a skinned mammal, and also in the close-up scraping of knives. These shots are intercut with sharp wind intruding on the boy's path, a weather pattern that gradually evolves into torrential snowfall. A very palpable negative connotation envelops the butcher, and by extension the trip towards him. Eventually the whiteout snow renders the boy and Zlateh (pulled by rope) a tiny dot amidst their unfavorable surroundings. Meanwhile, Deitch flashes momentary, evocative glimpses at the boy's tense mother at home, slumped beside the window of course. The boy thankfully discovers a tall heap of hay where he escapes from the cold field with his goat, who eventually provides him with milk and warmth.

This, the middle section of the film, is the most accomplished, appearing almost Bressonian in its simplistic rythym. Melancholy strings accompany the entire affair, exemplifying the touching nature of the boy and goat's relationship. As the snow piles up around the stack of hay - the exterior shots of which are abstract and recurrent - and the boy holds his goat tight, Deitch cuts away to comforting images of a sunny poppy field. Surely this is the type of poetry that a child can grasp, and it's rather sentimental, but it comes across swiftly and poignantly; Deitch certainly knows how to make his way through a story sparingly, and one can imagine him marking off checkpoints as he goes. It's a film that is quite enjoyable to look at, with its grainy footage never demanding of attention, and Deitch also figures out a way to throw "the interdependence of man and nature" into a child's set of knowledge.

You, The Living (Du Levande) A Film by Roy Andersson (2007)

A bottomless optimism repeatedly crawls out of the mouths of several of You, The Living's sleepwalking characters, giving Roy Andersson's follow-up to Songs from the Second Floor a slightly different ring: "Tomorrow is a new day," they say. Not surprisingly though, given the Swedish director's wry cynicism, the next day always finds little by way of improvement. But if there's one means of solace in life for Andersson and his deadpan models, it's alcohol. "With all the misery in the world, how can we not get drunk?" barks a horrendously obese woman towards her old mother, standing before the hot stove in their kitchen. You, The Living shares the same sentiments as the stunning Songs from the Second Floor, and in its unmistakable style - a carbon copy of its grim predecessor - the film works as a more celebratory companion piece.

Songs explores the roots of the existential conundrum of humanity, whereas You, The Living rarely penetrates the surface, gently probing us with one thought: "yes, life is indeed tough, but why can't we enjoy something here and there?" Andersson rarely gives his characters much to write home about, but as a lovesick girl who wanders somberly through the film displays, happiness (as distinguished from the impermanent satisfaction of alcohol) can only truly exist inside people's dreams, not concrete reality, especially when that reality is one where husbands call their wives hags, dying woman are physically incapable of reflecting on the warm memories of early life, hairdressers ruin their clients' coiffures on account of personal problems, and men open their apartment doors to allow their German Shepherds to verbally destroy hallway dwellers.

The Sweden that is populated in Andersson's work is like nothing in cinema; his world is constructed entirely from sets with cardboard-like backdrops, in which walls are painted with the same deathly lack of vibrancy that permeates the sullen faces arranged meticulously on screen. He works largely with interiors, accentuating the drab, claustrophobic perspectives while also finding moments to jumble the frame in an extremely pedantic manner. Often times, one can watch three or more scenes evolving in one static camera take; for example, after an annoyed man bangs the ceiling of his living room to the discordance of a tuba player practicing on the floor above, the shot cuts across the street to another apartment building where a blank husband stares at the two lit-up rooms from his balcony. We gaze closely, as if viewing a Peter Bruegel painting, and Andersson's blackly comic staging always manages to enhance the experience. The opening twenty minutes had me laughing uncontrollably, much like the other buffoons around me, as I watched one uproarious vignette after another.

