World Trade Center (2006)

World Trade Center (Oliver Stone, 2006)

There's a remarkable restraint in Oliver Stone's rightfully sentimental take on the 9/11 tragedy which practically changed the whole world. I'm sure it's a difficult film to make. Almost every film made after the tragedy had to take into account the brand new politics (American and world) that was quickly ushered by the tragedy (Zoolander (Ben Stiller, 2001), which was released after the tragedy had to digitally remove all images of the two towers). Stone's World Trade Center breezily walked us through the considerable laxness of pre-9/11 America to welcome in (or cower from) an America that is completely reformed. When Will Jimeno (Michael Peña) first sees the destruction of the plane crashes after being pulled out from the rubble, the first thing he asks is "where are the towers?" Minutes later in the film, brooding ex-marine and volunteer Dave Karnes (Michael Shannon) declares to the person he is calling to in his cellphone that this (referring to the once-proud twin towers) has to be avenged.

There's a relative unease in reconstructing a true story, especially if the tragedy happened in recent memory. Stone had to juggle that fact (the personalities and families involved) and his philosophies and politics. I understand why Stone had to level down his shock tactics to film World Trade Center. The event in itself is all about shock and the tragedy has had a tremendous aftershock that rippled throughout the world, and what else would Stone add to the genre that criticizes post-9/11 America (although that genre never ceases to amaze and entertain me with all its conspiracy theories, true or untrue). Instead, he choose to realize a sugary survival drama, distills it from whatever politics that might cloud his vision or might turn the survivors' tale into exploitation material. Of course, that is a near-impossible feat and Stone still crafts the film with a belittled political depth which even minuscule, could create such a stir that can shift your views of liking or disliking the film, depending on your political leanings.

Much of the film is spent underground. Jimeno and cop-for-twenty-years John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage), among other brave career men, are Port Authority policemen who were one of the first to respond to the planes crashing on the twin towers. They get trapped within the rubble and the mess of what was once the World Trade Center, and while trying to stay alive, reminisce about their wives and families. Stone spends a great deal of time detailing the internal angst of the wives of the trapped survivors. Allison Jimeno (Maggie Gyllenhaal), wife of Will, is pregnant and is unable to keep still while awaiting the fate of her husband. Donna (Maria Bello), wife of John, juggles the task of keeping her children stable while contemplating on the fate of her missing husband (wherein it is suggested that their marriage has turned into an unemotional valley).

The performances are all good. Cage is surprisingly restrained despite being pinned down by tons of concrete. Peña is one of the better performances from Crash (Paul Haggis, 2004), and here, he repeats the same kind of charismatic charm to make the underground scenes a lot more watchable, with his natural delivery of banal and mundane anecdotes about his wife and his childhood. The wives didn't have much to do except look anxious and reminiscent, and since their scenes took a good chunk of the film, it's a tough feat to keep eyes glued on the screen while doing exactly nothing.

The most questionable character in the film would have to be the passionately dubious Dave Karnes, who sees the dissimilar impassioned speech of President Bush on television and sees himself as the savior of mankind during those moments. Stone gives his character much emphasis. Others might think of the emphasis as Stone compromising his politics to please Republican America, giving the hero's role to a defiantly sure ex-marine who shares the same sentiment as Dubya to rid the world of all those who presumably caused the tragedy. I thought not. His scenes are over-the-top schmaltzy. He's given lines that would cause the most thick skinned to cringe with disgust. The character is a self-important bozo that would characterize the stance of the government during the whole tragedy. Rather than a compromise to please, I thought the character was more of a caricature to poke fun at the self-importance, the self-righteousness that has enveloped most of America post-9/11.

White Lady (2006)

White Lady (Jeff Tan, 2006)

Tales of female ghosts garbed in white flowing dresses haunting the darkened streets of Manila aren't exactly new. I thought such tales are mere results of poor public works programs of the Philippine government, neglecting the necessities of installing street lamps to dissuade these female ghosts (and also the rapists and killers who, in those ghost stories, were always the cause for those violent hauntings). Regal Entertainment, one of the few big-sized commercial film outfits in the Philippines which is currently milking the horror film craze of all its worth, decided to come up with a film to first, tackle the decades-old urban legend; second, give the products of local reality-based talent competitions a chance to slug it out on the big screen; and third, provide commercial (or brainless) entertainment while preparing for its large scale epics for the upcoming Metro Manila Filmfest (a two-week bonus period for local producers where foreign films are banned from screening in Metro Manila).

