Death of the Bohemian: The Great Beauty and Only Lovers Left Alive

I saw two movies this week that dealt with similar kinds of subject matters: Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty (La grande bellezza) and Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive are both movies about the connection between historical art and the modern day. Both feature bohemians that have lost their way somewhere along the way. And they are not so much plot-driven films as mood pieces, dashing out various scenes presenting ideas and pondering them. So, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at both movies from these angles. Since this analyzing means dealing with some plot points, it should be reminded here that this post may contain spoilers.

The Great Beauty opens with a scene showing Japanese tourist so overwhelmed by the ancient city of Rome that he has a heart attack. This is cut to a outrageous megaparty where tattood strippers lure men in glass booths and drunken upper-class art connisseurs dance in line to the music of hot DJ's mixing traditional sounds to modern beats. In the middle of all this hullabaloo, the birthday-celebrating Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo) is introduced smiling with a cigar in his mouth, looking like Silvio Berlusconi. He has done this kind of partying for a long time.

Not until someone close to him dies does he realize that he should perhaps want to spend his life also as a creator, not just a partyer. He starts to consider writing another book, but he has trouble getting the inspiration, which he calls "The Great Beauty". But he has trouble spotting it, due to the banality of the performance pieces he tends to visit, and being so used to classical architecture (his own penthouse apartment has a view over the Colosseum).

Only Lovers Left Alive deals with two immortal vampires, Adam (Tom Hiddleston) and Eve (Tilda Swinton) who have been lovers for centuries. At the start of the film they are "living" seperately, however. While Eve binges on old literature and lives somewhat happily in Tangier, Adam is brooding in his Detroit home, composing music but sheltering himself away from fans. In his desperation he has produced himself a possible exit from this bleak world: a bullet made out of hard wood, that would effectively work like a stake when shot through the heart of the vampire. When the pair reunites, there's plenty of discussion on whether the world has gone astray or if the world's problems are just a permanent glitch.

Adam has a bleak outlook on the future. Humans (or zombies, as vampires call them) are on the verge of self-destruction which has manifested itself also in contaminating their blood. Eve, as an elder vampire, has seen the worst history has to offer from floods and plagues. She shrugs off the problems as long as she herself is living comfortably. The brooding Adam, however is waiting for the global climate crisis to reach the point humans start World War III over fresh water. He has lost his faith on humanity, his idolized poets, authors and scientists throughout the ages being mostly long gone, and left only humanity's self-doubt over their abilities and their subsequent refusal to figure out a way to save themselves.

During The Great Beauty, Jep keeps being disappointed when a potential source of beauty turns sour. A grace-fallen love interest he seeks to redeem dies on him, modern art consists of meaningless performances trying to gain the attention of rich buyers and even spirituality is reduced to status-seeking. People don't pray but rather take similar photographies of themselves with a priest that's to be a strong contender to be a pope or an ancient nun that's to be pronounced a saint after her death, Jep's companions try to hint to him to try to search the Great Beauty from within, not just looking from the outside. It isn't until the grotesquely old nun spells out to him how important "roots" are, does he fully get it and remembers entirely the night he lost his virginity.

So, The Great Beauty has an optimistic look that one may find one's muse when looking at moments of beauty at one's roots. Only Lover Left Alive is far more pessimistic. Art-loving vampires have trouble functioning at a celebrity-crazed culture that insists every popular creator is to be fitted into a spotlight. It prevents the sort of art bohemia of yesterday when poets could feed from one another (so to speak). Even though Adam tries to keep his musical creations to himself, they seem to find a way to leak out and to be played in underground clubs around the world, much to his dismay. He is in it purely from a love of the instruments. He also helds a popular hipster opinion that nothing popular can't be too good, since at the end he hears a Morroccan singer, he comments that she's far too good for fame. Adam seems to find that the more attention things get, the easier it is for money-hungry people to push it to the limits and totally ruin it.

During OLLA, the vampires suffer one indignity under another and are increasingly pushed to the edge. As much as they loathe the modern humans, the more they find themselves to resemble them as their back is pushed against the wall. Even Eva's comforting outlook starts to show cracks. They can't plan for the future when their current needs start to weigh too heavily. Blood is a sort of drug in the movie. When the supply of pure, good stuff runs dry, the desperate vampires have to start taking risks in acquiring it on the streets. The safest bet seems to be drinking from young lovers, since what else is pure in this world any more?

In the end, The Great Beauty is a movie looking back, trying to get people to make the right choices to feel good about their lives in general. It has the stance that happiness can't come from mere self-indulgence or hedonism, one has to have spiritual experiences as well and remember the parts of life that matter. But if this balancing act is reached, it doesn't see why a rich life can't go on as it used to.  

Only Lovers Left Alive has a much bleaker outlook.It sees that the fractured world can't anymore produce a sphere for artists to meet and discuss and create. The future of the vampires is either self-destructive retroactivity (as with Mia Wasikowska's Ava) or death. The demise of John Hurt's cultural vampire Marlowe (revealed to have ghost-written Hamlet as well as other world-famous writings and poems over his multiple lifetimes) represents the death of the culture. This is a sign of how dog-eat-dog the world is about to get as things get more and more difficult for everyone. There's no room for new ideas in the world if the only idea that's going to matter is the instinct for survival. Jarmusch's film is nothing short of heralding total apocalypse. it's a good thing that the film has a sense of humor about it too, or it might be harder to swallow.

I don't like drugs (but the drugs like movies)

Happy 4/20! I don't do drugs (though I'm still far from being a winner), but plenty of filmmakers either have, or have been inspired by drug-usage to create some perplexing visions. I take a look at four cult films that vary, whether their portrayal of drugs is the cause of, or solution to life's bigger problems.

