The Nut Job [2014]

MPAA (PG)  CNS/USCCB (A-1)  ChicagoTribune (1 Star)  RE.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (F)  Fr. Dennis (1 1/2 Stars and really not for kids, see below)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (K. Jensen) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (S. Wloszczyna) review
AVClub (K. McFarland) review

The Nut Job [2014] (directed and screenplay cowritten by Peter Lepeniotis along with Lorne Cameron, story by Daniel Woo based on characters from Peter Lepeniotis' 11 minute animated short Surly Squirrel [2005]) is an animated film that IMHO really didn't deserve to be made and certainly not in its (PG / A-1) configuration. 

Both the animated short Surly Squirrel [2005] and now the feature film The Nut Job [2014] are about a rather unsympathetic squirrel named Surly (voiced in the current feature film by Will Arnett).  Why is Surly, well ... surly (rude, unfriendly)?  Well, he's presented as scheming and selfish.  He doesn't seem to care about the other nut eating rodents in the city park where he lives.

Now, in the actual "wilds" in front of my Rectory, it would seem that our neighborhood squirrels are, while cute as can be with white pelts on their tummies, not particularly altruistic either.  They don't seem to fight over nuts (or bulbs that they love to dig out of our garden) but they seem to "bury their stashes" of nuts, bulbs and acorns, each on their own.  So with the exception of being something of a foul mouthed squirrel (in the short) or simply "a squirrel with an attitude" (in the somewhat toned down feature), Surly doesn't really behave much differently than the average cute as a button squirrel "squirreling away" fallen crab apples from our tree gracing the front of our Rectory or the tulip beds gracing its sides.

How then to make a compelling movie about a squirrel acting like a ... squirrel?

Well both the short and the feature film postulate that "all the other rodents and nut-eating animals" of the city park where Surly lives "share all the nuts and other food stocks that they collect."  Communism.  And to make the point, both the short and the feature film posit a Raccoon (voiced in the feature film by Liam Neeson) as the Park's "Boss" in the short, and first its "Benevolent Leader" then exposed as its chief "Crook" in the feature.  So in good part, Surly is "surly" simply because he's living in a strange city park where the rest of his companions are behaving unlike normal animals (They seem to share what they find rather than keep what they find for themselves).

So is the message (remember that this is a children's film that's received a PG rating from the MPAA and an A-1 general admission rating (!) from the U.S. Catholic Bishops' media office) that sharing is unnatural (even a slippery slope to Communism) and humans too should be allowed to simply fend for themselves??  Hmm.

But the message gets even more confusing when one realizes that both short and feature film juxtapose Surly the squirrel's avarice for foodstuffs that he has no intention of sharing with anybody with a gang of humans seeking to rob a bank next door to the park.  So here the film makers seem to compare Surly's attitude of "the nuts I find are mine" with stealing. 

So what the heck are the film makers trying to say?  And is this really a film that you'd want your children to see?  At minimum, Surly is really a quite nasty (surly...) squirrel who never really changes for the better.  Parents, would you want your generally cute little kids to be nasty and never really change for the better either?

This is an odd little movie (the feature itself is only 87 minutes) and honestly not really for kids.


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Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit [2014]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  ChicagoTribune (2 Stars)  RE.com (3 Stars)  AVClub (C)  Fr. Dennis (1/2 Star)

IMDb listing
KinoNews.ru listing*

CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (G. Kenny) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit [2014] (directed by Kenneth Branagh, screenplay by Adam Cozad and David Koepp) is an ideologically cumbersome and technically silly reboot of the characters around American spy-thriller author Tom Clancy [IMDb]'s most famous hero, the mild-mannered Langley based "CIA analyst" who when need be becomes a butt-kicking field agent Jack Ryan [IMDb] and who's become Anglo-American pop-literature's most famous spy after Ian Fleming [IMDb]'s James Bond [IMDb].

Hmmm, so what's so wrong with the story? ;-)  Well, above all, whatever Tom Clancy's political affiliations actually were (and the American-Right has certainly tried to claim him as its own) Tom Clancy was both imaginative and intelligent.  His villains were widely dispersed.  In his universe, the villains who crash a Boeing 747 into the U.S. Capitol Building during the U.S. president's State of the Union Address (a scenario described in his book Debt of Honor [1994] (!!)) killing the President, most of Congress and all of the U.S. Supreme Court WERE JAPANESE.  Now THAT's one heck of a ("didn't see that one coming...") compelling spy novel scenario as opposed to the eyes rolling "Ah, it's the Ruskies (TBtG at least it's not the 'turban heads') again..." pedestrian quality of the current film. 