The result isn't exactly topnotch entertainment, but it's a pretty much decent way to spend an hour and a half of your life, especially, if there's nothing else to do. Writers Don Michael Perez and Joel Nuñez situate the typically Manila-based urban legend within the confines of a university. Instead of innocent cab drivers, sexually-deprived rapists or cruel murderers, the white lady terrorizes the university's students, more specifically a group of obnoxious students who'd do anything to get what they want. The leader of the group is Mimi (Iwa Moto), a snotty rich girl, who takes an interest on the new girl in town, Pearl (Pauleen Luna). Pearl just arrived from the province of Iloilo with her best friend Jonathan (Gian Carlos). Gifted with a pleasant singing voice, she outdoes the jealous Mimi of almost everything, including campus hunk Robbie (J. C. de Vera).

One by one, the members of the group meet a violent fate, usually caused by a phobia (which they unabashedly share during one of the university's group discussions). They start to blame Christina (Angelica Panganiban), who suddenly disappeared after being bullied and terrorized by Mimi's group. Christina lives with her grandmother Tasya (Boots Anson-Roa), a reclusive yet kindly old woman who lives in the outskirts of the university and is rumored to be a lunatic witch.

Newbie director Jeff Tan directs the feature with an attitude that fits a young toddler who's excited to show off everything he's got. The film is a visual mess. While the cinematography is sometimes appealing, Tan doesn't maintain a coherent visual look for the entire film. I get the fact that he wants different looks if scenes call for flashbacks, or present time scenarios. However, it doesn't really work and the differences (Tan uses washed out colors for flashbacks) suggest a lack of trust of the director for the audience to understand what seems to be a straightforward (and near idiotic) flow of the story. It also doesn't help that Tan makes a gratuitous use of CGI effects to supposedly enhance his film. While the CGI effects look cleaner than most other Filipino movies, the results are quite abysmal. Tan drapes the ghost with a CGI enhancement that devalues whatever artistic contribution was put into the conceptualization of the white lady; and the white lady isn't exactly a scary thing (it pales in comparison to the now-classic Sadako of Ringu (Hideo Nakata, 1999) or even the cat-kid in Ju-On (Takashi Shimizu, 2000); all of which did not use CGI in enhancing the delirious yet simple make-up designs).

Yet despite the atrocious direction and the displacement of the urban legend from the more horrifying lamp-less streets of Manila to the rather safe and boring university campus, White Lady doesn't offend me as much as I thought it should. I thought Iwa Moto (who looks curiously like a young Maggie Cheung, without a fragment of the acting talent) is a lovely find since the camera loves her facial features so much. The rest of the cast performed relatively well (which isn't much of a compliment since all they had to do was scream, look mean or scared, or run for their lives). Boots Anson-Roa gives the film an emotional core that despite its shallowness is shown with an effortless ease that makes everything else forgivable. There's so much to dislike about White Lady; the silly vendetta plot, the degeneration of the commentaries that could attach to the urban legend into a teenage romp of shallow jealousies and cutesy romanticism, the horrible effects work and Tan's visual spoon feeding. Yet almost mysteriously, I just can't hate it.

Monster House (2006)

Monster House (Gil Kenan, 2006)

Gil Kenan's Monster House opens ala Robert Zemeckis' Forrest Gump (1994). The camera follows an autumn leaf being blown by the wind, which is then sucked by the breeze which results from a little girl's tricycle. But unlike the feather of Zemeckis' syrupy epic, the leaf ends up being sucked inside a creaky and ominous house. The similarities between the two films end there, when a cranky old man starts scaring the wits out of the little girl, who leaves her tricycle behind in what may seem an escape to save her young life.