Reefer Madness, a.k.a. Tell Your Children (USA, 1936)
Director: Louis J. Gasnier

The original anti-drug "educational" film gained a huge cult following in the following decades. Potheads from all over the world, and of all times gathering around to giggle at the stern image this film gives about their culture. There has also been a colorized version of the film which has the added interest in having different-colored pot smoke to come out of different characters, all relying on their mood.

At a local high school, Dr. Carroll (Joseph Forte) narrates a tale to a PTA meeting of how easily the youth can be corrupted. Drug pushers Mae (Thelma White) and Jack (Carleton Young) lure high school students to drop by at Mae's to smoke some "reefer cigarettes". This drug-smoking has various horrifying effects on the teens. One leaves the apartment intoxicated with his car and runs over a pedestrian. A girl is almost raped at a wild drug party. Sex-crazed potheads battle over girls, which causes a gun to go off. Won't somebody please think of the children!

The film is definitely a C-grade product of its time, with which I mean it moves along with a glacier's speed, the acting is hammy and the entire ordeal repetitive and quite boring. The funniest parts involve the straight-out finger pointing, hammering home the message to speak to the kids about the dangers of drugs. Which, of course have been wildly exaggerated and their portrayal hardly based on any empirical evidence. Yet still, you'd probably have to be stoned to enjoy this properly.

★★

Mystery of the Leaping Fish (USA, 1916)
Directors: Christy Cabane, John Emerson

Of course, American attitude over drugs hasn't always been as stern. In the early 20th century you could buy even hard drugs at a pharmacist's. A hilarious relic of this time is this short film, starring Douglas Fairbanks himself. Also appearing is Lupe Velez, best remembered from wanting to have a suicide that would give the press a field time and then dying with her head on the toilet. This comedy features the coke-fiend private detective Coke Ennyday (really!), who actually gets plenty of help to solving a case from chasing the horse. Regular cocaine ingestion also helps his crippling depression.

The Leaping Fish of the title refers to a sort of surfboard / blow-up toy.

There are several quite perplexing visions throughout the film. Ennyday is a sort of an inventor, having several odd inventions in his home, such as a clock on his wall, that tells him when it's time to shoot dope. Money launderers iron out a whole mountain dollar bills. Ennyday's car has the same chess-pattern as his costume. Surfers lie on silly-looking blow-up fish dolls. The movie does run out of steam after a while, which makes it good it's only 25 minutes long. The end twist is a bit dumb, but it gives Fairbanks a chance to really parody his image as a clean-cut hero.

As if taking this role wasn't enough by itself.

The film was co-written by Tod Browning and D.W. Griffith of all people, which makes one ponder how much of their own films were directed under the influence.

★★★ 1/2

Side note: These two older movies are public domain by now, so they can be legally watched all over the internet by now.

Liquid Sky (USA, 1982)
Director: Slava Tsukerman

Aesthetically beautiful, but somewhat incomprehensible plot-wise, this psychedelic epic has truly earned its cult-movie status. Pity it seems director Tsukerman had to return to his home planet in the vastness of space soon after this was finished. This product is truly one of a kind. The film has clearly inspired Gaspar Noe on his work.

Frames tell a lot more about this film than words ever could.

Checking out what it's supposed to be about, microscopic aliens arrive on Earth on a flying dinner plate to seek for the chemical construction that makes heroin. Spying out the hedonistic life of a New York penthouse, the aliens realize that sexual pheromones are a lot more potent drug. A German scientist and an androgynous model follow the aliens and their ordeals nearby.

But all that nonsense is irrelevant. This is a steamy, sweaty film for a hot summer night. It's a vibrant, vivid, colorful piece of art that awakens emotions on a larger scale. It's a twisted, dark and sometimes nightmarish movie. The film's synthesizer soundtrack is perhaps even more iconic than the movie itself. The whole ordeal taps into New York City subculture of the times, when punk aesthetics were swept away in the wake of New Wave, and the hedonism and self-centerdness of the 80s was truly setting in. And before the discovery of AIDS, when coke-fiends were banging each other without a care in the world.

Now, since I watched it drunk, the film might have taken place in my fever dreams at least a bit. that's why I hesitate to give it the full ★★★★★ score. But when I get a chance to see it again, it may rise to new heights.

★★★★

Blue Sunshine (USA, 1978)
Director: Jeff Lieberman

For an even more sinister look at the drug-usage, this sci-fi thriller is fearful of the loss of control connected to drug usage. So much so that it warns the threat to be so vast as to be able to cross even a long period of time. Even worse than acid flashbacks, the users of the form of LSD known as Blue Sunshine, lose their minds years after having taken the drug. They lose their hair and grow an urge to murder. And murder just anyone in their vicinity, family member, random stranger or authority figure. Jerry Zipkin (Zalman King) is falsely accused of a mass murder at a party. On the run, he must gather evidence of the secret behind Blue Sunshine to clear his name and save the life of a presidential candidate.

A plot ripped straight from the headlines!

It's another drug film that's definitely a product of its time. The paranoia and cynicism of the 70s saw that the carefree 60s had caused a lot of dangers to the modern world. These threats would blossom when erstwhile hippies have grown adult and risen to the position where they rule the world. Seedy discos, corrupt politicians and untrustworthy former friends occupy the modern world.

And nobody still thinks of the children!

The film is quite offbeat and bald mass murderers that cross their eyes when flipping out, look quite silly. Still, everything is played out with a straight face, which works better for the threatening athmosphere than a tongue-in-cheek approach would. The film is unevenly paced, with long stretches of time running on empty, and with important scenes, like the climax, taking place in a flick of the wrist. It's a deliberate exercise in tricking the audience's exceptions, but still it causes the film to be quite uneven in interest at times as well. But it's still well worth a check if you fear for the acid flashbacks to come.

★★★ 1/2

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I hear a bell toll.