Then while it's always a challenge to make compelling optics of spy-craft in our computer-based, digital age -- the last James Bond movie, Skyfall [2012], actually did a much better job with this -- the sort-of "cliff-hanging" scene, where the young rebooted Jack Ryan (played by Chris Pine) has broken-into the Evil Russian FSB-connected oligarch Viktor Cherebin's (played by Kenneth Branagh) post-communist glass-and-concrete by Moscow's Red Square fortress-like lair and then into Cherebin's computer (after calling back to his cover-job (now as an undercover "Wall Street Analyst") to ask his naive/salt-of-the-earth "just makin' money for da stockholders" Wall Street boss VIA CELL PHONE: "BTW can you quickly give me the password we have on file for Cherebin's accounts") and is then seen DOWNLOADING all of Cherebin's "secret accounts" to his (Ryan's) trusty little netbook / flash drive WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY ANALYZING the hundreds upon hundreds of lines of numbers and text scrolling down his screen PER SECOND from said "secret files,"  makes a mockery OF ANYONE who's ever tried to make sense of a simple "Google search" while the phone starts ringing or one's being "called down for dinner" back home ;-).  It's just insane: Jack Ryan presumably can read hundreds upon hundreds of lines of text scrolling down his screen at break-neck speed, PRESUMABLY IN CYRILLIC, to quickly (in real time) unravel the Evil Russian Oligarch Cherebin's plot to "crash the whole U.S. economy" in a single financial if coordinated blow.  Note to the NSA: there's no need for supercomputers to analyze ECHELON data (every phone call, ever made, anywhere ...) when one has superhuman analysts like the new Jack Ryan on staff ;-).

Then the film's makers can't seem to decide how Evil / closed they want to make Russia today.  One on hand, they want to make Russia a still largely impenetrable Cold-War like entity.  On the other hand, the CIA is apparently able to drive freely (and _discretely_) around Moscow with an NYPD-style surveillance van stuffed to the hilt with electronics gear.  Indeed, a far more interesting film could have been made of simply imagining how American intelligence would secret-in all the parts to make such a surveillance vehicle in Moscow.  After all, one would imagine that the FSB would have a surveillance cam (or two...) around the U.S. embassy monitoring traffic in-and-out of its motorpool ;-): "Sergei, looks like discrete Amerikanskij NYPD-style surveillance van going out for spin again today.  Tell Sasha to put on tail..."  Then wouldn't the Russians be able to confiscate such a super-secret "top of the line" surveillance van (if only temporarily ... but not before completely disassembling it and returning it to our embassy in boxes) by simply stopping it for a random "tail light" violation? ;-)

Sigh, Chris Pine seems to be doomed to play B-grade rebooted versions of legendary characters (he also has had the unenviable task of playing the new Captain James T. Kirk [IMDb] in the rebooted Star Trek films).   And poor Keira Knightley playing the young Jack Ryan's future wife Cathy [IMDb].  She played the hilt out of the script that she was given, but the Anna Karenina [IMDb] of two years back really deserved better than this.

What then of the overall nefarious plot?  The Evil Russian FSB pissed-off at the proposed construction of pipeline through the Republic of Georgia / Turkey (To carry whose oil/gas?  CERTAINLY NOT RUSSIA'S... so...?) decide nevertheless to retaliate by seeking to destroy the U.S. economy with a single coordinated blow.  To do so, they awake "sleeper agents" in the U.S. by sending a cumbersome coded message through the RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH.  Imagine ALL THOSE YEARS sitting at _endless_ Orthodox Christian liturgies (they are _lovely_ but they are so, sooo long ;-) waiting for a single out of place word to be said.  "Slava Bogu!" one sleeper agent exclaims on catching the coded message.  Slava Bogu indeed ;-).  And here one thought that the FSB was merely sending coded messages to its agents through endless piles of internet porn ;-).

Anyway, working on Wall Street, undercover (hmm... the CIA's charter must have been "discretely changed" post-9/11...), is CIA analyst Jack Ryan who finds something amiss with Evil Russian Oligarch Viktor Cherebin's accounts with his firm just as tensions between the U.S. and Russia appear to rise over said proposed pipeline.  SOOO he asks his naive, salt-of-the-earth Wall Street Boss if he could fly out to Moscow to ask Viktor Cherebin "what's up with that?"  He gets permission ... the rest follows ;-)

Sigh ... could the Japanese be hired to crash their 747 into ... never mind.


ADDENDUM - Since this film came out / I wrote my above review about it, obviously a number of things have changed "on the geopolitical scene" as it were, notably the crisis in the Ukraine / Crimea.  Please don't take any of the above review as somehow an endorsement of Putin, et al's policies.  It's not.  Yet I honestly don't believe it serves anybody's interests, American or the world's to make fun of people.

Indeed, one of the very, very few things that I'd agree with Putin in would be his assessment of many Americans' attitudes toward his country.  In one of the articles run by Time Magazine when Time selected him as their "Person of the Year" one year, they quote him as saying that it appeared to him that many Americans think of the Russians as "only one generation from swinging from the trees."

Unfortunately, I do believe he's right (in _this_) and no I don't believe it's anything remotely approaching "a good thing" that such disdain for another people is considered acceptable by many of us.  In fact, it's been my experience that common Russians consider themselves as "exceptional" as many common Americans think of themselves -- They see themselves as having a "proud history of 1000 years of expansion" (their version of "Manifest Destiny" ...) they remember themselves as having driven the Nazis back to Berlin (and Napoleon back to Paris before that), etc, etc -- It's not particularly good if common Russians think that Americans are blithely spitting the olive pits from their Martinis at them ... and yet many (including Putin) do ...

So IMHO films like this one really don't help ANYBODY.  Instead, they serve to confirm the worst stereotypes that both Russians and Americans have of each other.  And I can't see that as being even remotely "good" in any conceivable way.


