Filmcap: The week of Dec 4-11

Raise the Red Lantern. Certified Copy, and Sideways are some of the films reviewed this week. I continue my catch up on 2011 films and I find one true masterpiece as well as two interesting but a bit standard works. In addition, I check out two films by renowned directors, one American and one Chinese, both with new films out this year. In this post you'll find films about second chances, coming together in the face of hardship, and why authenticity may not matter. 

Another Earth (Mike Cahill, USA, 2011): The sci-fi concept in this film is almost the same as the one in Melancholia: a new planet emerges from behind the sun. But instead of a planet that is about to hit us, in this one the planet serves as a second chance, it is a new reality. On this planet, everything is the same as it is on Earth. This alternate reality emerges and gives our young protagonist a possibility of a second chance after she drives drunk and kills the wife and young son of a man in a car crash the night she celebrates her MIT acceptance. Instead of going to MIT the next four years she has to spend it all in jail. The pretty contrived plot comes in after she visits the man with no family, trying to apologize but finding herself unable to do so, and pretends to be a maid for him. I've seen that story before and it's not done particularly better here and so the sci-fi plot is really the only chance this movie has of being unique and memorable.

I think the theme of second chances is heartfelt in this movie, particulardy due to Brit Marling's performance (she also co-wrote the screenplay), and the Earth-2 concept is a good concept at translating that desire for second chances into a real and literal feeling. It's a wonderful concept, but the plot around it is completely standard indie movie. What does elevate it ever so slightly above standard indie fare is Marling's performance as well as Cahill's cinematography. The bright light of the day and the low lighting of the nighttime gives Marling's performance an extra boost. One of the loveliest images is when Marling is sitting in an attic and the room is lit in a way you can see the specks of dust in the room and the one time MIT student looks at the specks of dust like they are stars floating in an endless universe. But ultimately the biggest problem is the script that tries too hard to tether itself to reality while also being metaphorical. The movie for some reason does include snippets of conversations and news broadcasts about the scientific ramifications that would not be out of place in a pure science fiction film, but at the same time Another Earth tries so hard to be its own metaphorical and philosophical movie that doesn't care about science. Unfortunately Another Earth is stuck somewhere in the middle.
Grade: C+

Tyrannosaur (Paddy Considine, UK, 2011): When an actor makes their directorial debut you rarely see much ambition. From movies directed by actors I usually expect an average screenplay with a lively plot, well-developed characters, and certainly great acting. British actor Paddy Considine's directorial debut fits all these expectations, though it should be noted that he wrote the screenplay himself which is not a very common occurrence for the directorial debuts of actors. As to be expected, the directing of the film is fairly simple, but the performances are big highlights. Peter Mullan plays a very angry man who seems to have some anger management issues that probably stem from a lot of unfair experiences in his life. The movie starts with him kicking his dog and killing it, which is definitely a brave move considering this guy is the main character and later in the film Considine attempts to have us sympathize with him. Mullan though does a great job of letting that happen.

The crux of the movie is the give-and-take mutually beneficial relationship between Mullan's character and the character played by Olivia Colman. She is a woman who starts the movie as a jolly God-loving woman who owns a store, but as we go deeper into her life we find out some awful truths about her husband and as she experiences her own disasters she enlists the help of Mullan's character. Mullan is an angry man who wants to find peace, and Colman is a peaceful woman who happens on anger and sadness. The story is fairly brutal but it does show how people who are so different can go through similar hardships in life and those hardships can bind people together. The impact of the film does not seem to linger much because I don't think the movie transcends its own plot and characters even though the themes are important. The movie almost seems like a play because of the smallness of the film, and I do wish the film was more cinematic and grand, or at least more unique in its portrayal of the conditions of the two characters. Regardless of my problems with Considine's flawed, but still relatively impressive, directing, the acting by Colman and Mullan enable this film to attain intense and brutal emotions.
Grade: B-

Sideways (Alexander Payne, USA, 2004): The mid-life crisis movie has seemed to have been remarkably overdone in the last 5-10 years. That may be a large part of the reason why I didn't seem to connect with this movie as much as others seem to have in 2004. Sideways was one of the most acclaimed films of the year in 2004 and it was very dearly beloved. But I found it to be well-made, well-acted, but not entirely distinct or special. Paul Giamatti plays a writer who is having a hard time getting a book published and recovering from a divorce, and so him and a friend who is about to get married, played by Thomas Haden Church, go to California wine country and spend a week having fun before Church's character gets married and also hopefully getting Giamatti's character back in a good mood. The plot later includes two women that the men get involved with, and it turns into a four character comedy/drama, and while the interactions between the characters are sweet and funny, it's all completely familiar.

