2 out of 4 Stars
Controversial. Sadistic. Hair-raising. Intense. These are some of the words to describe Lars Von Trier's new film, Nymphomaniac: Volume One. Von Trier's full cut of the movie was so long (four hours) that he had split it into two parts as Tarantino did with Kill Bill. Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is found lying on the snow-covered streets and is saved by Seligman (Stellan Skarsgard), a fly-fishing intellectual who listens to Joe tell him how she ended up on the streets.
Joe's story is an intense, no holds bar description of her sex life with tales of having her virginity being taken by Jerome, a moped-driving twenty-something (Shia LaBoeuf, with a terrible British accent), and competing over a bag of chocolates with her friend by seeing which one has the most sex on a train. As she reaches adulthood, Joe's sexual conquests grow from promiscuous to compulsive as she sees the destruction of one man's married life as his wife (An unforgettable Uma Thurman) confronts Joe in her apartment. The film concludes with a chilling cliffhanger that will leave you shocked, yet curious, over how Joe ended up in the warm embrace of Seligman.
Lars Von Trier once said that "films should be like a rock in a shoe." Von Trier's films are like rocks and shards of glass in a shoe with no socks on, whether it is the suspenseful and grueling Antichrist
or his audacious musical, Dancer in the Dark. Von Trier's Nymphomaniac is of no exception; he succeeds in shocking you with intense imagery, yet leaves you scratching your head over the age old question about filmmakers of his caliber: is the film made to shock us for the sake of being shocked, or is there an underlying message that is overshadowed by the grueling imagery?
In the sake of Von Trier's Nymphomania, it is a film that tries to look at the ethical nature of sexual compulsion in the same vein as Steve McQueen's Shame or Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris, yet manages to leave you squirming and turning away from images that make the film anything but sexy. Von Trier's perspective is a heavy handed mix of Freud and Kinsey mixed with a blend of earthy, yet uncomfortable, scenes that are reminiscent of Pasolini. The film is unforgettable, but only from when it is being seen at face value. In terms of the story, it is a feeble attempt of being philosophical as Terrence Malick and overly pretentious as if Von Trier was trying to remake I Am Curious (Yellow).
Monday, March 24, 2014
Sunday, March 16, 2014
The Grand Budapest Hotel
3 1/2 out of 4 Stars
In his seventh film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson examines the unconditional need to capture the past with grace and elegance in the face of terror and bewilderment. The result, a delectable and lighthearted journey that secures Anderson's position as one of the great comedic and heartfelt filmmakers in recent memory. His impeccable obsession with detail mixed with the quirkiness of his protagonists is a pleasure to devour with your eyes and ears.
Set in the non-existent European country of Zubrowka, Monsieur Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) is the concierge of the Grand Budapest Hotel; a charming man with a penchant for perfume, poetry, and pleasuring the elderly women that stay at the hotel. While running the hotel, Gustave mentors Zero (Tony Revolori), a beloved lobby boy who is taken under Gustave's heavily-perfumed wing. After one of his flames, Madame D. (Tilda Swinton), dies of a mysterious death, Gustave is named in her will as the owner of her most priceless painting, much to the dismay of her hotheaded son, Dimitri (A hilarious Adrien Brody), and his henchman (A chilling Willem Dafoe). As a result to Gustave's good fortune, murder, adventure, and romance ensue in the tradition of Jean Renoir's The Grand Illusion and Robert Altman's Gosford Park, yet through the kelidoscopic eyes of Wes Anderson.
Charming and funny, Ralph Fiennes gives a stellar performance as the regimented, yet flawed, Gustave. Tony Revolori is unforgettable as the loyal Zero; it would be hard to imagine not seeing Revolori resurface in another Anderson picture, or indeed, in whatever comes his way next. The rest of the cast, which consist of Anderson's regular actors, add to the fun and warmhearted adventure. Based on the writings of Viennese writer, Stefan Zweig, Anderson and Hugo Guinness have crafted a story that fits the mold of Anderson's previous stories about father-son relationships, yet with the intoxicating images of Anna Pinnock's set designs of the hotel and shot with the sharply focused eyes of Anderson's long-time cinematographer, Robert Yeoman.
As repetitious as my praise for The Grand Budapest Hotel is, the only quote I can think up to sum up the experience comes from the immortal lyrics of the Eagles, "You can check out anytime you like, but just can never leave."
In his seventh film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson examines the unconditional need to capture the past with grace and elegance in the face of terror and bewilderment. The result, a delectable and lighthearted journey that secures Anderson's position as one of the great comedic and heartfelt filmmakers in recent memory. His impeccable obsession with detail mixed with the quirkiness of his protagonists is a pleasure to devour with your eyes and ears.