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The Past (orig. Le Passé) [2013]

MPAA (PG-13)  ChicagoTribune (3 1/2 Stars)  RE.com (4 Stars)  AVClub (A-)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (G. Cheshire) review
AVClub (M. D'Angelo) review

The Past (orig. Le Passé) [2013] (written and directed by Oscar winning Asghar Farhadi [IMDb]) continues a wave of insightful, generally gentle, personalist dramas coming from Iran in recent years.  I've already reviewed two such films here Farhadi's A Separation (orig. Jodaeiye Nader az Simin) [2011] which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012 and Adel Yaraghi's Meeting Leila (orig. Ashnaee ba Leila) [2011].  A third Iranian film, by Rafi Pitts, The Hunter [2010], not nearly as gentle but still very much personalist in nature (about a troubled man and his family) I was able to see when it passed through Chicago sometime last year, but I wasn't able to write a review of it (for lack of time).  Everyone of these films has been excellent, films that if I were Iranian I would certainly be proud of, and they are films that offer Westerners an opportunity to see how Iranians would like themselves to be seen (beyond the hyperbolic rhetoric that American comic Jon Stewart of the Daily Show has had the insight to remind us is often driven by the requirements of populist politics across the globe).

Any Westerner who's actually gotten to know an Iranian or two during his/her life would come to appreciate how proud they are of their 3500-4000 year old "cosmopolitan" culture (they've been on the "Silk Road" since its beginning ...) who'd really like to compare Tehran to London, Paris or New York (Chicago from where I write, would seem to to most Iranians as being of  "second city" status, sort of the Tabriz of the United States, "nice" perhaps but not of "first league" status like the other Western capitals listed above or ... "one day" Tehran again...).  Even the structured/hierarchical Shiite Islam, dominant in Iran, would compare (and this would by my own insight) far closer to Catholicism than what most members of both faiths would (at least initially) like to admit. 

I do believe that the age, cosmopolitality of Iranian culture and even the paternalism of the (presently overbearing) ascendant Shiite "Church" in Iran make for fertile ground for the making of the personalist dramas coming from Iranian film makers today, just as similar personalist films were produced in post-Fascist Italy of the late 1940s (one thinks of the films of Vittorio de Sica [IMDb]) and during the Czechoslovak "New Wave" of the "Prague Spring" era of the 1960s.  For personalism, focusing on the dignity, problems and immediate relationships of the humble individual, can be poignant, _safe_, and even a subtle platform for protest when (fill in the regime) becomes overbearing and entering into parts of the lives of individuals against which most people would begin to chafe.  Interestingly enough, a big exponent of Christian personalism was none other than Pope John Paul II.

So then ... the current film, The Past (orig. Le Passé) [2013], has absolutely nothing to do with politics ... :-) ... but is instead a personalist drama about the final spasms of a marriage between Ahmad (played by Ali Mosaffa), Iranian, and his Parisian French wife Marie (played by Bérénice Bejo). 

At the beginning of the film, Ahmad, flying in from Tehran, is picked-up at Paris' airport by Marie. Why?  He's flying into Paris, after having returned to Iran some years before, at Marie's request to finalize their divorce.  Why?  The marriage has been dead for years now and Marie's found another guy, interestingly enough another Iranian immigrant/expatriate living in Paris, named Samir (played by Tahar Rahim) who she wants to marry.

The nationality/similarity in appearance of Samir to Ahmad is not lost on Marie's oldest (teenage) daughter Lucie (played by Pauline Burlet) of yet another relationship of Marie's (previous to Ahmad) who tells Ahmad "she's only marrying Samir because he looks like you."  Needless to say, Lucie's not excited about Samir's entry (as now her third father figure...) into her life.  One could say that she's had it with her mother in this regard. 

There are two other children in the mix.  There's Lucie's younger, 8-9 year old sister Lea (played by Jeanne Jestin) and there's Samir's again 6-7-8 year old Faoud (played by Elyes Aguis) from his marriage, also to a Parisian woman, who we find out, is lying in a coma after trying to commit suicide.

Now why did Samir's wife try to commit suicide?  That's much of the rest of the film.  What becomes clear is that Samir and Marie had entered into an affair prior to her attempting to commit suicide.  Was this a factor?  Yes? no? maybe?  To the story's credit, after exposing this central sin of the story -- the affair between Samir and Marie (after Ahmad's more or less permanent departure for Tehran...) -- the rest of the film is really about the nuances and distributed culpability for the sin and its effects.

And here Catholic moralist would be proud: (1) because it's absolutely clear that there was a fundamental sin here, and (2) it's _also_ complicated (NO ONE except for the littlest of the kids comes out looking good here).

Then there is a final question: Is a life (or a marriage...) "in a coma" truly over?  This is a gentle, nuanced film NOT done by a western-style (there are no rules) atheist but by someone who's still fundamentally a "there are rules believer."   Fascinating! 


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Lone Survivor [2013]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (O)  ChicagoTribune (3 Stars)  RE.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (B-)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J.P. McCarthy) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (S. Boone) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review

Lone Survivor [2013] (directed and screenplay by Peter Berg, based on the memoir by Marcus Luttrell [IMDb] and Patrick Robinson) is about the skill, dedication and heroism of U.S. Navy SEALS fighting in the post-9/11 U.S. War on Terror, often, obviously, in the mountains of Afghanistan where this story is set.