I thought Kenan's Monster House is a surprisingly fresh stab at the CGI-animated kiddie features market. When the market is oversaturated with almost everything and anything forced to talk and tell nasty (most of the time corny) jokes to please the young ones, Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis come up with an animated feature that is also an effective horror film --- with notable borrowings from the recent ushering of Asian horror films (a telephone call from the supposed dead brings to mind several J-Horror films), the dozen haunted house films created over the years, and the other dozen low budget monster flicks released. Yet despite the effective scare tactics, the film still remains to be child-friendly with healthy doses of typical genre humor, coming-of-age angles, and enough eye candy to make the most hyperactive toddler drool with fascination.

The story's the meat of the film. It is what practically sets the film apart from its counterparts. It's a no-nonsense suburban horror that takes the traditional moralistic goal of every kiddie pic to a minimum. It starts out a day before Halloween. Kids are preparing for their annual trick-or-treat event, but DJ (Mitchel Musso), who's on the verge of puberty, feels he's far too old to go trick-or-treating. Instead, he spies on the cranky neighbor Mr. Nebbercracker (Steve Buscemi) who practically scares every kid with his nasty attitude and even nastier antiquated wooden house. DJ, his overweight friend Chowder (Sam Lerner), and prim-and-proper good girl Jenny (Spencer Locke) try to investigate the mysterious activities inside the house, when upon Mr. Nebbercracker's "death," the residence suddenly takes a life of its own and attacks and subsequently eats everything that comes near its reach.

Sure, Monster House is no comparison to the works of Miyazaki (I thought the mutated house on the rampage near the end of the film looked very similar to the bizarre monsters of Miyazaki's films), or Takahata, or any of the Japanese anime directors. Monster House still falls into that category of disposable films whose value is merely for entertainment, and nothing more. It doesn't really speak of anything new, and although its technique and attack on the subject may be fresh (the film doesn't really have a moral center which mostly covers almost all American animated films; even the rationalization behind the house's murderous activities fall under bizarre rather than distinctly understandable by a child's black-or-white level of cognition), there's nothing deep or fascinating about the overall outcome.

Show Me Love (1998)

Show Me Love (Lukas Moodysson, 1998)
Swedish Title: Fucking Åmål

The original title of the film is "Fucking Åmål," referring to the overall attitude one of the characters have for her small hometown. Elin (Alexandra Dahlström) is Åmål's prettiest sixteen year old girl. She's shallow and rumors conceive her as a loose girl, which isn't exactly false. While she's still a virgin, she flirts and makes out with almost everyone while complaining how boring it is to live in her small burg (she whines about how everything is late in her town, that the "in" things are already "out" when they arrive in her town, referring to rave parties). Agnes (Rebecka Liljeberg) has lived in the town for two years but hasn't exactly made enough friends On her birthday, her mom decides to put up a party for which she disagrees to, embarrassed by the fact that no one will be coming. Agnes is lesbian, and is in love with pretty Elin.

Bored and without nothing new to do, Elin and her sister decides to just go to Agnes' party. Elin's sister dares Elin to give Agnes a kiss for twenty crowns. She agrees, but then, she subsequently retreats and instead, leaves the melancholic party to hang out with the popular kids in town. After a while, she returns to Agnes and the two dare each other to hitch a ride to Stockholm. Inside the car, as the radio plays the song "I Wanna Know What Love Is," the two continue the kiss Elin suddenly terminated during the party. The two have fallen in love, but is now faced by the stigma that attaches to lesbian relationships.

Show Me Love is Swedish director Lukas Moodysson's first feature film. It's quite remarkably well-made. Moodysson, despite the frequent amateurish techniques (sloppy close-ups, incongruent camera movements), possesses an immaculate detailing of the small-town teenage issues and a loving understanding on the dilemma that falls upon the two characters. Moodysson might be a little more affectionate towards the pathetic Agnes, who spends her time writing secret notes in her personal computer and hanging out with an also-friendless girl who is reduced to her wheelchair and disabled basketball matches. Elin is portrayed as the sexual gravitational center of the small town --- attracting the timid nice guy Johan (Mathias Rust) to admire her and subsequently court her. Elin's reaction is less than admirable, using Johan as a cover for her secret homosexual longings. Moodysson's portrayal of Elin is problematic turning her turn-around a bit surprising and unrealistic, despite its beautifully emotional heftiness.