While the film does not completely maintain the same attack and energy of this brilliant succession of sight gags, it is thoroughly engrossing throughout. Also, when the camera escapes from its usual stasis towards the end, Andersson supplies a breathtaking, uncharacteristically uplifting dream sequence involving a moving house carrying newlyweds which is greeted by a supportive crowd. You, The Living almost touches the borders of Fellini in scenes like this; Andersson shows similar - albeit still imbued with his distinguishable gloom - enthusiasm for waltzing celebration as the Italian maestro. This brief interjection of emotions not in the vein of despair is undeniably a welcome one for the director. Although tomorrow carries no promise of betterment for Andersson, at least it's perpetually hysterical.

The Third Man (1949) A Film by Carol Reed

Carol Reed's noir thriller The Third Man contains a sequence towards the end that is often said to be one of Orson Welles' defining moments on screen. He is playing Harry Lime, a friend of cheeky American novelist Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), who, in this scene, is witnessing Lime for the first time after investigating his supposed death in Vienna. The two ascend on a ferris wheel and Welles gives a wonderfully quick-witted speech that, like the carnival device they are stationed on, goes in circles continuously. It's a nicely written scene by Welles himself, but it lasts so quickly that it brings into question the performance itself. Surely any great actor can enter a film for a moment and deliver some eccentricities, but should this mean they are remembered so fondly for the entire tenure of their art?

This scene is much like the remaining scenes in The Third Man, an impermanent romp that feels out of step with the rest of the film. Indeed, I do believe the film is largely overrated and is by no means the classic it is almost ubiquitously regarded as. This bothersome modular quality in the film is also reflected in Roger Ebert's review; each paragraph lists seemingly meritable aspects of Reed's picture but fails to bring it to any sort of cohesion, some sort of decision on why the several parts add up to a solid whole.

The film follows Holly Martins on his trip through a post-war Vienna, meeting Lime's associates and his rigorously loyal girlfriend Anna (Alida Valli), but finding that the truth is rather elusive. A British official named Calloway insists Holly stop wasting time over Lime, for he was an unjust man. Nonetheless, Martins continues his search, naive in the face of it as well as his company with Anna, whom he fruitlessly tries to flatter. Reed tells the story with a weakness for economy, diverting from his thriller plot several times to focus on mundane aspects of Holly Martins' bluntly American character, who Joseph Cotten plays quite forcefully.

Robert Krasker's cinematography is likely the high point of the endeavor; the murky Vienna streets are extremely well photographed, lending an expressionistic glaze over the story, but the film does not embellish his visuals for lengthy amount of times, save in the final, and best, sewer scene. In spite of this, Krasker manages to give birth to one of my biggest pet peeves in cinema: the wretched tilted angle shot. It seems a far too literal way to evoke a crooked, out of synch atmosphere, not to mention leaves a viewer's neck with a subtle ache by the roll of the credits.

Elsewhere, Anton Karas' famous zither score is only detrimental to The Third Man. Its annoyingly repetitive and clanky sound blatantly contrasts the mise-en-scene, turning what should have been a low-key thriller setup into a story that nearly seems to be a parody of itself. Although the surface elements of the film are extremely disjoint, there does seem to be something stirring underneath, a notion that is hinted at in the final scene involving the men chasing Lime through the shadowy Vienna underbelly with (beneficially) no zither. Sometimes however, it's just too difficult to get past the film's lackluster pacing and bother to find out.

Antonio Gaudí (1984) A Film by Hiroshi Teshigahara

In the late 1950's, Hiroshi Teshigahara took his first trip away from his Japanese homeland with his father Sofu, visiting Europe and the United States. In Spain, he witnessed the architecture of Antonio Gaudí and was awestruck. Twenty-five years later he revisited the sites of Gaudí's work, substantially updated his footage, and completed one of his finest late career documentaries, Antonio Gaudí. The film is a rousing, predominantly visual smorgasbord of Gaudí's breathtaking structures, married mellifluously to long-time collaborator Tôru Takemitsu's ambient score which alternates between peaceful organ music and eerie chugs and whistles. It's a wonderful opportunity to see one great artist paying tribute to another, the late Catalan architect from the same region of Spain as Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso.