From this description, it should be clear that the film carries with it a clear, basically, pro-American, pro-American-military point of view.  To many American readers here, this may seem like a somewhat annoying restatement of the obvious: Of course this is (and should be) a pro-American, pro-American military film, for it to be anything else would disingenuous or unpatriotic or both.  Yet though I am an American, I belong to a world-wide Catholic Religious Order (the Friar Servants of Mary), I've been on various national and international committees for my Religious Order over the years (including Justice and Peace), and a significant portion of my blog's Readership comes from overseas.   I know well that non-American Readers of my Blog (and non-American Viewers of the Film) would approach this same film with a great deal of skepticism wondering: Is this just "another American propaganda piece?"  I WOULD TELL READERS HERE, BOTH AMERICAN AND NON, THAT IN A CERTAIN SENSE IT (NECESSARILY) IS (an American propaganda piece) BUT (!) IT IS A RATHER GOOD / THOUGHT PROVOKING ONE WORTHY OF THE CRITICAL ATTENTION OF EVERYONE (of both Americans and non).

Why would I write that this film deserves "the critical attention of everyone?"  I write this because the film does deal with both moral questions AND portrays, I believe QUITE WELL certain fundamental characteristics of "American military doctrine" THAT ARE WORTHY OF REFLECTION UPON and COMPARISON WITH fundamental characteristics of the military doctrine of both "other lands" and "other times."

I write this because we all know well that ANY COUNTRY could produce wonderful, compelling "pro-Our Folks" military pieces.  American director Quentin Tarantino did the ENTIRE WORLD an enormous favor by including in his fascinatingly deconstructive "WW II" film Inglourious Basterds [2009] the subplot of the German propaganda machine seeking to produce an American style but PRO-NAZI GERMANY World War II film about "a brave lone Nazi sharpshooter in a bell tower keeping 300 American soldiers at bay" in some random town in Italy (One scene even shows the "brave Nazi sharpshooter" holed up in said "bell tower" pulling-out his pocket knife to carve the crisscrossing lines of the Nazi Swastika into the wood of the floor next to him, to the wild applause of the pro-Nazi German audience watching the film's premiere) the point being precisely that ANY COUNTRY can make its people look Good and "the Enemy" look Bad.   

That said, even propaganda films reveal more than "Our guys are Good and Their guys are Bad" and that is what I believe makes THE CURRENT FILM fascinating.

For the setup of the current film is conventional enough: A team of four über-fit, highly trained U.S. Navy Seals -- Marcus Luttrell (played by Mark Wahlberg), Michael Murphy (played by Taylor Kitsch), Danny Deitz (played by Emile Hirsch) and Matt 'Axe' Axelson (played by Ben Foster) -- are inserted on a "recon" mission into the mountains to Afghanistan to positively I.D. a Taliban leader by the name of Shah (played by Yousuf Azami) reported to be operating out of a small Afghan village in said mountains.  Once positively I.D.ing said Taliban leader, the rest of U.S. Navy Seal Team would be brought in by helicopter to take him and the rest of his company out.

All goes more-or-less according to the set plan until ... the four Navy SEALS perched in the mountains overlooking the village are happened upon by a number of goat herders -- two boys and an old man.  The Navy SEALS quickly overcome/bind the three Afghani goat-herders, but the question becomes, what now?   The team radios back to HQ for instructions, but alas, radio reception even today isn't ideal in the mountains _anywhere_ let alone in Afghanistan.   Without instructions (or the hope of immediate backup ...) the team has to decide what to do on their own.  The team's leader identifies three options: (1) let them go, which will almost certainly compromise their positions and virtually guarantee a firefight coming from directions/positions that they only guess (the Taliban is an army after all, with its own communications networks, and their garrisons aren't simply "sitting in town" waiting to be attacked by Americans ..., (2) leave the three tied-up, with the Navy SEALS bugging-out to another position (with presumably better possibility for communications), (3) "terminate the compromise" -- kill the three goat herders.

ONE COULD IMAGINE AN ELITE SQUAD OF ANY NATION'S ARMY FACING A SIMILAR SET OF OPTIONS.  What distinguishes THIS ELITE SQUAD is that it is _American_ and thus two characteristic concerns/values pervade: (1) The four have been trained according to post-WW II U.S. Military Doctrine to value their team.  One of the Navy SEALS says it bluntly: "I don't care about them (the three Afghani prisoners), I don't care about the higher-ups, I care about you, you and you (the team)" and (2) professionalism / a learned sense of accountability.  Another of the Navy SEALS points out: "If we kill these three Afghanis, or leave them here to freeze/die, it will be found out (someone's going to go looking for them and those goats are going to remain in the area), it will make CNN and we'll end up in Leavenworth."

I DON'T THINK A RUSSIAN SQUAD to say nothing of a NAZI "ELITE" WAFFEN-SS SQUAD would think that way.  In both cases, they would be "fighting for country" rather than "team" and in both cases, there would be no "CNN" to worry about, let alone "accountability back at the base."

Now I am no "pie in the sky, we do no wrong" naive American patriot.  Indeed, I reviewed (and gave high marks) to a documentary film produced by liberal/left leaning Nation Magazine national security correspondent Jeremy Skahill named Dirty Wars [2013] which chronicled various time when U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan (and elsewhere) weren't nearly so careful and killed all kinds of civilians both in Afghanistan and in Yemen.