Show Me Love remains to be Moodysson's most sincere film (although I haven't seen Together (2000)). Here, he isn't faced with pressing issues such as white slavery in his highly acclaimed Lilya 4-Ever (2002). He isn't belittled by the shocking imagery of A Hole in My Heart (2004; although there are painful sequences here such as Agnes's suicidal attempts), or experimentations as in his latest, Container (2006). Moodysson concentrates primarily on the compelling development of teenage romances, which probably resulted from the rebellious trait that springs forth from the absolute boredom and predictability of their sleepy little town. Also, Moodysson is at his most emotionally convincing self here. His use of songs, his on-the-point visuals, his relative ease in bringing out excellent performances from the young cast, culminates in those gorgeous moments wherein the characters are faced with seemingly petty dilemmas, but to them, would mean the world. With Show Me Love, Moodysson seems to have achieved the difficult --- he has expanded small-town teenage conflicts and angst into a pressing and emotionally rich tale of romance against all odds.

Matador (1986)

Matador (Pedro Almodovar, 1986)

Pedro Almodovar's Matador opens with a montage of scenes from movies where women die violent and bloody deaths. The audience of the gruesome montage is Diego (Nacho Martinez), a prominent bullfighter who is reduced to teaching young hopefuls his former craft after he got gored at one match. At first glance, we are aware that Diego is a deranged man --- we welcome the character masturbating to a montage of women suffering and dying. Then, we see him at work; he explains to his students the art of making a kill. As he teaches, Almodovar inserts a thematically related sequence of Maria (Assumpta Serna) inviting a man to her room, undressing him, and finally, stabbing him at the back of his neck with a hairpin, killing the erstwhile lover almost instantly.

Angel (Antonio Banderas) is one of Diego's student. Angel, who badly wants to become a bullfighter but faints at the sight of blood, has lived under the wing of his ultra-religious mother. Virgin at the age of twenty two, Diego asks him if he's homosexual, and Angel denies such and is determined to prove to his maestro his masculinity. That night, Angel attempts to rape Eva (Eva Cobo), his neighbor and Diego's girlfriend, but only succeeds in prematurely ejaculating; and suddenly faints when Eva accidentally slips to reveal a bloody head wound. Probably sick and tired of his mother's ultra-conservative prodding, Angel admits to the rape and the other murders that has recently happened.

Almodovar, with Matador, concocts a black comedy wrapped in trappings of absurd romanticism and fantabulous machinations. Despite the numerous jumps from logic and grandiose U-turns from reality, Matador works very well. Almodovar paints the film with a stylistic hue that makes each and every fantastic plot twist and revelation, both surprising and expected. For example, there will be scenes wherein Almodovar will whisk away your attention from the absurd sexual fetishes of the astrologically-crossed lovers by focusing his attention to the ex-matador's student's crotches while they practice their dangerous craft. It's as if Almodovar makes you aware that bullfighting is not merely an entertainingly dangerous sport, but is also a bastion of Spanish masculinity verging on the homoerotic. Almodovar cuts the montage with the image of the police inspector glancing at those young student's crotches; and with that Almodovar surprises by not only poking fun at the macho sport, but poking fun at the uniformed detective, who after that scene rejects an offer by the psychiatrist (Carmen Maura) to sleep with him that night.

Almodovar maintains that volatility throughout the film. There is no telling what might happen next, and that creates a wildly-imaginative goose chase of something that might or might not happen. Almodovar's visuals is delightfully inventive, especially for the final fifteen minutes, wherein everything breaks loose turning the film into an implosion of almost everything that should not have happened if the film was a conventional one. Almodovar betrays his murder mystery, his romanticism, his satire, his commentaries on Spanish machismo, to conclude Matador in a fashion that is so outrageously absurd, yet in a strangely compelling way, lovely. There's nothing more romantic than a highly romantic urge being completed when the sun and the moon meet in the sky --- and with that, you can't help agree with the police officer saying that he's never seen anybody happier.