Teshigahara treats his camera as a newcomer, first scanning the community and capturing the spirit of the Barcelona streets, then closing in on Gaudí's several accomplishments. He takes us from a bizarre apartment complex to a magisterial building to a bustling outdoor park and eventually to the Templo de La Sagrada Familia, a towering church Gaudí was unable to finish before his death. The work completed by Gaudí in his lifetime is truly astounding; each organically curvaceous wall contains microscopic detail, whether shards of colored ceramics or sculpted symbols. His designs are primarily naturalistic, incorporating numerous motifs of the Earth such as seashells or trees. At the same time, his architecture touches upon Medieval, Victorian, and Modern elements simultaneously.

Teshigahara lovingly embraces every inch of it in dazzling color cinematography, recording through close-ups, obtuse angles, and a mobile camera the fantastical interiors and exteriors. Eventually, the film achieves a wonderful rhythm, until a momentary narration intrudes towards the end for a minute or two. It doesn't seem necessary given that the architecture speaks for itself, and the narrated information is rather dull - nothing that one couldn't have known from scanning the back cover of the Criterion DVD. Nonetheless, Antonio Gaudí is the ultimate tourist video, a gorgeous combination of sights and sounds that will have one checking the rates for a vacation to Spain.

Werckmeister Harmonies: Some More Thoughts

(Note: I guarantee this post will contain several spoilers. It is primarily an analysis of Bela Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies, which I have previously reviewed, but in retrospect is a rather weak encapsulation. Therefore, if you haven't seen the film, well, that's quite unfortunate, because you'll get nothing out of this post. Or you could just scan the images, in which case you will likely want to see the film.)

After viewing Hungarian director Bela Tarr's 2000 release, Werckmeister Harmonies, I couldn’t shake the fact that it was a monolithic achievement; it was closer to reality than to a movie, and therefore I felt it had the uncommon capacity to alter my perceptions of art, the world, and ultimately of myself. The film is, in my opinion, Tarr's most enticing, for there is always a strong sense of menace lurking right around the corner, which is an emotion that is usually absent in Satantango and Damnation, in which the hell of their worlds has already erupted and is there to stay. Werckmeister Harmonies treats me to everything I find sublime about cinema: exceptional high contrast black and white cinematography, languid tracking shots, lack of conventional narrative, abstract symbols, gorgeously somber music, unique characters, dominant use of elements such as fog and fire, and thoughtful musings. Its rhythms are as eerily similar to a fever dream as those in David Lynch's Eraserhead, another film which I believe to be genuinely masterful. I have now returned to the atmosphere of Werckmeister Harmonies three times and feel its more than worthy of a closer look.

Instantly, Werckmeister Harmonies is substantially unconventional and anti-commercial. In fact, it’s in a league almost entirely on its own in current cinema (only paralleled by Tarr’s other work). It’s a methodical dreamscape of a film depicting a small town in Hungary that encounters an odd circus show amidst a prophetic time. Tarr puts paramount emphasis on atmosphere rather than plot. Each image cannot be taken at face value; considering most shots are supremely lengthy, one is forced to assess the connotation of each individual black and white composition. Every unbroken shot represents a single scene, of which there are a minimal 37. I was stunned by Tarr’s sophisticated bare bones technique, this being the first time I witnessed such a minimalistic style. The fact that the film is continually enticing is in itself enough of a mystery when placed aside modern media’s propensity to lasso the attention of viewers with rapid juxtapositions of often times technically manipulated images. I couldn’t help but associate these minimalistic visuals with unadulterated reality, because no one can dismiss the fact that life frequently moves slowly and mysteriously.