But this is exactly a good part of my point: In the United States these stories DO COME OUT.  Violating "rules of engagement," blithely killing civilians, does actually carry risk in the U.S. military (and other western armies).  It doesn't elsewhere.  And please, if I'm wrong, show it to me.  Please offer me an example or two when members of Russian Special Forces units have been held accountable for "accidental killings" in the Caucuses, or even members of Indian Special Forces Units for similar actions in The Kashmir?

Jeremy Skahill's documentary Dirty Wars [2013] did show _clearly_ that U.S. Special Forces have killed innocents in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the War on Terror.  Still, I do get the sense that U.S. special forces units DO TRY TO BE CAREFUL and do understand that there are consequences (including possible jail time) for unprofessionalism.

Anyway, the Navy SEAL team in question in this story lets the three Afghani goat herders go free and the rest of the film follows.  The title of the film itself is a spoiler, suggesting more or less obviously that only one of the four will make it out.  I'll add a SECOND SPOILER -- the one who got out alive, made it in good part because of assistance from Afghani peasants (other "goat herders ...") who ALSO "happened upon him" when he was wounded ...

Great story and honestly one giving one much to think about.


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The Legend of Hercules [2014]

MPAA (PG-13)  RE.com (1 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (1 Star)

IMDb listing
ChicagoTribune/Variety (S. Foundas) review
RE.com (S. Wloszczyna) review

The Legend of Hercules [2014] (directed and cowritten by Renny Harlin along with Daniel Giat, Sean Hood and Giulio Steve) is really kinda a mess.  Presenting an "origin story" for the Greco-Roman hero Heracles (Hercules), it actually borrows more from The Gladiator [2000], Oliver Stone's Alexander [2004] and 300 [2006] than from the classical myth.

Now why should this be a problem?  After all, Marvel Comics has done a pretty good job converting the Norse God Thor [wikipedia] [marvel] into one of its comic book Superheroes, a character that's happily appeared in three Marvel films reviewed here [1] [2] [3].  Further, the Percy Jackson series, its latter film Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters [2013] reviewed here as well, did a reasonably good job re-imagining the various Greco-Roman heroes for the present day (I've found it particularly amusing that Percy, et al have been portrayed as growing-up with largely "absent fathers" ;-).  And I didn't find it particularly necessary to check the classical mythology underpinning films like Clash / Wrath of the Titans [2012], the latter film reviewed here as well.  Yet in the case of the current film, The Legend of Hercules [2014], I did find it necessary to do so and let me explain why:

Though bearing the name that derives from the Greek Goddess Hera (the Goddess of Hearth and Home), in the classical myth Heracles was actually tormented by Hera throughout most of his story.  Why?  Because he was the illegitimate son of her serially unfaithful husband, Zeus (the head of the Olympian Gods).  Indeed, in the classical myth, so terrified was Alcmene, Heracles' mother, of Hera's wrath that she left her infant Heracles exposed (to die) after giving birth to him.  Yet Athena (the Greek Goddess of Wisdom) seeing this injustice taking place, had pity on the infant and (playing a trick on Hera) brought him up to her, who (as Hera is the "Greek Goddess of Hearth and Home") cheerfully raised him as her own even giving him the name Heracles -- meaning "Hera's glory" because ... well that's what a Goddess of Hearth and Home does when she sees an abandoned infant: SHE TAKES CARE OF HIM / RAISING HIM AS HER OWN.  Imagine then Hera's anger when she discovered that her "pride and joy" Heracles was actually the illegitimate son of her philandering husband-God Zeus!  So she then took-out her anger on Heracles in all sorts of ways for the remainder of his earthly life.  That's the classical myth.

In the case of THE CURRENT FILM, Queen Alcmene (played actually quite well by Roxanne McKee) irritated with her husband King Aphrytion's (played by Scott Atkins) endless-warlike ways prays to Hera (again the Goddess of Hearth and Home) to knock some sense into her husband who was causing SO MUCH PAIN TO SO MANY HOUSEHOLDS (including her own) with his constant wars.  Okay, that would kinda make sense.  In the Greco-Roman world, Hera would probably be the Goddess to pray to with such a request. What doesn't make sense is Hera's answer to Queen Alcmene's prayer: HERA sends her randy/ever-philandering husband Zeus to impregnate Queen Alcmene so that she'd give birth the to the future Heracles (here understood as "Hera's Gift").  ANYONE WHO KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT GREEK MYTHOLOGY WOULD KNOW THAT THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN IMPOSSIBLE.  There's simply NO WAY that Hera would "vend out" her husband like that.  Not only was she EXTREMELY JEALOUS in the Greco-Roman conception, she was THE GODDESS OF HEARTH AND HOME.  She wanted peaceful households, NOT ones where there was infidelity present.

So from the get-go this story is "Hollywood, in your dreams" nonsense ...