Rouge (1987)

Rouge (Stanley Kwan, 1987)
Cantonese Title: Yin ji kau

Master 12 (Leslie Cheung), so-named because he is the 12th son in the Chan family, falls in love with Fleur (Anita Mui), a charmingly demure courtesan who fetches hundreds of dollars for the mere touching of her neck or ear. The master showers the courtesan with numerous gifts, which in turn, is rewarded by the courtesan with her love. Undaunted by the master's family's refusal to their relationship, the two live together forcing the master to work as an extra for a Chinese opera staging. Their relationship tragically ends when both decide to die by suicide, promising each other to meet up in the afterlife. Fifty three years later, Fleur reappears in her traditional cheongsam in the office of newspaper editor Yuen (Alex Man) asking for the editor to print an ad for a missing person. Fleur follows Yuen until he discovers that Fleur is a ghost. Yuen, with his girlfriend (Emily Chu), helps the melancholic Fleur to find her lover who failed to meet her in the afterlife.

Produced by Jackie Chan, Rouge is an odd ghost story as the film does not seek to draw out horror from the supernatural scenario. Instead, the film is quite disarmingly romantic. You are instantly drawn to what may seem like a timeless romance the moment Master 12 hears the low-toned yet seductive singing voice of Fleur echo through the hallways of the brothel. When the two meet for the first time, a gorgeous exchange of carefully placed flirtation, pervades the party. This is followed by a courting sequence which is equal if not greater in romantic atmosphere as the initial meeting of the two. The Master await Fleur patiently as the latter go out and about seemingly testing the love and intentions of the man courting her. Just from the introductory scenes, the hallucinatory scent of romantic passions can be felt floating the beautifully designed walls and windows of the brothel.

The film is beautifully shot by Bill Wong, and is the third feature of Stanley Kwan, who directs the film with quiet yet assured pacing. The interchanging of time periods is significantly done in a logical manner, assuring the feeling of sad nostalgia as the classically dressed ghost sees movie theaters and ancient shops turned into commercial spaces and highways. Above the external changes of the Hong Kong landscape, a theme of the huge differences of romanticism between Fleur's age and the present age surfaces. Unwittingly, the editor and his girlfriend's relationship is tested and is put upon a microscope when they are swept by the courtesan's sad story. In one scene, the girlfriend asks the editor if he'd commit suicide for her, both of them said no. As the story progresses, Kwan seems to persist with the idea that it is not the quality of the sacrifices one would commit for the survival of romantic relationships that has changed, but the fact that such ability to commit such sacrifices is inherent to the person, depending on his or her experiences in life or his or her capacity to love unflinchingly. The ending of the film suggests the idea that it is the courtesan's experiences (Kwan always had a soft spot in portraying women who are stepped upon) that gave her the determination to commit the suicide, and not the fact that the quality of relationships of old is much stronger than in the present.

The performances of both Anita Mui and Leslie Cheung are magnificent. Mui isn't exactly the prettiest of actresses, but her face possesses a unique sultry and seductively sorrowful quality that keeps her rather flat character interesting, despite that all she does is wait and stare and talk. My main problem with the film is that I don't quite buy the efforts given by the editor and his girlfriend in finding where Master 12 is. The editor and his girlfriend come up with the silliest of scenarios to explain the mysterious numbers, and to help Fleur in finding her lover. The supernatural doens't always jive with the grounded realities of the film. It is also unfortunate that there is a certain lack of humor that could've helped Kwan's droll pacing to move forward. On the other hand, the film is beautiful to look at, and the tragic relationship between Fleur and her lover is enough to keep you watching until the rather emotionally unfulfilling end.