25th helping of Love & Anarchy

Festival poster circa 1993. Image Source: http://www.hiff.fi 

Helsinki International Film Festival opens today! This year, the festival is celebrating a quarter-century of Love & Anarchy. For a person my age (i.e. only a year or few older than the festival) it's hard to imagine the film-going climate of the days before. While it's a myth there weren't any interesting art house flicks and such in theatres, the fact was that they came from a pretty thin slice of the world. Love & Anarchy changed all that way back when.

The very first HIFF movie poster.

Due to the festival, we have today film distribution companies that will bring us some real treats from around the world, even if DVD's have taken over much of our movie-watching customs and there aren't that many theaters around any more. Since Love & Anarchy itself celebrates it's history with a retrospective of various treats from the years back, I thought this would be a good chance to preview several older films to be shown at Love & Anarchy's retrospective series. After all, I already did one post about tips, and other blogs have been tooting the same horn ever since. Besides, this is a rare opportunity to do a retrospective and a preview at the same time.

The Killer (Hong Kong, 1989)
Director: John Woo

As mentioned, Love & Anarchy used to be the first and only place to see some of the Greatest Hits of Asian movies in the whole Finland. One of the festival's most important imports is the action cinema of Hong Kong director John Woo. Woo himself also visited the festival in the early 90's. His best film is still this action tale, pondering the morality of a violent hit man, and the code of ethics he has in the job.

The deadliest mob enforcer/assassin on the business, Ah Yong (Chow-Yun Fat) accidentally blinds the nightclub singer Jenny during one of his jobs. Feeling guilty, he dedicated his life to take care of her and vows to quit his line of business. But in order to get Jenny a surgery to restore her eyesight, he has to take on one last assignment. But it turns out the Triads don't want him to stay alive and the mission turns out to be a trap. With his skills, Ah Yong survives the first encounter with Triad thugs, but there wlll be more after his head. He makes a deal with the hot shot detective Li Ying (Danny Lee) to bring down the mob bosses. Li Ying learns to trust his foremost worst enemy and starts to see the warm heart beating inside an unstoppable killer.

Like many of Woo's films, at it's core it's about friendship and almost a wartime brotherhood type of relationship with two men facing overwhelming odds and billions of bullets. Woo perfected his shooting scenes with almost ballet-like choreography and utilized stuff like slow-motion and symbolic imagery that broke into mainstream American cinema a decade later after The Matrix. But Woo is a true original. There's no way around it, this is a cornerstone in action movie cinema altogether. And thus also warrants its place in Love & Anarchy's retrospective, no matter how many times you may have seen it already.

★★★★

Chungking Express (Hong Kong, 1994)
Director: Wong Kar-Wai

Sometimes the greatest films come from a little impovisation. In the early 90's, melodrama maestro Wong Kar-Wai was on a roll. While making Ashes of Time he took a two month vacation but couldn't calm down and just be still. He decided to make a movie based purely on his gut instinct. Thus was born a gripping tale of loneliness, everyday romanticism and bittersweet emotionalism. And Chungking Express is at least among, if not the best of Wong's films.

Chungking is basically an episode film in that it features two stories that are similar, yet don't have much in common with each other. In the most densely populated areas of Hong Kong, two lovelorn policemen each on their own, never meeting, try to overcome a broken heart and fall in love again.

First, we have a young 24-year-old cop (Takeshi Kaneshiro), whose first love with an unseen woman named May is going to pieces. He gives her one year to change her mind, until his 25th birthday, and remains adamant that they will get back together, bordering on obsessive. He becomes pedant to the point where he starts to collect tin cans with the same expiration date as his relationship. But the day comes and May doesn't contact him in any way. He goes to a bar to drink and decides to falls for the first woman he sees. She turns out to be mysterious blonde woman (Brigitte Lin) who, unknown to him, just so happens to be a notorious drug smuggler. But she too is broken and alone and finds a kindred spirit in him, even if her bad business won't allow her to become attached.

The second story is similar, as it concerns another cop (Tony Leung) trying to get over the break up with his airline stewardess girlfriend. He eats every day at a small noodle shop at a station, where he is spotted by the quirky noodle-saleswoman (Faye Wong). She falls in love with him and decides to help him get over the breakup, and starts following him around.

The universality of the tales is underlined by the fact that character names aren't used. Hong Kong is only shot in neon light at night, and particularly in the second story, likened with Los Angeles, California. Both are full of broken dreams, and are seething with crimes and broken promises, yet have a melancholic loneliness at the hearts of many of its occupants at the same time. Wong develops his stunning visuals (realized by cinematographer Christopher Doyle) from scarcely-lit noir films old and new. Even though the stories concern policemen, they aren't solving crimes nor doing much police work.

As melodramas come, Wong doesn't trust to worn-out plots nor hammy acting. Instead, the film barely has a plot and will remain frustratingly unresolved for those waiting for happy endings that tie all loose ends together. But Wong respects his audience's intelligence more and keeps things subtle while the imagery just seeths with the emotions he wants to come across. Every lonely person on the planet who wants to believe in love but is too much of a realist to accept a hokey Hollywood love story to come true, will find his or her true love with this film. 

★★★★★

Naked Lunch (Canada/UK/Japan, 1991)
Director: David Cronenberg

Cronenberg's love letter to the beat novel by William S. Burroughs is by far not everyone's cup of tea. I hardly understood the novel way back in the day. Upon first viewing, I deemed the film to be a shallow adaptation, doing weird stuff for weirdness' sake. Yet Cronenberg is rarely simple and a subsequent viewing is often more than handy. The Canadian author has stated his film is based more on his personal experience of Burroughs' writing rather than a straight adaptation (which would be somewhat impossible, given the novel's rambling style, jumping from one thing to another with seemingly little effort).

This is a movie that has a constant theme, which is William S. Burroughs. Several aspects of the man pop up from unexpected places, most notably his urge to write, his ambivalent homosexuality, his tendency to binge on hard drugs and liqueur. Some of the most dramatic parts of his life, such as the accidental homicide of his wife by trying to shoot a glass on her head, are also main plot points.

