Friday, March 8, 2013

Oz the Great and Powerful [2013]

MPAA (PG)  CNS/USCCB (A-II) Richard Roeper (2 1/2 Stars)  AV Club (C+)  Fr Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Chicago SunTimes (R. Roeper) review
AV Club (S. Tobias) review

Oz, the Great and Powerful (directed by Sam Raimi, screenplay by Mitchell Kapner and David Lindsey-Abaire, inspired by the L. Frank Baum's [IMDb] children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz [1900] and the beloved MGM film The Wizard of Oz [1939]) is IMHO a surprisingly good (if often the key word here is "surprising"), star studded, Disney produced prequel to the much beloved story that offers parents/adults much to think about (and off-screen "intrigues" to contemplate/investigate) even as the kids just enjoy the show.

To give a sampling: Why did DISNEY make this film?  (Apparently back in the 1930s Disney was busy preparing to make L. Frank Baum's book into an animated feature when it discovered that Baum's family had sold the rights to rival studio MGM).  And why did DISNEY choose to use this prequel script by Kapner / Lindsey-Abaire where the focus is on the MALE character of the "Wizard of Oz," rather than one based on Gregory Maguire's novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West [1995] and the subsequent musical Wicked [2003] (ever an on-stage hit but as yet not put on the screen), which was a more feminist re-imagining of the original story and where the focus was on how Eldora (born green) came to receive (unjustly) her moniker as the "Wicked Witch of the West?"  (In Wicked, the "Wizard" wasn't exactly portrayed flatteringly...).

Part of the answer to the second question (Why "Oz, the Great and Powerful" as opposed to "Wicked?") can be found by taking a look at wikipedia's / the IMDb's listings of books and films/shorts inspired by L.Frank Baum's original creationWicked has been by no means the only spin-off from the original story (if IMHO in our time the most culturally significant).

Perhaps more positively, however (and I realize that there will be women reading this review who will be rolling their eyes as do so), while much of contemporary American culture "gets" Maguire's inspired critique in Wicked of Baum's original story / 1939 MGM film, today there may be a cultural need to "better understand" the (Male) wizard in the story than to simply continue to beat-up on him.  Already in the 1939 film, he was portrayed as something of a goof / charlatan.  In Wicked he was arguably a villain. Here I do honestly believe that James Franco does a surprisingly good job playing the 2-bit turn of the 20th century Kansas circus magician named Oscar (who knows he's a petty charlatan/fraud) but who after a turn of fate finds himself reluctantly in the role of Oz's "Wizard."  (There are certainly folks who don't like Franco as an actor, but honestly, I do believe he was perfectly cast).  Repeatedly, Oscar confesses to characters he meets in the Magical land of Oz that he's "no wizard," and repeatedly, he's told "we know that, but try anyway."  It's a fascinating take on contemporary male self-awareness / doubt.

Again, I realize that plenty of women who'd read this essay would roll their eyes ("Poor fraudulent 'male authority figure' surrounded by various clearly competent, arguably superior women...").  But here we are ... Bruce Willis' "Die Hard" character notwithstanding, the last truly "macho" "in control" traditional archtypical male roles in American cinema were created in the 1980s (and Willis' comes from that era) Even macho-man Steven Seagal found himself Under Siege [1992].  Since then, males have generally been portrayed as "bums" (Homer Simpson, Nicholas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas [1995], etc) perhaps more sympathetically more recently as "bums with stories" (Mickey Rourke's character in The Wrestler [2009], Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark in Marvel comics' Iron Man franchise, Liam Neeson's character in the Taken films) but still bums or people with many regrets.  In that cultural continuum, "Oz, the Great and Powerful" appears to be a plea to men to "step up" even to fake it if they have to, to "step up" for the sake of the greater good.

But is "faking it" a sustainable approach?  (And would women in the long term want men who have to "fake it" on a near continuous basis in order to keep above water?) These are some of the "big" or "deep" concerns that the film leaves adults even as the their kids watch smiling ear from ear a world arguably as magical as that of James Cameron's Avatar [2009] or Tim Burton's recent uptdate to Alice in Wonderland [2010].