Container (2006)

Container (Lukas Moodysson, 2006)

After Lukas Moodysson's rather pretentious and critically panned last feature A Hole in the Heart (2004) which focuses mainly on four characters, centering on the introverted teenage central character who observes his father making home-grown pornographic videos, one would expect for Moodysson to follow it up with something more akin to his first three features which offer narratively conventional yet rewarding cinematic experiences. Instead, Moodysson comes up with Container, which seems to be even more dense and pretentious than A Hole in the Heart. Shot in low-grade black and white video, haphazardly edited into a nebulous string of unconnected images ranging from the utterly banal to surprisingly striking, Container looks and feels like the work of a film student rather than an internationally known director. It's more similar to Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation (2003), a cinematic autobiography which features personal home videos and pictures of the director edited together to form a coherent and very introspective look at his homosexual life. Yet Container is not personal at all, unlike Caouette's Tarnation. Container distances its viewer by separating the visual and aural values creating an air of discordant and jarring experience that is devoid of any emotional impact, aside from stereotypical depression.

The visual component of the film features one central character --- an overweight man (Peter Lorentzon) who is seen prancing around, donning women's clothes and performing some other acts that suggest some emotional or mental disturbance. Another character features --- a petite Asian girl (Mariha Åberg) who is shown as the overweight man's inner self. The two are infrequently shown together except on a couple of situations --- when the man is carrying the girl, or when the girl is tending to the man. Aside from those situations, the two are filmed separately, sometimes in similar situations, suggesting the identity of the two characters. The scenes where they are shown together suggest the relationship of the outward and the inward personalities --- that the outward character is forced to carry the inward character as a burden, but in return the inward character tends and takes care of the troubled outward character. The visual component is an accurate conveyance of what a transgender individual might feel, and despite the amateurish production, the visual component is quite effective in its portrayal.

More important and resonating than the visual component is the aural component. The voice is supplied by American actress Jena Malone (who is also one of the actresses the character pretends himself to be). She speaks in hushed whispers, as if speaking from a covered closet. Malone speaks of many things --- of her experiences as a trans gender, how she hates homosexuals and differentiates herself from that, how she collects things and buys junk from Ebay, her idols ranging from Savannah, a classic suicidal porno actress to Britney Spears. The voice is quite updated on celebrity news. There's a frequent appearance of anecdotes regarding Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston's break-up, Paris Hilton, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, which transform into social and pseudo-philosophical commentaries and introspective intimate discussions about her own experiences.

The visual and aural components do not match up, but almost magically, Moodysson is able to give resonance to both components when experienced together. I don't think the visual component will work without the voice, but the voice, in particular, is added a certain value when coupled with the black and white images that are shown. Sure, it's undeniably pretentious and the only reason it might have a wider audience than its similar student-made counterparts, is because Moodysson attaches his name to it. However, Container has a certain compelling quality that just simply can't be dismissed. It's nothing like Tarnation, which is both accurate, intricate, and intimate. Container is more interested in detailing the sickness and the depravities of our modern society by showing the incongruent personal and fictionalized experiences of a trans gender individual. Moodysson attaches footages of a desolated building in Chernobyl and its surrounding areas, including several point-outs to the tragedies that have struck the world (the Iraqi War, the Chernobyl fallout, a kid dying while playing soccer, Kylie Minogue's breast cancer), to connect and juxtapose the desolated interiors of the troubled trans gender individual with the confusion that surround present and modern living.

A Prairie Home Companion (2006)

A Prairie Home Companion (Robert Altman, 2006)

At eighty one, Robert Altman has established himself as one of the world's most important artists. His films have defined what several decades of American filmmaking should look and feel, and with that, have spawned many admirers and copycats. His latest feature, A Prairie Home Companion is probably his most delightfully personal film. It might very well have been made by Altman as his swan song, that final masterpiece to cap a wonderful and illustrious career. A Prairie Home Companion is so preoccupied with death that it might be mistaken as morbid or depressing. It is not. The death A Prairie Home Companion envisions is a death that is inevitable but sweet. It is a death that symbolizes an end to a lifetime of wonderful moments and familial relationships.

When one of the longtime beloved performers (LQ Jones) suddenly dies awaiting his lover, Lola (Lindsay Lohan), the daughter of the one of the show's singing sisters Yolanda (Meryl Streep), insists that Garrison Keillor (who reprises his real life personage in the film) that people should know about the passing and that a moment of silence should be given to honor the man. Keillor declines noting that radio does not know silence, and more importantly, he doesn't want people to be forced to honor life. Lola cries and doesn't quite understand the wisdom to Keillor's words. She's in her teens and busies herself writing poetry about death and suicide, designating herself as an expert on mortality but when faced with death as close as that day, she succumbs to emotionality and dissolves the mask her teenage sensibilities have forced her to wear.