Set in the non-existent European country of Zubrowka, Monsieur Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) is the concierge of the Grand Budapest Hotel; a charming man with a penchant for perfume, poetry, and pleasuring the elderly women that stay at the hotel. While running the hotel, Gustave mentors Zero (Tony Revolori), a beloved lobby boy who is taken under Gustave's heavily-perfumed wing. After one of his flames, Madame D. (Tilda Swinton), dies of a mysterious death, Gustave is named in her will as the owner of her most priceless painting, much to the dismay of her hotheaded son, Dimitri (A hilarious Adrien Brody), and his henchman (A chilling Willem Dafoe). As a result to Gustave's good fortune, murder, adventure, and romance ensue in the tradition of Jean Renoir's The Grand Illusion and Robert Altman's Gosford Park, yet through the kelidoscopic eyes of Wes Anderson.
Charming and funny, Ralph Fiennes gives a stellar performance as the regimented, yet flawed, Gustave. Tony Revolori is unforgettable as the loyal Zero; it would be hard to imagine not seeing Revolori resurface in another Anderson picture, or indeed, in whatever comes his way next. The rest of the cast, which consist of Anderson's regular actors, add to the fun and warmhearted adventure. Based on the writings of Viennese writer, Stefan Zweig, Anderson and Hugo Guinness have crafted a story that fits the mold of Anderson's previous stories about father-son relationships, yet with the intoxicating images of Anna Pinnock's set designs of the hotel and shot with the sharply focused eyes of Anderson's long-time cinematographer, Robert Yeoman.
As repetitious as my praise for The Grand Budapest Hotel is, the only quote I can think up to sum up the experience comes from the immortal lyrics of the Eagles, "You can check out anytime you like, but just can never leave."
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Alain Resnais 1922-2014
Alain Resnais, one of most thought-provoking filmmakers of last sixty years, died at the age of 91. Resnais, along with fellow filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, formed the vanguard of Cinema Verite which led to a string of films that broke down the conventional styles of studio filmmaking and lit the torch for a new generation of filmmakers to carry by disregarding the norms and status quo of what should be filmed versus what can be filmed. With 50 films to his credit, Resnais crafted some of the most time worthy gems in postmodern cinema, ranging from his harrowing look at the deserted concentration camps of World War II in Night and Fog to the politically conscious views of warfare in Hiroshima, Mon Amour and The War is Over.
If there was one film that cemented his career as being regarded as one of the most inspirational and revered filmmakers of his generation, it would be his surreal 1961 epic, Last Year at Marienbad. His tale of love lost and gained within the confines of a majestic hotel became, arguably, the source of inspiration for many filmmakers that succeeded him. It would be hard to imagine Stanley Kubrick to film The Shining without looking at Last Year at Marienbad and it's subtext involving memory and déjà vu. The same thing can be said for Lars Von Trier's Melancholia and it's opening sequences resembling the shadowed topiary from Resnais' masterpiece.
Resnais had an unflinching eye that would set the standard for other filmmakers to emulate. Actor/director Jean Claude Biette said that both Night and Fog and Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salo, or 120 Days of Sodom were films to be shown to "anyone interested in civics." Years before shocking periods of our time, like the Holocaust or slavery, were presented on film, Resnais was the first to film Night and Fog, a thirty minute documentary about the horrors that occurred at Auschwitz and Majdanek. When I was teaching summer film courses in New Hampshire, this was one of the films that I showed to my students and, suffice to say, it is emotionally draining and still packs a powerful punch about the horrors of World War II in the same sense that Hearts and Minds was an eye-opening documentary about the Vietnam War.
Resnais once said, "Luck, I never looked to make difficult films on purpose. You make the films you can make." For Resnais, he succeeded in making the films he wanted to make and as he is physically gone from this life, his films and philosophy on filmmaking live on for the next wave of curious visionaries struggling to make the films they can make.
If there was one film that cemented his career as being regarded as one of the most inspirational and revered filmmakers of his generation, it would be his surreal 1961 epic, Last Year at Marienbad. His tale of love lost and gained within the confines of a majestic hotel became, arguably, the source of inspiration for many filmmakers that succeeded him. It would be hard to imagine Stanley Kubrick to film The Shining without looking at Last Year at Marienbad and it's subtext involving memory and déjà vu. The same thing can be said for Lars Von Trier's Melancholia and it's opening sequences resembling the shadowed topiary from Resnais' masterpiece.
Resnais had an unflinching eye that would set the standard for other filmmakers to emulate. Actor/director Jean Claude Biette said that both Night and Fog and Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salo, or 120 Days of Sodom were films to be shown to "anyone interested in civics." Years before shocking periods of our time, like the Holocaust or slavery, were presented on film, Resnais was the first to film Night and Fog, a thirty minute documentary about the horrors that occurred at Auschwitz and Majdanek. When I was teaching summer film courses in New Hampshire, this was one of the films that I showed to my students and, suffice to say, it is emotionally draining and still packs a powerful punch about the horrors of World War II in the same sense that Hearts and Minds was an eye-opening documentary about the Vietnam War.
Resnais once said, "Luck, I never looked to make difficult films on purpose. You make the films you can make." For Resnais, he succeeded in making the films he wanted to make and as he is physically gone from this life, his films and philosophy on filmmaking live on for the next wave of curious visionaries struggling to make the films they can make.
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