If you need to know more about the plot, it's about the exterminator William Lee (Peter Weller) who finds that the powder he uses to kill bugs is also a powerful hallucinogenic drug. This gives the uptight man new purpose in life, as he rediscovers his passion for writing. But the drug also causes him to act in strange ways and possibly kill his wife Joan (Judy Frost). He travels to the Islamic port to get to the bottom of his wife's disappearance and to make amends with two dueling creatures inhabiting his various type writers.

So, this is a delirious account, where there's a strong sense of anything being possible. It's a film that delves into the human subconscious and brings up some of our most grotesque fears. Disgusting creatures and body modifications appear here and there. There's no one better to do this than Cronenberg. Bright colors make this almost cartoonish, or more accurately, instantly looking like the cover of a 50's pulp fiction novel. Burroughs' text is recited in several scenes with characters telling stories. I think the author himself was proud of how respectful this is, while at the same time unmistakably a product of the feverish imagination of its director.

★★★★

Hana-bi – Fireworks (Japan, 1997)
Director: Takeshi Kitano

Another notable presence in the festival throughout the years has been the Japanese "Beat" Takeshi Kitano. He shares Wong Kar-Wai's knack for melancholy, but whereas Wong makes strong, vivid melodramas, Kitano makes calm, poignant, and slowly moving genre films, most notably crime films. Renowed for his almost zen-like yakuza trilogy, Kitano surprised the world when he took some elements of his previous work, and made with the same tools his most touching film.

Yoshitaka Nishi (Kitano) is a police officer who quits the force. His reasons are personal in two levels. First, he's struggling with the guilt over the crippling of his partner Horibe (Ren Ohsugi) in a shootout. Second, he needs time off to care for his wife Miyuki (Kayoko Kishimoto), who is dying of leukemia. He will do anything for her, even break his morals. But one brick builds on top of another and Nishi eventually gets indebted to the yakuza. He must sacrifice more and more for those he loves, and this altruism will start to threaten his very life.

As with his best work, Kitano uses silence to great avail and lets us viewers often figure ourselves what's going on through the heads of his main characters at several given times. The film is deeply personal, since it's Kitano's first film after surviving a near-fatal car accident. The suicidal feelings of the wheelchair-bound Horibe must have come across the auteur's mind before. Like himself, characters are seen using art as a therapy method.

But while the film deals with traumas, guilt and sacrifice, it's main message is none of these. The film tells us simply of how beautiful and precious life is. Miyuki is a beautifully realized character, appreciating art, and wind at the beaches as she's nearing her end. While Nishi may be altruistic and self-sacrificial, she is the true role model of the story as she spends none of the time in self-pity or wallowing in past pains but enjoying the little things during the few moments she has left.

★★★★

Elephant (USA, 2003)
Director: Gus van Sant

A big part of Love & Anarchy's programme has been to bring both major award winners and American independent films to screens before anyone else has had the chance to. So was the case with the Palm d'Or -winning Elephant, one of Gus van Sant's finest. The film has been made in the aftermath of Columbine high school massacre, but sadly, it's perhaps even more poignant today as such mindless carnage has grown more common all around the western countries.

While suggesting how the film ends may be regarded as a spoiler, it is by no means hard to guess. All in all, it adds poignancy to van Sant's approach to the subject. His camera tours around a seemingly-regular high school in Portland one day, stopping at various teens talking about their problems, plans or other mundane things. But at the same time two sad, lonely, fucked-up teens, Alex (Alex Frost) and Eric (Eric Deulen), who are preparing for their own ultimate solution. These guys are humanely also shown as dumb, naïve and (deeply) flawed young persons as they are, not as some vicious killing machines born to do harm to others.

To call the film melancholic would be an understatement. No matter how mundane things van Sant's teens deal with, there's a string of finality in them. It's as if his characters were already dead, trying to get through their final day and having their last conversations. Van sant has a deep understanding of teenagers and his dialogue is natural, unforced and realistic. Much of his film's young cast appear with their own first names.

The tragic hero of the film, John (John Robinson) is randomly spared by Alex and Eric just before they start their shoot-out. He tries his best to first stop people from going to school, but is not taken seriously since he's seen as a geek. Then he attempts to alert parents and authorities, but this has little effect on how the things go down and many of his friends die.

As for the somewhat cryptic title, I see it as a fairly clear metaphor: Elephants never forget, so we should not forget the victims of surprising and cruel mass murders either.

★★★★

Grizzly Man (2005)
Director: Werner Herzog
 

One of the best movies of the 2000s (yes, way up there) is this Werner Herzog's oddball documentary, which at face value repeats much of the director's basic themes, such as an eccentric individual dismissing the rules of a society and man's relationship with uncontrollable forces of nature.

This is truly a story too weird to be fiction. Timothy Treadwell was a natural conservenatiotist who loved the great outdoors and spent whole summers in the wilderness. More troubling was his love towards animals, particularly bears. He viewed them as his peers, friends and companions. Treadwell didn't get along well with many people and started to sink deeper and deeper into his own world he saw nature. In actuality his vision of nature was warped by his own mind. Treadwell was also a major narcissist, shooting endless tapes of himself ranting about nature and his sightings.

Ultimately, Treadwell's life ended in a tragedy as he was mauled and eaten by a hungry grizzly bear. Years later, Herzog attempts to find and capture this free-spirit's soul. His film mostly consists of clips from Treadwell's own tapes. But our German documentarist/narrator also does some leg work and travels to meet persons who knew something of the spirit of Treadwell.

The movie is all about kindred spirits. Treadwell felt bears were his, until nature's cruelty made it's point clear. Yet this also extends to Herzog who sees something similar in the ranting, but smart and poetic Treadwell, as he did with his muse Klaus Kinski. Herzog's own scenes, particularly one where hears the audio of Treadwell's death tape are almost as chilling and memorable as Treadwell's own.