Death is such a pervading presence in the live radio show that although quite absurd, death actually shows up in the form of a seductive femme fatale (Virginia Madsen), all dressed in a white trench coat and dizzyingly glides through the many passageways of the theater, finally attracting the dim-witted and self-important security guard Guy Noir (Kevin Kline). Noir fashions himself a private eye, but instead has landed a job as security officer to the dying radio show. He talks and moves about like a forgotten leading man, without the dashing macho sexuality, causing him to rely on flirtation to establish his masculinity. Noir's character gives form to the nebulous array of live musical performances and notable talk about life and nostalgia by summing everything into a storyline which involves the Axeman (Tommy Lee Jones) closing down the show that played at the Fitzgerald Theater, a building that will be demolished to make way for a parking lot. There's a funny joke there on how vicious corporations take down little human businesses in favor of spaces for automobiles. Noir seeks the identity of the luscious femme fatale while finding ways to stop the Axeman from closing down the show which he himself (he tries so hard to be part of the musical cast and crew that in one scene, he insists on playing the piano as a signal, but I'm sure he just wants to let the crew know that he knows a bit about music and is not entirely an outsider to the radio show family) has become an integral part of his life.

Altman directs the film with a mixture of understated flair and grace. The antiquated theater contains narrow passageways leading to dusty wooden dressing rooms, where ghosts float in and out the rooms and to and fro the corridors. Altman's camera wafts through the theater like a a voyeur, catching the denizens of the radio show in their several conversations and banter, most of which are memorable throwbacks to past secret relationships, and discussions on dismissed opportunties. Altman's visual assuredness keeps the characters glued into one beautiful relationship, that when the Axeman finally arrives to tell the rumored closing down of the show, the film exudes a poignant note that simply breaks your heart. You've heard their stories, you've seen them sing and dance, you've participated in listening to their heartaches, their joys and their little discussions about nothing, that to see everything end with a cruel Texan destroying everything that he has no actual knowledge of is utterly painful.

The most heartbreaking of all is that that's probably what everybody is expecting from the aging Altman; that one day, the newspapers, radio programs, and entertainment shows will mourn his passing. Altman here is detailing the inevitability of death while showing that it's not all bad. He after all ends his film with a dubious note involving the angel of death staring through the celluloid and Noir trying to find out who's to die next by little hand signals. He follows up the ending by a joyous song that accompanies the end credits. Altman seems to see death as an expected result of the greatness of life, and that there's no point in mourning a passing, and instead, one should celebrate life, the same way the best way to celebrate the end of the radio program (which I believe, is still around) is to replay the memorable songs that have touched and affected the millions of patrons it has served the past thirty years.

The Man Without a Past (2002)

The Man Without a Past (Aki Kaurismaki, 2002)
Finnish Title: Mies vailla menneisyyttä

Aki Kaurismaki's The Man Without a Past is so disarmingly simple that it's such a treat in our present cinematic world that fetishizes in complex convoluted plot lines and stories that are grounded upon unexpected twists and turns. If it weren't for the stylish use of colors and the droll yet motivated blankness of Kaurismaki's visuals, The Man Without a Past would be convincing as a 50's Hollywood film. Also, Kaurismaki's humor can be traced to Jim Jarmusch rather than the comedic geniuses of the golden age of Hollywood cinema.

A man (Markku Peltola) is mugged and left as dead by a band of thugs. He awakes, wrapped in white bandage, and the first thing he does is to fix his broken nose (a rather funny note as Kaurismaki would be using Peltola's prominent nose through the numerous profile shots that pervade the film). The man turns out to be like the invisible man who unwraps his bandages and learns that he is as transparent as air. Instead of the curse of invisibility, the man is cursed (or gifted) with the sudden disappearance of his memory. He moves in an empty container van near the ship docks of Helsinki, and starts to work as a crew for the Salvation Army, where he meets and falls in love with Irma (Kati Outinen).