An indelible impression was also made on me due to the metaphysics of each scene. Granted, Tarr would deny the presence of any allegory in his work, but there’s no doubt that Werckmeister Harmonies is the most symbolically tempting film in his career. As a starting point, the film perhaps makes the suggestion at times - with ample references to the universe and landscapes - that nature is far more powerful than humanity. It is so powerful in fact that it can drastically shape the behaviors of people, a notion that is stunningly on display in the film’s bravura opening sequence, an approximately ten minute long waltz around a drunken display of the cosmos as directed by the protagonist Janos Valuska. If one views the circus as an obstruction to the natural flow of things, as is mirrored in the film through the pantomimic display of an eclipse and Uncle Eszter's microphone discussion of the natural tones that composer Andreas Werckmeister disrupted through his creation of a musical scale, nature’s effect on people is disastrous: violence, depression, reclusiveness, and angst all ensue because of it. (Also, as Eszter posits, the onset of harmonic dissonance and the lack of pure music.) The simple image of the massive circus truck entering the town through a barren roadway is a magnificently lucid portrayal of the coming of catastrophe; one hankering slab of metal signifies the moon beginning to cover the Sun, Werckmeister's orderly thought process setting in motion centuries back, and Hungarian Communism taking full stride.

Aside from a commentary on nature's powerful abilities, Werckmeister Harmonies can be read in a spiritual manner, or - given Tarr's willingness to deny the possibility of proving God's existence - lack thereof. Twice there are undertones of this sentiment. Janos raves about the whale being a creation of God's omnipotence, withholding a stirring sense of the great beyond. He determinedly tries to show it to Eszter but there is never an opportune moment. Angry circles of bearded men surround the whale in its metal tomb, a way of imprisoning good in evil. The whale can be viewed as God Himself, withering away unseen, owned by savage men and used for squalid entertainment. Tarr could be making the case that God has no impact on destitute situations, except perhaps to one soul (Janos) that can't seem to make his or her case known. Later on, in the masterful hospital sequence, the shocking exposé of a bare and fragile old man in a damaged hospital takes on a staunch religious connotation. A slice of incandescence is emitted on him, also giving him the implication of God, however, surrounded by a crowd of hostile men in a shadowy room, a deceased God. The sight of him turns the tides on the havoc being wreaked, but there is no hint of the man ever bettering himself upon their departure. Once the hospital has been ravaged, there's no hope for his survival. Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, the dwarfish Prince is utter evil. He drags malevolence with him and contains the whale, suggesting him as Satan. He also speaks Slovakian, an enemy of Hungary during World War II, and his spurts of anger towards his co-employees sound only a notch or two away from Hitler. Although his size may impress upon him less power, his mysterious enigma attaches hordes of zealots to him. Tarr is depicting a classic clash of power - good and evil - which does not end in uplifting triumph, but rather an exertion of the evil so ruthless as to extinguish itself. What results is the optimistic soul of Janos being stuck in a bleak mental hospital with a loss of hearing, and the stately whale left worthless in the foggy market square.


In conclusion, I feel that Werckmeister Harmonies can be digested in three different ways, none of which are superior. The entire rise and fall structure of the film could owe itself to a projection of Hungarian history before, during, and after Communism, grounds that Tarr has showed interest in, most notably with Satantango. With this mindset, Tarr views each period as equally hellish, as one could imagine of pre-apocalypse, apocalypse, and post-apocalypse. The film also flirts with more cosmic terrain, resulting in a more profound religious interpretation. In this scenario, Earth as a whole is hopeless in its void attempt at finding help from a supernatural force. Thirdly, Werckmeister Harmonies could just be an indictment of the "ignorance of society", as my good friend put it, in which case we are simply viewing the fragility of a mass of people in the face of something new to a community (the circus). However, this hearkens right back to the political message: when times get confusing, people get violent. It is possible that Tarr was touching upon each of these, and it is also possible that he had none of this in mind, which would match his own words - "I just wanted to make a movie about this guy who is walking up and down the village and has seen this whale. And, you know when we are working we don't talk about any theoretical things." His vagueness suggests an artist truly concerned with the intriguing, multivalent integrity of his work. However you interpret the film, it is certainly an experience that washes over the viewer with the type of symphonic force that only tremendous art can offer.