The current film, Oz, the Great and Powerful, actually offers an even bigger challenge (or source of anxiety) to religionists, like myself, because it's not hard to see that "The Wizard of Oz," deep down a fake/charlatan though he may be, plays a God-like role in the Land of Oz.  Are we, religionists/priests, deep down ... fakes...? (Boy, as a Catholic priest, do I hope not ;-) ;-).  Nevertheless, the question has been "out there" for a while.  Interestingly enough, L. Frank Baum, wrote his The Wonderful Wizard of Oz [1900] (Amzn 1, 2) about midway between Friedrich Nietsche's proclaiming "God is dead... and we killed him" in Also Sprach Zaratustra [1885] (PDF), and Franz Kafka's writing his nihilistic horror The Castle [1922] (Amzn) in which, after much struggle to finally reach "the Castle" which was always in Inspector K's view, but always "unattainable," he discovers that "no one's there."  So there is, actually, an unsettling religious backdrop in the Oz story. 

Va bene ... okay, after all these high-minded musings, let's get to the movie itself.  How does the current Oz story play out?

Set in 1905 (some twenty years before the 1939 film), we meet Oscar (played by James Franco) a scheming 2-bit traveling circus magician in Kansas, who soon finds that he's deceived one one many young ladies.   Barely escaping the clutches of a jealous husband (or vengeful family member) he jumps a ride on a hot air balloon just as a powerful thunderstorm is arriving.  Like Dorothy in the 1939 film, he gets sucked into the vortex of a tornado ... and when he comes out of it, finds himself in far away from the dreary two toned world of Kansas and in the eye-popping colorful world of Oz. 

Among the first people he meets is a nice, somewhat naive (and dressed in red, perhaps like "little red riding hood") young lady named Theodora (played by Mila Kunis) who introduces herself to him as a "witch" though a "nice one."  Since Oscar's a stranger and his name begins with Oz, she immediately suspects that he may be "the One." What does she mean?  Well it was prophesied that "a Great Wizard" was going to arrive in  Oz to restore harmony after the death of Theodora's father, the last "Wizard of Oz." 

Seeing a good looking young lady and needing her help and two-bit con-artist that he's been, Oscar takes advantage of her kindness as he tries to regain his bearings.  "Wizard? why not?" he had been a magician after all.  So he accepts her invitation to join her on the "yellow brick road" and travel the Emerald City to "do what he can" to fulfill the prophesy.

When he gets to the Emerald city, he meets a green dressed sister of Theodora, named Evanora (played by Rachel Weisz).  She's not nearly as naive as the red-dressed Theodora, and immediately sees a use for the good old wizard (who she understands to probably be a fraud from the get-go).  She sends him on the errand to go and capture/kill their evil sister Glinda (played by Michelle Williams) who Evanora says (and Theodora believes) killed their father.  Much ensues as the Wizard heads from the Emerald City to the Dark Forest to take care of Glinda, among these is both his/the audience's realization that Glinda doesn't come across as all that evil after all.  What's going on?  Could there be lying/deceit in the Land of Oz?

Finally, while all three sisters -- the red dressed Theodora, the green dressed Evanora and the turns out white dressed Glinda -- are actual witches with actual supernatural powers, Oscar's remains, as always, someone who survives only by his wits.  What to do?  And how to restore peace/tranquility to Oz when all one has is THE REPUTATION of POSSIBLY being "The Wizard of Oz?"  Great story ;-)

There is honestly a lot in this story: Oscar strives for "Greatness" while it's clear that all that Glinda (and the girl that she reminds him of back home in Kansas) really want of Oscar is "Goodness."  And while Oscar finds himself repeatedly overwhelmed by a sense of inadequacy, he _is_ able to (and repeatedly) perform small (and yet profound) miracles: faced with a weaping/orphaned "broken china doll" (voiced by Joey King) he finds THAT HE REALLY HAS a "magical elixir" in his bag (glue ;-) that can "put her back together" :-) ;-).  Little "aw" events like this occur throughout the story, and do over time leave someone like me in my own at times precarious profession in awe.

And indeed, there are those who do know me, especially from back in the days when I was stationed in a lovely parish in central Florida where I repeatedly said that I felt like Jesus' disciples encountering themselves in an impossible situation with only "five loaves and two fish," and yet MIRACULOUSLY the situation turned out well.  I was telling young people quite often back then that "You can actually do a lot with only 'five loaves and two fish.'"

