Slumdog Millionaire
Last time I looked, India had the second largest film industry in the world. Yet very seldom a Bollywood movie reaches the eyes of a western audience. The genius behind Slumdog Millionaire is to make Western filmmakers translate a Indian based-story into a western film format. In the process, a magnificent film has arrived on American shores that will be a strong contender for the Oscars. The film is a fairy tale for adults with great dramatic and romantic force. Its wonderful story gives you a glimpse of India—with all its contradictions—that most Americans and Europeans would have never seen. The film covers a 25-year period in the life of Jamal and his slightly older brother Salim who grow up in the slums and later are pulled apart because of differences in personalities and circumstances. Emotionally the first part of the film reminded me of Cinema Paradiso, the second part of teenage delinquency epics, and the final part of modern game show and reality-show culture. On top of it, a Romeo & Julia story holds the film together and makes it appealing for a mass audience. I did not know anything about the film before seeing it. I selected it over the new Clint Eastwood film Gran Torina simply because I wanted to see pictures of India. What a lucky choice: Slumdog Millionaire effortlessly made it onto my list of favorite films of all time.
Doubt
A psychologically pleasing story offers you some resolution at the end. John Patrick Shanley, the writer and director of Doubt, denies you this pleasure. He errs on the side of wanting to teach you too much. He wants you to be in doubt at the end of the film and this means never revealing what really happened. The film takes place in a catholic school in the Bronx in the 1960s. The head nun (Meryl Streep) suspects that the school’s priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is abusing his position of power. She harbors no doubt and uses all her political skill to get the priest to resign. In the end, after the priest is gone, she admits to her confidant that she is in doubt but we never find out if the priest did anything wrong. If you are someone who already knows that we never can be absolutely sure, the movie will not give you much.
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The Edge of Heaven
The German title of the film (Auf der anderen Seite) means something like “on the other side”. Fatih Akin, the German writer and director of Turkish background has wonderful material to work with (growing up with Turkish parents in Germany) but lacks the skill to shape the material into a first-class film. He comes across like a recent film school graduate who received money to turn his school project into a full feature film: the writing is unfocused and, worse, he shoots the film in such a way that you always remember that everything is an act rather than real. By not allowing the fundamental magic of movies to unfold where you lose yourself into the plot as if you were watching a real thing, Aktin is making it unnecessarily hard for the viewer. I recommend that you watch instead http://peter.murmann.name/movies_comments.php?id=256_0_2_0_C ]The Lives of Others[/url]which shows you what a good filmmaker can do with powerful material.
Good Night, and Good Luck
At the Oscars award show not long after Good Night, and Good Luck came out in 2005, the host made a joke about the long-term bachelor George Clooney who directed and starred in the film. It went something like this:
300
300 is different from any movie I had seen before. The closest would be Chinese films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with the magical fighting scenes. Yet these Chinese films still are far from where 300 takes you. For my eyes, the film pushes boundaries of cinema as an art form. 300 tells the story of a historical battle in which 300 Spartan battled hundreds of thousand Persians intent on subjugating all Greek city states. (I cannot tell more without giving it away). ). I typically don’t like brutal, bloody films. But the makers of the film based on graphic novel (never new they existed) prove that even slaughter can be made artful.
Anyone who wants to see a cinematic innovation and is able to stomach some really terrifying carnage, rent 300.
Mama Mia!
Mamia Mia!, this was worse than I had feared. I did not even get a great tour of the Greek islands. I was the first to leave the cinema. Now I was watching people coming out. Women smiled, men looked pained, albeit a bit proud they took their lady to the movies. Cinema, in my view, has rendered opera unnecessary. What makes a great movie is that, unlike opera or its modern incarnation—the musical—, it makes you forget that you are watching a staged reality. The best movies become lifelike. You think you are watching reality. In Mamia Mia! you never forget that you are watching a show. A good playwright like Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare in Love) could have managed to write a decent script around the songs of Abba. But Catherine Johnson lacked the skills and produced childish superficial love story. Pierce Brosnan (the former James Bond) is not able to act out his inane role. Meryl Streep does better with hers, showing that she is a truly great actor because she can play any role, even the most trivial one, without letting you know that she is acting. Making the actors sing all the songs, even when they have the weakest voice as in the case of Pierce Brosnan, struck me a big mistake. I yearned for the real voices of ABBA. The movie would have been a lot better if once in a while the actors could have done ABBA karaoke instead of pretending that they can be real singers.
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We Own the Night
We Own the Night transports you back into the disco era. Drugs were a big part the Studio 54 scene (I visited famous disco once before it closed and marveled about Grace Jones’s rooftop haircut). One son of a family of senior police officials son a night club. Before long he has to choose between his law enforcement family and the vast opportunities given to him by the Russian owner of the club. Skip this film and instead watch the documentary of Studio 54 produced by VH1.
No Country For Good Men & There Will Be Blood
Both films have high ambitions: they want to capture the spirit driving American society. In the Coen brothers’ No Country For Good Men America is at its core only greed and violence. The writer and director of There Will Be Blood offer a more balanced and accurate depiction of America. There is violence but there is also hard work and tender feelings, especially toward children. There is greed but also wealth generation that benefits the community. There Will Be Blood is slow because it strives to portray in detail just how difficult it was to develop the American continent. Daniel Day Lewis deservedly received an Oscar for his unusual performance as the lead character.
I am not there
About three years ago I acquired a collection of the best Bob Dylan records. I was surprised how many songs I knew, reminding me just how influential Dylan’s music had been during the past four decades. I am not there is an artistic experiment that manages to be a total failure. Todd Haynes wants to tell the story of Bob Dylan by showing him through entirely different characters, ranging from a young black vagabond kid to middle-aged cowboy. At the end of the film I yearned to simply listening to Dylan’s songs rather than seeing the collage of biographies of different people that are supposed to stand for the life of Dylan. Dylan’s songs tell you more about him than this “art-film”. The one saving grace is Cate Blanchet, who plays one of the characters representing Bob Dylan. She does a much better job than all of the other stars (Christian Bale, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger) who had signed to represent through a role Bob Dylan.
La Vie en Rose
La Vie en Rose is the mirror image of August Rush. Telling the story Edid Piaf’s exotic life, the film easily feels real and authentic. For an ear that grew up on pop and classical music, it is difficult to connect to the French style of singing in the 1920s and 1930s. I could not hear what made Edid Piaf’s singing so extraordinary. By contrast, the first time August Rush touches a guitar to make music, it is apparent that this kid is a genius. You can see and hear it. I found La Vie en Rose to be in a similar league as Ray and Walk the Line. In regard to the superb acting, the most compelling scene takes place on the first date that Edith Piaf (Marion Cotillard) has with the boxer Marcel Cerdan (Jean-Pierre Martins). Cotillard task is to show in her face that Piaf, who grew up in a whorehouse and has had a long list of lovers, is smitten with Marcel in a way she had never felt before (a “coup de foudre” as the French would say). Cotillard deserved the Oscar this year for this scene alone.
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