The metaphor of wine is definitely the most interesting and unique part of the film. Wine is something that gets better with age until its peak at a certain moment, something similar to what Giamatti is probably feeling. The travels through the wine country also make for an interesting environment that is very well set up and created. The tone is quite breezy, quick, and light, so the movie is always funny. One of the reasons I may not have liked the film quite as much as others is because in the years after this film, Giamatti has starred in numerous films and his performance in those films have been wonderful, but very similar to his performance in this movie. This film was his second hit after his breakout role in American Splendor so audiences who watched this film in 2004 were not as aware as I was of Giamatti's acting style and persona. Alexander Payne has made one film that I love in Election and he followed that one up with About Schmidt and Sideways, two movies that I found were well-made and humorous but ultimately much too standard and conventional. If Payne made movies every year, like Woody Allen, I would consider this film a good achievement, but considering he takes multiple years in between, it's hard to figure out why so much time and effort is spent on a movie that is not very unique.
Grade: B-

Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami, France, 2011): A master director from Iran decides to make a film in France that is mostly in English. It may seem like a sell-out, but instead of selling out, Kiarostami created a masterpiece. The beginning of the movie is a lecture by a writer who has written a book that goes by the same title of this movie, and in the lecture he talks about how copies and fakes of things like art, can also be considered real and artistic on their own merits. He feels that authenticity is everywhere, even in fakes of paintings because they were created by a person and that is enough to be authentic. That initial lecture informs the rest of the film in some splendid ways. A woman, played by Juliette Binoche, meets the writer and they spend a day together while usually walking and talking, that's really all the movie is.These two people spend the day together and they seem like they're getting to know each other very well, but there is one tear midway through this film that turns our understanding of what is going on in this film completely upside down.

The film turns into an ambiguous intellectual mystery that is somehow all about love and relationships. There have been very few films I've seen that have taken intellectual ideas like authenticity and wrapped them around such human issues like love with so much perfection. This is a film that uses the relationship in the movie to comment on the question of authenticity and helps us ponder the question of the film with not only intellect, but also emotion. The emotions involved in the mysterious relationship between the two are real and felt, and the questions surrounding the relationship satisfy immensely on an intellectual level as well. They seem to be getting to know each other in the first half, but in the second half we have to question that. The main question is whether or not this couple really have never met each other or not before this day. There are numerous theories that can be made and it's best to discover the films mystery on your own.

 I also have to talk about Kiarostami's amazingly economical and beautiful directing. The story of this film can be called deceptively simple, but it's really the directing that truly inhabits that phrase. If you've seen his previous films, you know Kiarostami is not a showy director. He keeps his camera steady and doesn't move it unless he has to. In this film he continues that, but because this movie is set in a very modern setting, he takes advantage of the mirrors and reflective surfaces in our world to include a remarkable amount of information in one shot. There is a long shot of the couple driving through Tuscany, the camera is situated on the hood of the car facing the windshield, we see the characters faces as they talk but also on the reflection of the windshield we see where exactly they're driving as well. It's a shot that showcases the setting and the emotion on the faces of the characters without moving the camera at all in anyway. Appropriately and a bit ironically, Kiarostami has found a way to represent a fake reality of life in a movie and at the same also capture a true reality of life.
Grade: A

Raise the Red Lantern (Zhang Yimou, China, 1991): The repression of females has been done in pretty much every society at one point or another, and in this film we see the repression of females in  Chinese culture. Set in the 1920's, the film centers on four women who are the wives of a rich man in a giant complex where all four live together. The four wives end up in a game to see who can get the man to stay the night with them for the longest period of time. In essence, the women turn into children in this scenario. One of the more interesting feminist points this film makes is that the repression and objectification of women itself leads to the immaturity and child-like image of women that society puts on them. The film may want to reveal a system of reciprocity and blames the system for keeping women in the status that they are in. At the same time, I'm not quite sure all the "games" that the wives play in this movie with each other and the rivalry between all the women neatly fits into the message of female repression.

The greatest accomplishment by Yimou in this film is definitely the visual architecture of the movie and the way the shots are composed. The film is extraordinarily beautiful and each shot looks like a meticulous and thought out painting. Yimou shoots the movie with a telephoto lens and the sounds in the movie are all amplified, and so the distances in the large palace the wives live in are not important, instead the palace seems like it has no beginning or ending. The palace is shot in a way that makes it look like a prison and enclosed. That repressive environment is captured perfectly by Yimou's cameras. I also cannot forget to mention the splendid use of color in the film. The colors are lush and red, and that is because the color red is very important in the story as well. The red lantern that signifies where the master wants to spend the night. While the film understands and captures the environment so well, I wish it captured the characters just as well. The women have their own personalities but sometimes it seems to reduce them to children without looking at why it is the way they are. Nonetheless Yimou is a fantastic director who knows how to create truly memorable images.
Grade: B