It may be then, that a similar message can be found in this story.  James Franco's Oscar finds himself REPEATEDLY almost "empty handed" and yet HE IS, IN FACT, able (yes, often with the help of others) perform miracles and thus be for the community "The Wizard of Oz."

Remarkable, huh? ;-)  What a neat (if perhaps initially surprising) contemporary adaptation of a beloved children's story!


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Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Blind Spot (orig. Doudege Wénkel) [2012]

MPAA (UR - would be R)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing

Blind Spot (orig. Doudege Wénkel) [2012] directed and cowritten by Christophe Wagner along with Jhemp Hoscheid and Frederic Zeimet is a crime thriller from Luxembourg that played recently at Chicago's 16th Annual European Union Film Festival held at the Gene Siskel Film Center in downtown Chicago.

The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is a tiny country (a constitutional monarchy) nestled between Germany, France and Belgium.  Tiny though it is, its history is ancient.  Its royal family stretches its roots back to Charlemagne.  Its all too strategic location between put it on Germany's invasion route of Belgium and France during both World War I and World War II.  American readers/history buffs here will probably most remember Luxembourg for having been the site of much of the fighting during the 1944 Battle of the Bulge.  Small, yet strategic, made Luxembourg a founding member of both NATO and the European Union following World War II.

The tininess of Luxemburg repeatedly plays a fascinating subtextual role in this current film.

First, the film is above all a police drama.  Brothers Olivier and Tom Faber (played by Jules Werner and Mickey Hardt respectively) are police officers, cops, in the City of Luxembourg.  As such, their characters speak and most of the film is filmed in the local language Luxembourgish (with English and French subtitles.  Apparently, Luxembourgish is close enough to standard (High) German that there wasn't a need for subtitling into German as well). One simply can't be a "beat cop" or otherwise LOCAL cop without being able to speak the LOCAL language.

Then characters, both foreign and local speak throughout the film in Luxembourgish, French or German (with the occasional English pop-cultural term finding its way into the characters' speech patterns as well).  And the character's language preferences are all significant to the story:  Tom (one of the two brothers) is found dead early in the story.  The Luxembourger investigators put themselves in contact with a crime lab in Hamburg (Germany) to investigate it.  Then a young Belorussian prostitute named Elina (played by Irina Lavrinovic) who was one of the last people to see Tom alive is brought in for questioning and talks to investigators in French.

What would a young attractive Belorussian prostitute be doing in Luxembourg to begin with?  Well, tiny countries like Switzerland (small), Luxembourg (smaller), San Marino/Andorra (still smaller) and Monaco (smallest) need reasons to exist.  In almost all these cases, these small countries have been ("wink, wink") financial and in some cases gambling centers.  And Luxembourg is, indeed, a banking center, and the seat of various finance related institutions of the European Union, including the European Investment Bank.  Where these is money, there's fertile ground for corruption (and crime thrillers ... ;-).  So Tom's contact with this prostitute serves as only the tip of a proverbial iceberg that involves all kinds of characters, both Luxembourger native and foreign, that have (and have had) reasons to come to, stay and leave this little largely city-state of Luxembourg

However, the story is not simply about financial or linguistic intrigue.  At its core, it's about two brothers.  And actually Tom, who was found dead near the beginning of the story, had been considered by all to be the "better" of the two.  He had been the stellar cop while Olivier had been the volatile screw-up.   Tom had had a nice stable family including two small children.  In contrast, Olivier's wife was leaving him and they were childless.  Imagine therefore the internal conflict that Olivier would have faced after finding out that his "perfect brother" had spent a good part of his last hours with a young Beolorussian prostitute.  And yet, Tom was his brother, who had two young children and Tom and Olivier had a mother who had simply adored Tom ... What to say / do? 

So it all actually makes for a rather compelling (and supremely contemporary European) crime thriller (with all those languages and much intrigue).  I'm honestly glad to have seen it, and feel that I've learned something about Luxembourg that previously I knew little about as a result.  Good job!


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Monday, March 4, 2013

Faith, Love and Whiskey [2012]

MPAA (UR would be R)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing

Faith, Love and Whiskey [2012] (directed and cowritten by Kristina Nikolova along with Paul Dailo) is a simple, poignant and award winning "indie feeling" Bulgarian film that played at Chicago's 16th Annual European Union Film Festival held at the Gene Siskel Film Center in downtown Chicago.