The movie arises multiple points to ponder till the conservationatists come home. Where actually is one man's place between unforgiving nature and society, where the most original, poetic individuals may be shunned and not allowed to grow freely. It’s a beautiful movie, very poetic and yet a really sinister spiral into madness.

★★★★★

Taxidermia (Hungary/Austria/France, 2006)
Director: György Pálfi

This offbeat and grotesque Hungarian movie satirizes the Hungarian national psyche and history. It is an episodic film showcasing three generations of men from the Balatony family. It's also not much of a plot-driven movie, rather than a mood piece that showcases the perversity, greed and madness of each generations focus person.

WWII-era soldier Morosgoványi Vende (Csaba Czene) is a figure sort of like a sex-crazed Woyczeck. Slow-minded, he's constantly berated and belittled by his commanding officer Lieutenant Balatony Lajoska (Marc Bischoff). He has chosen to give Morosgovány shelter, but makes him sleep in the pigsty. He has vivid sexual desires towards Lieutenant's teenaged daughters and even his obese wife.

In the 1970's Morosgoványi's bastard son Balatony Kálmán (Trócsányi Gergõ) is a world-class competititor at speed eating. He falls for the women's speed eating champion Aczél Gizi (Stanczel Adél), much to the chagrin of his coach and foster-uncle. Distracted by love, he has a horrible accident while competing.

In the modern day, Kálmán has grown to be a morbidly obese mountain of lard. He lives with his son Balatony Lajoska (Marc Bischoff), who is a taxidermist, whom he despises. For Lajoska is thin as a stick, and a major disappointment in the eyes of his father. After the death of his wife, the only thing he can love are his three huge cats. Lajoska takes his father's insults and verbal violence calmly, but in secret harbors a plan to get back at him and also to get himself recognition all over the world.

Taxidermia is surely a one-of-a-kind movie. Filled with the blackest humour imaginable and with scenes unbelievably disgusting and delirious, mere text doesn't do it justice. It's like the British comedy series The League of Gentlemen or Monty Python's The Meaning of Life - on acid. Only splatter fans and truly twisted individuals can value the film at face value, but then, we find mountains of things to love here. Particularly the suberbly odd final punch.

But the film does go a little deeper. To get to the core one should know a little bit about Hungarian history and society. Suffice to say, history hasn't been kind to Hungarians, which explains why each generation has their own traumas and crosses to bear. Pálfi takes the faults caused by these traumas and takes them to ridiculous extremes. So, when people fight to survive, comes strong sexual urges. When food is scarce and people are hungry, comes overwhelming greed and gluttonous food orgies. And when one looks past these days, when things are finally better, one finds a need to still concerve some of these horrible sins rather than to move on.

★★★ 1/2

The rest of Love & Anarchy's retrospective after the festival. Right now I'm in a hurry to get to the screening opening film, Beasts of the Southern Wild. Hope to see you at the festival!

The Criminal 00's

The Best Crime Movies of the 2000s - Part 11 in our ongoing series.

In Bruges (c) 2008 Focus Features

Many of the best films of all time deal with the lives of crooks and criminals. Gangsters have been deconstructed so many times in movies during the years, is there really anything new to say about the subject any more? Judging by the films of the 2000s, there are plenty of things left. What these films usually do is strip away the glory of the life of crime added by crime epics such as The Godfather. These finest crime films depict crime as brutal and ruthless, and being always something that allows innocents to suffer. I defined the Crime genre here to be a film that focuses on criminals and their daily work. It's not filled with car chases or shoot-outs with police but rather some scall-scale extortion and a lot of idle chatting and planning.

City of God
Cidade de Deus, Brazil 2002
Directors: Fernando Meirelles, Kátia Lund



One great thing about cinema in the 2000s was that films from the third world became also easily available for western audiences. And this surely is a film for us fat cat westerners that think we have it badly in here. City of God is a film about the favelas of Rio de Janeiro in the 60's and 70's. There young people are left with the choice of joining a gang or die. A trio of young boys, Rocket, L'il Ze and Bené do petty crimes and develop a strong bond. Years later Ze (Leandro Firmino) and Bené have gotten ever more dangled with the life of crime and dealing drugs and are practically running the city. Rocket (Alexandre Rodriguez) has turned his back on them and wants to leave the slums to become a professional photographer.

The film is nothing short of incredible. It's burned up, scorching cinematography is good - Brian DePalma-level good! The actors may all be amateurs but they pull off their roles intensively and believably. As the film chronicles years' worth of crime it is a massive piece, yet one that will not wash away from memory very easily. And that's probably for the best as it's good to know that such atrocious lifestyle falls on millions of people even today. The film is based on real events.

The Departed
Director: Martin Scorsese
USA, 2006



Andy Lau's hongkongese Infernal Affairs is a fine film, shattering ideas of cops and robbers by showing the ideas of both being damaged by the corruption of the society. Yet the film is confusing and hard to follow at parts. Leave it to maestro Scorsese to make heads and tails out of the story. In his film, the action has moved to Boston. There, the police departement sends a mole (Leonardo DiCaprio) to infiltrate the Irish mob. His job is also to find out who's been giving classified police information to the mobsters. That would be Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), a crook that has infiltrated the police force. Neither of the moles knows the identity of the other, yet they both succeed in taking the other's life to parts from their position.

As always with Scorsese, the editing and the use of music are fantastic. This movie has so great characters, that a lot of bit-parters steal the thunder from Damon and DiCaprio (who are still pretty good). The biggest scene-stealers are by far Jack Nicholson’s pervert crime boss and Mark Wahlberg’s insulting policeman, who both seem to be having the time of their life chewing the scenery. One can try to make a film with as quotable lines and as great settings, but William Monahan's script makes it seem effortless. How could you not have a great time with all of that? Granted, the American remake has forgotten a lot of the subletities of the original. Instead, the film overplays its methaphorical iconography that the corruption is inside the whole society. It is still Scorsese's best film of the decade, even if it is lightyears from his previous mob epics.