Then the rest of the story simply plays on elements of the three above mentioned Hollywood films:  King Aphrytion is never sure whether Heracles (played by Kellan Lutz) is really his son (shades of Oliver Stone's Alexander [2004] where Alexander the Great's father is portrayed as having similar worries).  At one point, Heracles is betrayed by King Aphrytion and Heracles' older/half-brother -- and SOLD INTO SLAVERY (as in the Russell Crowe starring The Gladiator [2000]).  How does regain his freedom? Through a series of "Gladiator-like" arena fights...  Finally, in case one didn't remember from 300 [2006] what a phalanx battle formation looked like, I can't imagine how one would forget it after this film, as this CGI friendly formation is used OVER AND OVER AGAIN THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE OF THE MOVIE.  There's even an a la last Hollywood version of Troy [2004] "doomed love story" between Heracles and a Cretian princess named Hebe (played by Gaia Weiss) which could be have been at least partly inspired by the Classical Heracles' falling in love with a Princess named Iole.  However, one gets the sense that the film-makers here really could care less about the Classical Heracles and just wanted to produce a generic, heavy on the CGI, "sand and sandal" movie with a more imposing name than the film in any way merited.


Sigh, there's a second Hercules movie coming out in the summer.  We'll have to see what this next one brings ...


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Faust (orig. фауст) [2012]

MPAA (NR would be R)  ChicagoTribune (3 Stars)  RE.com (3 Stars)  AVClub (A)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
KinoNews.ru listing*

Izvestia.ru  review*  news coverage*

ChicagoTribune M. Phillips) review
RE.com (G. Cheshire) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review

Faust (orig. фауст) [2012] [IMDb] [KN.ru]* (directed and cowritten by Aleksandr Sokurov [IMDb] [KN.ru]*, screenplay by Yuri Arabov* [IMDb] [KN.ru]* based on the Faust legend popularized by late 18th-early 19th century German playwright Johann Wolfgang Goethe [IMDb]) is a serious, award winning film -- it won the Golden Lion for Best Film at the 2012 Venice Film Festival as well as four Nika (Russian Academy) Awards among them for Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Screenplay) and was nominated for four others (Best Costume, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography and Best Music) -- by a serious award winning Russian director.  It played recently at the Music Box theater here in Chicago.

The film (played in German with English subtitles) set in a nondescript German village of the late-18th century is to be understood as the capstone (part 4) of a four part reflection on POWER which included three previous Sokurov-Arabov collaborations -- Moloch (orig. Mолох) [1999] [IMDb] [KN.ru]* (about Adolf Hitler [IMDb] and "a weekend with friends" at this mountain retreat in Biertesgarten a few months before the beginning of the fateful battle at Stalingrad), Taurus (orig. Телец) [2001]* [IMDb] [KN.ru]* (about a "day near the end of the life" of V.I. Lenin [IMDb] where he finds himself impotent and marginalized at his own "dacha" (country retreat) wishing for death), and The Sun (orig. Солнце) [2005]* [IMDb] [KN.ru]* (about the Japanese Emperor Hirohito [IMDb] musing with the conquering American general MacArthur [IMDb] about the origins of the War that had just ended and his (the Emperor's) personal failings, even as he had been worshiped as a "living god").

Needless to say, Faust (orig. фауст) [2012] [IMDb] [KN.ru]* along with Sokurov-Arabov's other collaborations is pretty dense stuff!

And it is certainly key to note that while Hitler [IMDb], Lenin [IMDb] and Hirohito [IMDb] were all despotic/totalitarian historical figures of the 20th century, Faust [IMDb] is, of course, a legendary one, and one who predated the others by several hundred years.  Yet, Faust [IMDb] is, of course, the legendary figure who "made a deal with the Devil" ...

So who then is Sokurov-Arabov's Faust [IMDb] (played in the film by Johannes Zeiler [IMDb])?  And how does he compare with the three 20th century (at least for a while) "living Gods"?   He is portrayed right from the beginning film as one who is obsessed with the acquisition of knowledge even if his methods shock/offend the people around him: The film begins with him performing (in his barn) a horrific 18th-century autopsy of a human corpse that he had dug-up (presumably without anyone's permission) from the village's graveyard.  The tools that he uses are basically 18th century farm and kitchen implements and he cuts off the genitals of the corpse (PARENTS take note ... this would DEFINITELY be an R-rated film) like one would cut-off a piece of sausage.  The scene is intended to shock ... and it does ... both the villagers who (quite understandably) look at him as Nuts/Evil ... and probably viewers of the film who honestly may not have expected such a grotesque beginning to the story.

But it becomes rather clear that Sokurov-Arabov's Faust [IMDb] does not give a damn what the villagers think of him as he dismisses them as "backward."  Well, his behavior, of course, attracts the attention of a "kindred spirit" ... the Devil, personified as a very slimy-looking moneylender (played by Anton Adansinsky [IMDb] [KN.ru]*).

Now initially Sokurov-Arabov's Faust [IMDb] dismisses the Devil himself as he has no use for him either.  Alas, however, raw "Power" / "Knowledge" don't seem to be enough (a seemingly common theme if one compares this film to the three others) as Sokurov-Arabov's Faust [IMDb] begins to long for "personal fulfillment" / "companionship" ... in the form of a village girl ... named ... Margarite (in the original legend, Gretchen) (played in the film by Isolda Dychauk [IMDb]).  IT IS FOR HER interest/companionship that he "sells his soul to the Devil."  But in this version, there honestly remains a question: Who's stronger throughout (even after he "sells his soul" to him...) the Devil or Faust.

In abstract, the adaptation here is interesting enough.  Further, due to my Central/East European background, I find myself having a certain disconcerting "attraction" to LENGTHY (and to almost everyone else outside of my background BURDENSOME) reflections on "the nature of Power" (and its abuse...).