Neli (played by Ana Stojanovska) is a young Bulgarian woman who's "made good."  She came to the United States some years back and bagged a nice (and successful) American fiancé named Scott (played by John Keabler).  Yet, one evening as she's gently leaning over the railing on the balcony of her and her fiancé's Manhattan apartment basking in the skyline, she realizes that she still has to go home.  Her fiancé is completely supportive.  So she packs her bags and flies back to Bulgaria (alone) for one last time before getting married.

When she arrives in presumably Sofia, it's exactly as she remembers it - louder, perhaps less sophisticated but alive. (Last year, while reviewing another GREAT Bulgarian film, Avé [2011], that played at this same film festival, I noted that "Bulgaria sometimes seems to me like the New Jersey of Eastern Europe," and this film, while sunnier than the other one, continues to offer an American viewer that possibility for comprehension: Neli may have flown back to Bulgaria, but she could have simply crossed the Hudson River to visit her family and friends in Hoboken (Frank Sinatra's hometown) or Asbury Park (immortalized by Bruce Springsteen), NJ and the story would have been very similar. 

When Neli comes back, she goes straight to her grandma (apparently her mother had died when she was young).  And Neli's grandma just loves her and is PROUD AS PIE that her grand-daughter is marrying an American "named SKOT."

She then also visits her friends, and this is a little more tense.  One of her friends asks: "So how are those Americans?"  She answers: "Well they're more goal oriented.  Success is a major value to them."  Val (played by Valeri Yordanov) who turns out to have been her old boyfriend before she left Bulgaria, interrupts her and says: "So you're saying that they're not losers like us Bulgarians..."  Val's subsequent blue streaked mohawk wearing girl-friend Sophia (played by Lidia Indjova) quickly sizes up the situation.  Soon afterward, she asks Val: "Did you sleep with her?" Of course he had ...

Yet despite Val's "uncoothness" (he has an ENORMOUS tattoo or perhaps simply GIGANTIC green tattoo stain that covers most of his back), it becomes obvious that he still loves Neli and, yes, in a way that the otherwise far-and-away leagues more successful Scott never could.  After all, they grew-up together.  They knew each others unspoken moods and mannerisms.  And it's almost certain that Neli could never know Scott the way she knew Val.  What the heck to do?

So things between Neli and Val soon reignite.  In the meantime, Scott's back in New York and after a number of missed calls and hurried texts, he gets worried.  So HE buys a ticket and flies out to Bulgaria to reconnect with Neli.

THIS IS AN OUTSTANDING FILM that ANYONE who's been living "between cultures" (or DATING SOMEONE "between cultures") would understand and/or OUGHT TO SEE.

And one can not but feel for Neli.  She has two people who clearly love her and offer her two very different kinds of lives/futures AND HONESTLY BOTH LIVES/FUTURES ARE GOOD.  Yet there she is, and she's doomed to have to hurt one of these two guys...

Again, there're "a few" Springsteen songs that touch-on the same dilemma ;-)


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Superclásico [2011]

MPAA (UR would be R)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing

Superclásico an award winning Danish comedy, directed and screenplay cowritten by similarly award winning Danish director Ole Christian Madsen along with Anders Frithiof August, played recently at the Chicago's 16th Annual European Union Film Festival held at the Gene Siskel Film Center in downtown Chicago.

The film tells the story of an until recently quite settled/contented and hence probably quite boring middle-aged Danish small wine shop owner named Christian (played by Anders W. Bertelson) who's very existence gets rocked to the core (eventually...) when his former athlete, since then sport agent wife Anna (played by Paprika Steen) who wasn't yet content to simply wait for death ... left him.  Wow, never saw that coming ... ;-)  


Content initially to just sit in his shop, drink a few (and eventually more than a few) bottles from his "reserve" hoping that this predicament would resolve itself, the reality of the situation finally hits home when he receives divorce papers from his estranged wife that she sent him from Argentina.  Sitting in his nice, clean white kitchen, glass of red wine at his side, no doubt wishing in good part that he could just shrivel-up and die without facing his deeply embarrassing situation, he finds himself (finally) unable to just sign the papers without a fight.