The Disappearance of Alice Creed
UK, 2009
Director: J Blakeson



I will maintain my affection for this film, which I've already brought out a couple of times. I just think it's great filmmaking that makes it all seem so effortless, even though it's all so well thought-out. The film has only three characters in it, two kidnappers and the kidnappee, the titular Alice Creed. Yet it never feels like a thetre rehersal or an experimental film. The characters seem to live in the real world, and having all the drama happen between three people just emphasizes the isolation of the kidnapping situation. And the crime itself seems to be as well thought-out by the screenwriters as the kidnappers would, as evidenced by the brilliant silent opening scene. Director J Blakeson could be blamed for being a M Night Shyamalan -style plot twister, but I don't think his twists are actually the only thing carrying the whole movie. Rather, they are used to put on a new shift while running the plot. In these times where we get most of our entertainment well-chewed, it is noteworthy where we get a film that doesn't show off all its cards right in the beginning.

Eastern Promises
Canada/USA/UK, 2007
Director: David Cronenberg



The Russian mafia has rarely been the focus of crime films (that I've seen anyway). Usually they are just comically evil antagonists to small-scale british spivs. But leave it to David Cronenberg to bring some weight into the issue. He and his leading man Viggo Mortensen really went to find out about the system of honor among thieves and a sense of families that runs in the background of some really brutal and ruthless gangsters.

In London, the midwife Anna (Naomi Watts) recieves the baby of a deceased teenager. Trying to get the baby to a deserving home gets her tangled with both Russian gangsters and a world that lives by their terrorizing rule. A mob boss's driver Nikolai (Mortensen), however decides to help Anna, which makes him a marked man among the mob.

Cronenberg never lets the viewer off easy and this is no exception. His portrayal of organized crime is one of the most sinister and brutal there is. The horrible scenes of ultra-violence come through suddenly and with all their brutal force. The naked fight in a sauna is one of the most outstanding scenes in the whole decade. The acting is also extraordinary, with Mortensen being particularly believable as a man with a past with violence as long as much as he has tattoos. Some say the ending is a bit Hollywood-y, but I say that judging by the film preceding it, this one victory actually feels very Pyrrhic.

Gomorrah
Gomorra, Italy 2008
Director: Matteo Garrone



Like the non-fiction book it's based on, Gomorra aims to reveal the grittiness of the murder trade. The film features five different stories, each of which touches upon Italian mafia. And in the world of Neapolitan organized crime syndicate Camorra, there's no sense of family or honor. It's a dog-eat-dog world where lives could end brutally just like that. And it doesn't just cover the more familiar mob-forced industries such as drugs and murder trade, but also things like industrial toxic dumps and immigrant sweatshops. The mafia's corruption of the land goes deep. There are some parallels to Berlusconi's rule in Italy to be found.

The movie plays like Mean Streets, in that it reveals the insecurities covered by the macho attitude of petty crooks. The Scarface-like gangster glamour turns out to be just an ideal for long-suffering boys dreaming of a better future. Image-wise, the film is rough and cold, like the world it is depicting. The film lurches on pretty slow, but I do believe that this is one of the more realistic mafia movies. 

In Bruges
UK/USA, 2008 
Director: Martin McDonagh



Bruges - big fucking deal. Such is the equivelent of what mob hitman Ray (Colin Farrell) lets out of his motor mouth to his partner-in-crime Ken (Brendan Gleeson), who's a lot more into the Belgian city's medieval art. However, Ray carries within himself massive guilt over their last botched operation that got innocents killed. That's also why the men are sent to Bruges until things cool down. But their boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes) also has bigger plans in mind. Also getting mixed up in the whole affair are a pretty young actress Chloe, Harry's poor inanimate telephone, a pregnant innkeeper and a cranky and melodramatic dwarf.

The result is a hilarious little English black crime-comedy. There has been a need for this sort of thing, since Guy Ritchie stopped making good films. The film wisely steers away from some of the modern potholes this kind of film might fall into, such as too overloaded postmodernism and a feeling that the makers think they are cleverer than they really are (See also: Lucky Number Slevin). It's a well-written and constructed piece of work. And funny to boot. YOU'RE AN INANIMATE FUCKING OBJECT!

Mesrine - Killer Instinct & Public Enemy no. 1 
L'instinct de mort / L'ennemi public no. 1
France, 2008
Director: Jean-François Richet



The true story of the most notorious criminal in France was so epic, they couldn't confine it in a single film. Jacques Mesrine lived a life that spans almost all sub-genres of crime films: he was a gangster, a bankrobber, an outlaw, a terrorist, a kidnapper, a scourge of the police, a convict, an escapee and a self-made legend. The first film is based on Mesrine's own autobiography, which he wrote in jail. But there was so much true accounts of what he did after that, they based the latter film on them.

The first film is inevitably a rise to power, with Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) having fun doing crimes and picking up girls as he goes on. The most interesting part is the one that deals with his family. Mesrine blames his father for being too timid towards his mom's rules. He might as well blame him for allowing to become what he was. A huge action set-piece about an assault to a prison ends the first part memorably. The latter part is mostly about Mesrine in jail, pining to connect with his daughter, but refusing to cave in to the system that wants to change him. The society will, of course eventually destroy him.

Vincent Cassel is wonderful as the flamboyant criminal. With all his dirty deeds, he is the sort that we have to root for - he doesn't seem rotten to the core, but rather sees himself as a sort of rebel. Cassel is also believably aged through the films. The rest of the cast is filled with a who's who of famous French actors from Gerard Depardieu to Mathieu Amalric and from Cécile De France to Anne Consigny.