However, I have to say that I found this film both very DENSE and AESTHETICALLY UGLY -- a combination of DENSE SOVIET-ERA (perhaps "good"/"best of" Soviet Era) ALLEGORY and a GERMANIC FASCINATION WITH THE GROTESQUE.  Add to this the film seemed unending ... well over 2 hours (and twenty minutes) long.

I'll grant the film (as the Czechs would call it) "Velkodil" (Great Work) status.  And I've since looked-up Sokurov-Arabov's other films (Moloch and The Sun).  Now where would one find them?  Well, in Chicago / the U.S. through Facets Multimedia ;-).  But my both Czech and American sensibility (both apparently lighter than German / Russian sensibilities) really could have done without the grave-robbing, the incessant half-congealed black/red blood and the genital mutilations).  I do get it, these graphics did add to the film, but the film's incessant "icky-ness" just went ON AND ON ...

Yes, the power-mongers of the last century were really sick S.O.B.s ... and I suppose I'm happy I saw this film, but I would never, ever want to see it again ;-).  But then, that's, in good part, the point ;-).  We'd probably _not_ want to see ANY OF THESE CHARACTERS again ;-). 


* Foreign language webpages are most easily translated using Google's Chrome Browser. 

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Aftermath (orig. Pokłosie) [2013]

MPAA (UR would be R)  ChicagoTribune (4 Stars)  Polityka.pl (4/6)  Liberte.pl (8/10)  RE.com (1 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
FilmWeb.pl listing*

GazetaWyborcza.pl (T. Sobolewski) review*   news coverage*
Polityka.pl (J. Wróblewski) review*  forum discussion*
RP.pl [Rzeczpospolita - Common Speech] (B. Hollender) review*  news coverage*
Gazeta.pl  news coverage*
Liberte.pl (M. Mirowski) review*   news coverage*

Jerusalem Post (Reuters) news coverage

ChicagoTribune/Variety (R. Scheib) review
RE.com (S. Abrams) review

Aftermath (orig. Pokłosie) [2013] [IMDb] [FW.pl]*(screenplay and directed by Władysław Pasikowski [IMDb] [FW.pl]* based on the true incident recounted in the book Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland [2001] by Jan Tomasz Gross), which played recently here in Chicago at the Polish Film Festival in America (but with a synopsis so "spoiler-free" that I honestly didn't know what the film was about until after the festival was over ;-) is a well constructed tale that utilizes the conventions that will be recognizable to American viewers as that of American Film Noir to bring to light a very ugly secret: During Nazi occupation in at least one case, Polish peasants took advantage of the Nazi campaign of exterminating Jews to (on their own, without much prodding by the German Gestapo) wipe-out the Jews of their own community ... in order to steal their land.

[The film is playing again at the Music Box Theater here in Chicago, which also organized a Panel discussion after one of the showings which included a representative of the Polish Consulate in Chicago as well as two Professors, one of Polish Studies and another, my Order's own, Fr. John Pawlikowski, OSM of the Catholic Theological Union here in Chicago and a former member of the National Holocaust Museum Commission.  I attended the showing with the subsequent panel discussion]. 

Needless to say, the J.T. Gross' original book caused a sensation (and an official Polish Government inquiry which both by-and-large vindicated Gross' claims regarding the 1941 Polish peasant instigated pogrom in Jedwabne AND found (thankfully) the atrocity to be all-but unique in the history of Nazi occupation of Poland.  J.T. Gross' subsequent works including Złote żniwa (Golden Harvest) about how various Poles across Poland would have benefited financially from taking-over property (both land and other material wealth) after their Jewish neighbors were taken away by the Nazis first to the Ghettos and then extermination camps have caused further controversy with Gross having been accused of oversimplification and more-or-less obvious one-sidedness.

This is because while Gross was CERTAINLY RIGHT that many Poles probably benefited from the land and property left behind by their deported and subsequently largely exterminated Jewish neighbors, Poles were CERTAINLY NOT the only "beneficiaries" of such "vulture-like" behavior nor were Jews the only victims.  The recent film Sarah's Key [2011] about the rounding-up and deportation of Paris' Jews (an operation run by PARIS' OWN LOCAL (FRENCH) AUTHORITIES if under direction of the German occupiers) reminded viewers that there are plenty of homes and flats across Paris that were confiscated after the deportation of their Jewish owners and then reallocated to non-Jewish French families.  And this would have been true across the whole of Europe.

Then the situation became even more complex in Poland after the War because 1/3 of Poland today belonged to Germany prior to World War II and the eastern half of pre-WW II Poland was annexed by the Soviet Union and now belongs to Belarus and the Ukraine.  SO THERE ARE MILLIONS OF POLES WHO LIVE IN HOMES OR OTHERWISE "OWN" LAND THAT USED TO BELONG TO GERMANS, even as millions of Poles were displaced (losing their land/property) as well.  Going south to my parents' country the Czech Republic and a similar phenomenon occurred when after World War II the post-war Czechoslovak government summarily expelled the three million ethnic Germans of the Sudeten region of that country.  Again there are perhaps millions of Czechs who now live in homes and "own" land that used to belong to ethnic Germans.   An excellent Czech film ALSO using the conventions of American Film Noir applying them to the "unspeakable secret" of the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans from their lands was the recent and quite haunting Alois Nebel [2011].