So he decides right, then and there, to take his and Anna's 16 year old similarly quiet (all the quieter since he's started reading  Kierkegaard ... ;-) teenage son Oscar (played by Jamie Morton) out of school for a few weeks and fly with him down to Buenos Aires to try to win back Anna.

It's only when Christian's down there that he begins to realize the full magnitude of his challenge.  This is because his former soccer playing now sports agent wife has become the somewhat older but very sexy lover and (since her lover's a good Catholic) fiancée of one of Argentina's premier soccer gods, a certain Juan Diaz (played by Sebastián Estevanez).  On the day that Christian arrives, Juan scores two goals to single-handedly win Argentina's annual "Superclásico" match between Buenos Aires' archrival teams Boca Juniors and the Rio Plate.  So while Christian had been contentedly running a nice, honest and always "moderately successful wine-business" back in Copenhagen, his wife has bagged a viril and yet (even more annoyingly) boyishly simpático Argentinian sports legend.  What the heck to do?

Well much ensues.  A similarly entertaining if more gentle side-plot plays out when bookish and scared 16-year old Oscar puts down his Kierkegaard and falls head-over-heels for a nice similarly-aged teenage Argentinian tour-guide named Veronica (played by Dafne Schiling) who he meets one day while he and his dad try to "catch some of the sights" (while Christian desperately tries to figure-out what to do).  It turns out that Veronica has a once Kierkegaard-reading, now firmly grounded in reality Argentinian auto-mechanic of a father who, like a good if not necessarily altogether morally consistent dad (the posters gracing the walls of his garage have the requisite number of near naked women posing suggestively with various auto-parts...) defends his lovely teenage daughter's honor with a crow bar in hand.  Much plays out in that story as well ... ;-)

All in all, Superclásico is a fun movie that most adult/teenage viewers would understand.  It reminds all that marriage (indeed any relationship) does require commitment and just contently "waiting for death" is not necessarily the best way to spend the lives that we've been given.  TO BE SURE, the "harlot Anna" has also "made her bed."  By the end of the film, it's clear that she's quite aware that she's become the older (hence aging...) girl-friend and soon to be wife of a young, viril Argentinian soccer legend.  But to otherwise "just wait for death..."?  This is fun film but as comedies often are, a quite thought-provoking one as well.




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Alois Nebel [2011]

MPAA (UR / would be R)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
CSFD* listing

Alois Nebel (2011) [IMDb] [CSFD*] (directed by Tomáš Luňák [IMDb] [CSFD*] based on the graphic novel by Jaroslav Rudiš [IMDb] [CSFD*] and Jaromír Svejdík (illustrator) [IMDb] by the same name) is a technically stunning, all black and white, hard-boiled animated film, which played recently at Chicago's 16th Annual European Union Film Festival held at the Gene Siskel Film Center in downtown Chicago.

In classic film noir fashion the story plays out in a cold, dark and ever raining/snowing setting.  It's the late fall of 1989.  The Berlin Wall is about to come down, but inhabitants of the mountain hamlet going by the name of Bílý Potok (Czech for "White Stream") nestled on the Czech side of the border between Communist era Czechoslovakia and Poland don't realize it yet.

Since Bílý Potok is a tiny speck on the map, with its only distinction that it has a railway going through it, not much seems to change from day-to-day.  And yet, if one pays closer attention, there's actually quite a bit going on (and passing through) this little dot on the map.

It's on the border between two Communist states.  Even though commerce is technically illegal, a lot of black market trafficking is taking place, between Poland and Czechoslovakia, of course, but also between both and the Soviet army garrison stationed discreetly in the forests nearby.  This Soviet garrison has been stationed on Czechoslovakian soil since the infamous Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.  Its original job had been to keep the post invasion Czechoslovakian regime reliable.  However, no doubt, since the beginning of the Solidarity era in Poland, it's taken on the second task of keeping Poland's Communist leadership in line as well.  Still, after 20 years of sitting in both discreetly and threateningly in a forest seemingly in the middle of nowhere, discipline in the garrison has to have waned.  With little going on, and so much stuff that could be pilfered and sold for odd profit, the temptation to get involved, indeed lead/dominate the black market trade would have been great.   So good ole Bílý Potok, a tiny spot on a map with a seemingly inconsequential railway station becomes actually a hub for all sorts of nefarious activity ...