A Prophet 
Un prophéte, France/Italy 2009
Director: Jacques Audriard



Jacques Audriard is a clear auteur. He has brought out whole new sides of crime movies probably more effective than anyone else last decade. A Beat That My Heart Skipped is a great film, but owes a little too much to James Toback's Fingers. Better is Audriard's follow-up, that breaks the form of conventional gangster films. In the career of every career criminal, there is a point where you serve time in jail. But Audriard makes this just the set-up. It's the prison that will corrupt the mind of a young convict Malik (Tahir Raham). As a place filled with dangerous people, he is forced to seek protection from some organized crime types. This all comes with a price and the mob boss's errands soon turn out to include smuggling drugs and murdering people. Both in and out of the jail. When Malik finally earns his freedom, he leaves the joint as a Don.

Audriard doesn't make this transition conventionally smooth. Instead, Rahid bumbles clumsily through his odd jobs, but manages to survive by luck. In a key scene his life is spared by a rival criminal as he remembers a dream about a deer which their car is about to smash into. Violence in the film has real consequences and we see the affect doing such brutal deeds has for a first-timer. But the prison as an Animal Factory has these sorts of Darwininan rules and thus begins the road to survival. Raham does unbelievably convincing work here. His thoughts are not usually easy to read from his face. Also, although he's identified as an Arab in the film, this is used to make him at odds with the hostile environment. Everyone can identify with that, and his need for survival. At the same spot, we'd probably do the same if we could be as fast-thinking. This identification is what makes the point where the plot eventually leads us a lot more chilling.

Snatch.
UK/USA, 2000
Director: Guy Ritchie



Snatch is really the kind of film that shouldn't work at all. It moves lightning-fast, has too many characters to keep track of, and isn't really about anything too deep. Just a lark. But Director/Writer Guy Ritchie managed to capture lightning in a bottle with this one. He's since desperately tried to duplicate the effect to no avail until he finally sold out to Hollywood. But let's not hold that (or  marrying Madonna) against him or the film.

In a nutshell, the story goes that unlicenced boxing promoters Turkish (Jason Statham) and Tommy get orders from a mob boss to fix up a match. He arranges for a promising young gypsy (an almost unrecognizable Brad Pitt) to take the place of their fighter, as he had beaten the champ in a bar scrap. At the same time some very dangerous criminals arrive to England to seach for a stolen jewel that's gotten lost on the way to its new owner. And from there on it gets a bit more complicated.

From the script's twists and turns to the hilarious dialogue, the film is all about fun for the lads. The fun extends to big Hollywood actors such as Pitt and Benicio del Toro doing small roles that won't do them any favours in their CV. The film is so fast it also rewards repeat viewings to catch everything. The ultra-polished direction from the look of the film to the editing shows a cockiness from Ritchie's part, but at least here he knew exactly what he was doing.

The 25th Hour
USA, 2002
Director: Spike Lee



The hardest film for me to decide whether I should include here, was this. One could argue that it's not about Criminal activity per se. Rather, it focuses rather on human relationships, quite like a Greek Tragedy (or a drama film if you will). Yet it is unmistakably about a drug dealer facing a prison sentence. And besides, I've already got too many films to fit in my inevitable Drama 00's post.

Monty Brogan has only 24 hours before a seven-year sentence starts. He goes through his life with the help of his girlfriend, his dog, his father and his two best friends. Part of him is filled with hate. He lets it out in a memorable scene in front of a mirror. Yet he comes to realize the reason prison is so hard for him is the love he has for his surroundings, topped with a big dose of fear of the unknown. His friends (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Barry Pepper) also go through crises of self-confidence. The first, a high school English teacher, suffers from loneliness and his lust for his sexy female student. The latter's crisis comes from realizing he can't really keep their friendship together or even help Monty as much as he'd like to. From a self-confident stockbroker the realization of some things being out of his power is world-shattering.

Spike Lee filled this with iconography related to New York. It is clearly a response to the attack the city suffered in 9/11 the previous year. Yet Lee never gets over-sentimental or rubs our faces with it. Instead he makes the Spirit of the multicultural City just a thing Monty is missing out on when he's in prison. Lee uses all the different ethnicities and varying people to create a colorful representation of New York as a home for even those that feel lost.

It should be remembered also, that Lee directed the fun and slick, albeit rather conventional heist movie Inside Man. It was close of getting a nod in the bubbling under list.

Bubbling Under: 
The Beat That My Heart Skipped, 2005; Layer Cake, 2004; Public Enemies, 2009; Sexy Beast, 2000; Traffic, 2000

To be seen:
American Gangster, 2007; Election I & II (2005, 2006); Read My Lips (2001)

Perkele! - Finnish Documentary Films at Year 10.

Today the 10th Helsinki Documentary Film Festival DocPoint starts. I've been anxiously waiting for the festival, because this will be the first time I will be able to attend it. I'm looking forward to seeing films like I'm Still Here, Hoop Dreams and Lemmy - more on which later on. But one of the most important films the festival accomplishes each year is to take a look on the back catalogue of finnish documentaries. Our country produces brilliant documentary films each year - more than can be said of our fictional film industry, although that may be getting better as well. This year, DocPoint brings retrospectives to documentary directors such as Pekka Lehto. Inspired by this, I will do a small look on recent, 2010 Finnish documentaries myself.

The Steam of Life (Miesten vuoro)
Directors: Joonas Berghåll, Mika Hotakainen

The Steam of Life has been an audience favorite at Finland. It has a reputation of being a film which makes even grown men cry, and not without merit. The film takes place solely in a sauna environment, where men of different ages and backgrounds discuss their lives. It seems that the finnish male, who has a reputation of being quiet and withdrawn, really opens up in the steams of a sauna. The men in the film are not bashful of talking about even the most painful things in their lives, and showing their emotions too. But if one thinks of this as a mere tearjerker, one is mistaken. Like any good film, The Steam of Life succeeds in having also scenes of hilarious life stories, tongue-in-cheek joking, pure joy and angry resentment of the wrongfulness of life.