It's a funny predicament the man lands himself into. He is consistently bullied by the head honcho of the homeless community, with a female dog named 'Hannibal.' The local chapter of the Salvation Army plays routine music that is much too old and safe for the tastes of the miserable denizens of the container vans. Even his girlfriend Irma is a perpetual virgin, morose and manly when wearing her outfit, and still morose but rises a few notches in terms of femininity whenever she's in casual wear with the titular amnesiac. Kaurismaki doesn't go for hilarity. Instead, he persists in deadpan humor, letting the absurdity of the scenario seep into his audience's cognition which in turn, brings about well-earned chuckles. The dialogue is slight, but that adds to the mysterious charm of the film which somehow survives with the cleverness and ingenuity of Kaurismaki's directorial designs.

Kaurismaki intends to end the film with a subtle twist --- a throwback to the cleverer sci-fi features of classic Hollywood --- and ultimately happily concludes the unfortunate tale of the man. It's a worthwhile film, despite the fact that the plot plays out like a straightforward feature which is absolutely devoid of contemporary notions of climaxes. Instead, Kaurismaki draws out interest by staging even more absurd scenarios out of the already absurd groundwork that he has mustered. A bank robber steals his money from the bank, and then asks the man, to deliver the money to the unpaid laborers which he has neglected to pay --- that is just one of the paradoxical statements that glue this film of virile paradoxes. Each of these little scenarios, little scenes, bring about a conclusion that makes you want to watch the film again to see the subtle nuances Kaurismaki placed in the film.

Goodbye Lenin! (2003)

Goodbye Lenin! (Wolfgang Becker, 2003)

After being left by her husband in favor of a more lucrative life in West Germany, Christiane (Katrin Sass) has decided to spend her life raising her two children properly and loyally serving socialist East Germany as a teacher. When her children grew up to become adults, nothing much has changed except that the unification of the two Germanys are coming close. Of course, the characters in the film do not know that, and when Christiane suffers a heart attack followed by an 8-month coma which is conveniently timed during the breaking of the Berlin Wall, the two children decide to keep the unification a secret from their mother who awakens without knowledge of the quick events that happened during the time she was unconscious.

It's an ingenious concept, I thought. A concept that is not entirely free from ridiculous inconsistencies, but in the end, is truly compelling. The democratic world saw the unification of Germany as the triumph of capitalism, but the inconvenient truth of a forcedly forgotten idealism towards socialism remains in the heart of former East Germans. Goodbye Lenin! seeks to visualize the hidden emotional impact of the unification by cooking up a comedic farce that is both emotionally deep and touching.

Wolfgang Becker directs the concept with able hands. Although there is a needless reliance to tired comedy, Becker still succeeds in creating a humorous attack to the historical event that this democratic world has considered a triumph. One scene that is charmingly funny yet also heartaching is when Christiane finally goes out from her room to discover a neighborhood that has changed since the time she suffered from coma. Katrin Sass walks weakly down her apartment, her face stoic from the lies that her children has supplied her ego, but is also unable to understand the presence of West Germans in her neighborhood, capitalist signs, and in one brilliant stroke of visual humor, a helicopter flying carrying the enormous bust of Lenin. But Becker doesn't direct the scene with humor in mind. He supplies the scene with a heartracing soundtrack that accompanies the resulting internal disagreement of the lies of the children and the mother's own reconciling of what she sees, and the effect is quite astounding.

Then Becker makes a huge cinematic mistake. He decides that the lie should go on, covering the amazing scene with another lie the son cooks up. I thought the brilliantly directed scene went down as an annoying emotional tease. I was expecting a difficult reckoning for the mother --- an uncovering of the life and the hard hitting fact that everything she lived for has turned into nothing when capitalism has ruled over socialism. Instead, Becker introduces more melodramatic elements into his film including a touching but not too original reunification of children and father, and so on. Sure, Becker, by following more commercial instincts, has made a more friendly film --- one that doesn't disagree with conventional wisdom of what is pleasant and acceptable. But upon deciding that, he forego what could've been truly impressive and devastating --- a mother breaking down from the treachery (although probably reasonable and rational) of the two most important parts of her life.