But NONE of this 2-bit or even 10-bit black-market trafficking compares to the truly awful secret that played out there in the aftermath of World War II.  This is because though TODAY this little hamlet called Bílý Potok sits on the Czech side of the border with POLAND, before the war this mountain hamlet bordered GERMAN SILESIA and was largely inhabited by the famous Sudeten Germans and went by the hyphenated name Bílý Potok-Wiesbach.  During the Nazi era, no doubt the Czech name was dropped.  Then in revenge, in the months following the war, the Czechs expelled ALL THE GERMANS from Sudeten borderland region and erased the German parts of all the place names.

The expulsion of the Germans of  Bílý Potok-Wiesbach no doubt played out at the railway station.  And this then completes the background to the story.

Alois Nebel, Jr (voiced by Miroslav Krobot [IMDb] [CSFD*]) the ever quiet, even somewhat dour operator at the Bílý Potok railway station had lived all his life there.  His father, Alois Nebel, Sr had been the operator at the station at the end of the war.  Alois, Jr had only been a small boy at the time, but he saw a terrible thing.  Not only did he witness the ethnic Germans of his town being loaded on trains and expelled at the end of the war, but he saw his ethnic German babysitter Dorothe (voiced by Tereza Voříšková [IMDb] [CSFD*]) manhandled by Wachek (voiced by Leoš Noha [IMDb] [CSFD*]) one of the Czech Revolutionary Guards leading the expulsion of the ethnic Germans.  Alois, Jr never really knew what happened to Dorothe and as he grew older and Wachek became one of the State Security officers in the region, he knew not to ask.  But in his dreams, he knew that it probably did not go well for her... 

Indeed, it was Wachek and his kind that did most of the talking in those days.  And what they chose to talk about was enough to keep almost everybody else with any sense, silent.  Still those dreams...

Now, anyone who knows anything about hard-boiled detective stories, graphic novels and film noir films knows that deep dark secrets, both big and small, can't be kept down forever.  Eventually, they begin leak out.

By 1989, Alois' dreams had tormented him enough that he realizes that he needs help.  But where?  This was Communist Czechoslovakia.  Psychiatric services weren't being used to help people, they were being used to keep people who couldn't keep their mouths shut, SILENT.  So poor Alois, who needed some help with his dreams, soon finds himself in a real-life nightmare bigger than he he was ready for.  Still, even the authorities know that he's a "small fry."  And so after some time, and no doubt realizing that he was no real threat to anybody, much less the Regime, they let him go.

But there in the psychiatric institute, Alois runs into another guy, a mute, in his mid 40s.  No one knows who he is because he doesn't talk to anybody.  But he just showed-up one day in Bílý Potok with an old picture of the train station, old because the sign still read Bílý Potok-Wiesbach and in the picture were four people.  Among the people in that picture Dorothe, Alois' father and Wachek.  And, oh yes, the mute had also come to the town with an ax.  With that kind of an entry, he was arrested.  And soon after that, he was taken to the psychiatric unit because he wasn't talking, and not even repeated electroshock therapy seemed to be able to "make him sing."  Then one evening, suddenly the mute man was gone.

"Escaped!  How could he have escaped? "  Old man Wachek (voiced by Alois Švehlík [IMDb] [CSFD*]) , now retired from the State Security Service, still living in the same town of Bílý Potok shakes his head in disbelief as he hears of the story in local tavern.  "Why in my day, NO ONE EVER ESCAPED AND WE GOT ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE TO SING."

A few more trains pass through town and Alois, after getting out of the psychiatric unit, takes a ride to Prague (to ask the Railway Service for a job now that the one that he's had all his life had been taken from him while he was "away").  While he's there, he gets to witness the falling of the Communist Regime, though none of the people who he's around, himself included, really understand what it all means.

So a lot more rain, sleet and snow still falls on Bílý Potok before the story comes to its conclusion.  Still, if you know these kind of stories, You can probably guess how it ends by now.  The mute man who "escaped" comes back... 

Now who was the mute man?  Who did he come for?  Why?  If you know these kind of stories, the answers should come rather easily by now.   For in these kind of stories, there are crimes that are so awful, so personal that they simply cry out ...  And so even decades later, someone comes into town ... with a worn picture ... and an ax ... and ... it becomes patently clear that justice will finally be done.