The film resembles a little the recent documentary Kansakunnan olohuone, which took place in the living rooms of finnish people. Similarily, regular people opened up their shells and talked and lived their life right in front of the camera. In The Steam of Life there is more camerawork and editing, which makes me suspect that the talking has been rehearsed and having been done in multiple takes. Nevertheless, it does have an aura of genuinity and like any good films, manages to stir emotions. I do admit of having a lump in my throat by the end.

Freetime Machos
Director:  Mika Ronkainen

Freetime Machos is a good companion piece for The Steam of Life. It concerns a group of rugby players in a Northern Finland team located in the town of Oulu. Now, many sport films would chronicle a bad team's rise to the top. Not so in here. The Freetime Machos begin and end as a shitty amateur rugby team. But in fact this film is another study of mascuilinty and a portrait for the finnish male. The sport team is an excuse, a thread which ties men of different ages and backgrounds together. The players are young and their talk is down and dirty in the film. Yet as the documentary goes on, the men start to grow from boys to men. They get into serious relationships, have children and get their stable jobs and houses. The team is a channel for thier mascuilinty because they are quite domesticated at home. But there are a lot of disappointments ahead too, break-ups and lay-offs go hand in hand with their defeat on the sport field. This is a film about the finnish Sisu, or guts. The men have true cojones to keep on trying even when it all seems hopeless. In the end of this film people get results from it.

Interesting is the film's emphasis on sex. The men do a lot of jokes about gay people and there is a clear homoerotic subtext in the film. By the end the confused young ones find heterosexuality and also openmindness to accept other sexual leanings. The characterization of the people in the film is good and one can reflect familiar types inside the film. Yet Freetime Machos can also be repetitive and even mundane, because other films do its job even better. Nevertheless, the film is well wrth a look.

Ito - Diary of An Urban Priest (Ito - Seitti - Kilvoittelijan päiväkirja)
Director: Pirjo Honkasalo



Honkasalo is the most internationally accalaimed documentary maker and she does do her films clearly to be international. So her films lack a finnish viewpoint to start with, which is not a bad thing considering the subjects she tends to choose. Ito is a story about a japanese ex-boxer turned buddhist preacher Yoshinobu Fujioka. He is also a barkeep and the mixture is not so crazy as it may seem. After all, one of the duties of a barkeep is to listen to the problems the customers may have. Kind of like a priest may have.

So like the other finnish documentaries, Ito features people openly speaking about their personal lives and problems in front of the camera, occasionally breaking to tears. There is clearly a trend in the finnish documentaries to have open conversation about lives and concentrating on the people speaking and not trying to illustrate the stories with some stock footage. The emotions on faces will do just fine and tell a lot more. But Ito doesn't concentrate on the millions of stories Tokyo has, but on just one, the story of Fujioka. He gets a lenghty scene where he is discussing with his boxing sensei about his life's recent developments, and he also breaks into tears on gratefullness on the guiding of his boxing life, and the acceptance of his new choices. Honkasalo is a stylish director, keeping herself to the background and having wonderful cinematography and inventive connections within the stories. She seems to also understand the japanese mentality and the importance of traditions in the culture and brings this up neatly too.


Reindeerspotting - Escape From SantalandDirector: Joonas Neuvonen

I think they switched this one for the DVD cover because it was too scary and graphic for children

Reindeerspotting was one of the most talked-about films in Finland in 2010, and it broke multiple attendance records for documentary films. A large part of the discussion was about the rating, which the Finnish Film Board in their infinite wisdom put to No Children Under 18 Allowed, even after multiple complaints. The film in question chronicles the life of drug users in the Northern Finland city of Rovaniemi. It does feature scenes of graphic drug use, but the interest is in the depiction of the drug-addicts life going in circles and not having a way out. It isn't like most anti-drug films in that it doesn't over-emphasize the downsides and the hungover feeling of taking drugs. So it could've been a good anti-drug info for highschoolers and wouldn't have been patronizing and ignorant like most of the study material they will get about the same subject.

The director Neuvonen used to shoot subutex with the main characters and the film started with him just shooting stuff with a loaned camera. The idea of developing the material into a full film has only sprung up later. For such an amateur principal photographer/director, the film is nothing short of a miracle. Most of the credit must go o the editing room, for the film's editing works like a charm. Yet Neuvonen also catches great shots of weird situations such as a reindeer race in the middle of Rovaniemi, during which e of the addicts falls from a balcony. There are occasionally futile attempts for artistic shots like shooting through a mirror, but mostly Neuvonen maintains an utilitarian, interesting viewpoint that captures what his eyes see in his daily routine.

From the daily rat race of shooting up and doing petty crimes to finance the drug habit, the main character Jani dreams of a better life. He hates his home town and wishes for a better life somewhere else. In the film's Rovaniemi, the police can't help any drug addicts, only slow them down. In the circles of the drug addicts, a best friend can turn into a homicidal worst enemy with the bat of an eye. Even if you think you can settle all debts and grudges, new ones will arise for confusing reasons. Towards the end Jani gets his wish of leaving Rovaniemi because he succeeds in stealing a large sum of money. At his trip through Europe there is genuine happiness on his face and some promise that things may be getting to be better after all. But Jani doesn't get rid of the drugs even though he promises, and thus his past life will come back to haunt him for it. It has been sad to learn that the main character has since died in mysterious circumstances in Far Asia. But there is some comfort in knowing that Jani died abroad, where he was truly ahppy, and not in the small Northern Finland town he so much hated.

RIP Jani

Reindeerspotting is the only one of the films presented here that gets a screening during DocPoint. If you are present and haven't seen the film yet, do yourself a favour and check it out.