I am simply in awe (and to be honest, a little bit frightened ...) that this classic Hollywood formula was applied so excellently here.


* Machine translations of Czech links provided into English are most easily viewed through use of Google's Chrome brower.


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Sunday, March 3, 2013

Gypsy (orig Cigán) [2011]

MPAA (UR, would be PG-13)  AV Club (B+)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
CSFD* listing
Lidovky* review
AV Club review
 
Gypsy (orig Cigán) [2011] [IMDb] [CSFD*], a film by Slovakian director Martin Šulík [IMDb] [CSFD*] about a fictionalized Romani (Gypsy) teenager named Adam (played by Ján Mižigár [IMDb] [CSFD*]) living in a Romani village in contemporary Slovakia played recently as one of Slovakia's submissions to Chicago's 16th Annual European Union Film Festival held at the Gene Siskel Film Center in downtown Chicago.

The film was largely filmed in an actual contemporary Romani village* outside of the town of Richnava* in Slovakia.  All the Romani characters were played by Romani actors speaking the dialect of the village in which it was filmed.  Indeed, this was the first Slovakian film ever to be made almost entirely in the Romani language.*

For its technical excellence and its bravery in opening a window into a very controversial subject in contemporary Czech and Slovak society, the film won critical acclaim in both Slovakia and the Czech Republic.  It served as Slovakia's submission to the Best Foreign Language Film competition for the 2012 Oscars.*  It also won 4 awards including the Special Jury Prize at the 2011 Karlový Vary International Film Festival.*  More importantly, the film was covered favorably and with interest in the Romani press.

Despite such critical acclaim, the film did produce some protest in Slovakia (Slovakian Railways refused to allow the posting of advertisement posters for the film on its trains / railway stations on account of the film's negative portrayal of Slovakian Railway's treatment of Romani workers) and resounding (and in the opinion of the Czech "Rolling Stone"-like magazine Reflex shameful) silence among the Czech general public.* The gist of the Reflex article was that most of the lighter-skinned Czech general public simply prefers not to be bothered by the problems of the darker-skinned Romani community in its midst, which, of course, makes the film all the more interesting/important:  Why would a technically excellent and personable film be so ignored by its primary intended audience (the white Czech and Slovak public)?  

So what then is the actual film about?  The film is about a young Romani teenager, Adam (played by Ján Mižigár [IMDb] [CSFD*]), trying to make his way in the world encouraged by the legacy of his tragically deceased father, by a concerned and active local Catholic priest (played by Attila Mokos [IMDb] [CSFD*]) and by an idealistic Slovakian documentary film-maker to try to better himself, while pulled by his pragrmatic village "mafia like" Boss uncle (played by Miroslav Gulyas [IMDb] [CSFD*]) to remember first "who he is" (a Cigán what Czechs/Slovaks basically call Gypsies), become content with this fate, and then, like he, learn to thrive in it.

Indeed, Adam's uncle has learned to thrive in his situation.  Okay, he's done his time in prison at various times in his life.  But he scoffs at Adam when he comes home one day with a pair of sneakers and a couple of t-shirts he had received from the priest at the parish.  Why accept charity when you can steal better?  Mistreated at the odd job that the whites might give you?  Just learn to simply take what is your due.  And if you take "a bit more" than what was your due occasionally, fine, it all definitely evens out in the end.

In the person of Adam's uncle is both a fatalism and a resourcefulness that one can imagine could keep a beleaguered people alive but also self-evidently mistrusted by those who've been stolen from.

And while Adam is trying to figure-out his answer to this overarching Shakespearean drama: "To steal or not to steal..." he's also growing-up in other ways.  So there's a lovely Romani girl named Julka (played by Martina Kotlárová [IMDb] [CSFD*]) living a few shacks up the hill ... (Don't you just want to cry?)  But like that other Shakespearean drama, this budding romance finds itself "impossible" though for its own societally (both Romani and non) driven reasons.

Needless to say, much plays out in this very well constructed story.

Clearly, I liked this picture for both for its technical excellence and its challenge.  However, being American of Czech descent and also a Catholic priest, I'd like to extend that challenge beyond simply the rolling woodlands of Slavic Central Europe across the ocean to ethnic Slavic communities here in the United States.  I say this because in all honestly, Slavs have not had the "best of reputations" when it comes to race relations in the United States.  We, often called "ethnics" in the United States, have had a reputation of being very racist in our dealings with people of darker complexions (African Americans and Hispanics).

Having watched this film, I do wonder how much of this tendency of looking down on darker skinned people in the United States comes from a centuries honed mistrust/hatred of the indigenous darker-skinned Romani people "back home in the old country."


* Machine translations of Czech and Slovak links provided into English are most easily viewed through use of Google's Chrome brower.


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Friday, March 1, 2013

Dark Skies [2013]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  Chicago Sun-Times (2 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Chicago Sun-Times review (P. Sobczinski) review

Dark Skies (written and directed by Scott Stewart) is, IMHO, the best film made by the Paranormal Activity franchise since its original.  This isn't to say that Dark Skies isn't formulaic or that it doesn't lean on a slew of previous horror and alien invasion/conspiracy movies (Invasion of the Body Snatchers [1956], Birds [1963], Poltergeist [1982], X-Files [1993-2002], Signs [2002] and, of course, Paranormal Activity [2007]).  However, there's been a long tradition in American horror films of building on / borrowing from previous films.  What makes films following in this tradition succeed or fail is how well they apply/mix the story elements that have been borrowed (and after hopefully adding something original to the tale) to produce something new.  I do believe that writer/director Scott Stewart does this remarkably well here.

So what is the film about?  The film is about a supremely "average" contemporary American family -- Daniel and Lacy Barrett (played by John Hamilton and Keri Russell respectively) and their two sons, early teen Jesse (played by Dakota Goyo) and 6 year old Sam (played by Kadan Rocket) -- living in some suburb somewhere in the United States.

Some time back, Daniel's lost his job (as a graphics designer).  As such, the family's been depending on Lacy's real-estate job to keep afloat, but "in this market..." it hasn't been easy.  Viewers are repeatedly reminded that the family has been cutting back on expenses.  They've ceased subscribing to their "home alarm system." When due to things happening in the story, they find that they have to revisit that decision, Daniel suggests that perhaps they could go without cable for a while.

To be sure, Daniel's been having job interviews but has been finding it increasingly hard to explain why he's been unemployed for so long and why he became unemployed in the first place (he tells an interviewer that after his previous firm had lost a particularly large contract, his "whole department was cut."  The interviewer shakes his head in sympathy but doesn't completely believe him ... If Daniel had been truly valuable to his previous firm, wouldn't they have tried to keep him even if the rest of the department had to go?

Things come to a head, when we see Daniel opening the family's mail after coming home from a particularly unsuccessful and increasingly embarrassing interview to see that he's received a 90-days past due notice on the family's house.  Yikes ...

In this environment, strange things start happening at the Barrett household.  Lacy hears something one night, goes down to the kitchen and finds the refrigerator open and random food strewn all around in a mess.  The next night, she again hears something and finds a weird sculpture made of a random assembly of empty pop and beer cans and kitchen utensils.  The next morning, they call the police.

The police officer (played by Josh Stamberg) is sympathetic but thinks it's an "inside job," that is, that maybe one of their kids did it.  But Daniel, a former graphics designer after all, notes that the structure's too clever, too symmetric, too ingenious for one of his kids to do, presumably while sleep walking.  When the following night, Lacy and Daniel, who've since restarted their "home alarm" security service hear it go off, and then find that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEIR FAMILY PICTURES in the living room STOLEN (the frames still there but EVERY ONE OF THE PICTURES was gone) they call the police again.  The police officer is now absolutely convinced that it has to be one of their boys.

Both Daniel and Lacy start to think that the younger son, Sam, has been actually acting rather strangely.  BUT WHERE ARE THEY GOING TO FIND THE MONEY TO TAKE HIM TO A COUNSELOR,. NOW?  That's when suddenly 800 birds (from three different directions) come crashing into the windows of the house.  And in the days that follow, EVERYONE of the Barrett family starts having unexplainable episodes.  What the heck is going on? 

Is the family simply "cracking" under the pressure of approaching financial collapse?  Or is something else going on?   (Go watch the film ... ;-)

It all makes for a classic American style horror movie of the past 50-60 years (since the 1950s-60s) and one that famed horror fiction writer Stephen King (Danse Macabre) would find impressive.  To say more would ruin the film, but honestly, what a great setup of a story of this kind!


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