THEN ADD THE COMMUNISTS TO THE MIX who confiscated lands and other property from "rich people" OF ALL ETHNICITIES  ACROSS ALL OF CENTRAL/EASTERN EUROPE, and redistributed them to others.  So there were a multitude of mass property thefts that occurred all across Europe and particularly Central/Eastern Europe during the middle half of the 20th century.

Then add to this list of property crimes, honestly, the confiscations of Arab lands that took place during the 1948 Israeli War of Independence (one of the biggest sticking points in the making of an Israeli-Palestinian Peace agreement is the question of the "right of return" of Palestinians to land that belonged to their families for centuries that was lost during that first Arab-Israeli War). 

Resolving these many, many layers of "property issues" would honestly require a Solomon as well as an ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF MERCY.

Hence it should not be surprising that a film like this one "would strike a nerve," and I certainly understand the fear of many Poles (expressed in some of the coverage of this film above) that a film like this would just make people across the Western world HATE POLES even as POLES HAVE BEEN SCREAMING FOR DECADES THAT THEY WERE ENORMOUS AND WILDLY UNDER-APPRECIATED VICTIMS DURING WORLD WAR II AND NOT JUST AT THE HANDS OF THE NAZIS who enslaved them, murdered a good part of their Intelligencia and even as the Nazis' War was lost leveled their capital city, Warsaw, to dust BUT ALSO OF THE SOVIETS who stole the eastern half of their country and deported millions of Poles from that part of the country East (an excellent recent film on this Soviet-era crime is the Polish language/English subtitled film Siberian Exile (orig. Syberiada Polska) [2013]) and waited patiently while the Nazis leveled Warsaw during the Warsaw Uprising wiping out most of the non-Communist "Polish Home Army" for them before coming in to "liberate" the country.

Still the truth is the truth and part of that truth is Nazi-era Pogrom in Jedwabne was an atrocity not committed by the Nazis but by Polish peasants themselves.  That is then what this film is about.  And as is typical of the young everywhere, the younger generation in Poland just wants to know its past and know the truth so that it can go forward from there.  And who can not appreciate that desire?

So then how does the current film then play out?

It begins presumably around the year 2000 with 40-something year old Franek Kalina (played by Ireneusz Czop [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) arriving in Warsaw (from Chicago) for the first time over 20 years after having left Poland during the Communist era following the 1980 crackdown against Solidarity.  He's not picked-up by anybody at the airport.  Instead, he takes a taxi to the train station, and then by train, then by bus and finally by foot he arrives, at night-fall, at his family's homestead at the edge of a small provincial town somewhere in rural Poland.

Why didn't his younger brother Józef (played by Maciej Stuhr [IMDb] [FW.pl]*) pick him up at the airport, or even at the bus-stop at the edge of town?  Well, apparently he didn't even know that Franek was coming.  Why?  Because they hadn't been talking in years.  Why?  Because Franek had appeared to be so involved in his own life in the West that he didn't even return to Poland for his parents' funerals.  Note that in an early conversation between the two after Franek appeared suddenly at Józef's doorstep, Franek tried to explain that it wouldn't have been easy for him to return as they died still during the Communist Era and conceivably could have gotten himself in trouble with the then Communist authorities if he had returned.  True or not, or partly true or not, the fact was the Franek hadn't come back for his parents' funerals and hence had been written off as being basically dead by Józef (and as we find out, by the rest of the village).

Okay, so what the heck is Franek doing at his family's homestead in Poland so many years after having broken ties with his parents/brother following his departure?  Well, we're told that JOZEF'S WIFE AND KID(S) suddenly appeared at Franek's doorstep in Chicago and Franek could not get a clear answer from them why THEY were there.  All he knew was that it was something about what Józef was doing.  So Franek flew out to Poland thinking that Józef his brother had been somehow abusing his wife and kids.

Yet it soon becomes clear that something else is going on: As the two confront each other in a very awkward initial conversation -- "What the heck are you doing here Franek after all these years?  Mom and Pop have been dead for a bunch of years.  You know YOUR PARENTS, the ones whose funerals you didn't bother to come back for."  "I get that, but WHY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS did your wife and kid(s) SUDDENLY show up at my doorstep back in Chicago?" -- a brick flies through through the window of Józef's house abruptly changing the conversation: "What the heck was that?" asks Franek.  "Ask in the village," replies Józef.

So the next day, Franek does.  The villagers _all remember_ Franek as the one who left the village back in 1980 and never returned, not even for his parents' funerals.   But they do add that Józef had apparently done something that had irritated them all.  What was it?  Well, he had dug up something on the "old road by the tannery" outside of town.  What was it?  Well, it turns out that during the Nazi occupation, the Nazis had paved "the old road by the old tannery" with the gravestones of the local Jewish cemetery.  Soon after the war, the local Polish government had paved over the the gravestones with asphalt so that the stones were no longer visible.  Well, a number of years prior to Franek's return, a flood came and washed away the much of the asphalt AND Józef one of the few people still taking that road (to his family's fields) happened upon those old Jewish gravestones.  NATURALLY APPALLED by what he saw, he started to recover those old grave stones, and SINCE NONE OF THE LOCAL AUTHORITIES SEEMED TO WANT TO DO ANYTHING WITH THEM he started to put them up, upright in his field nearby.  Józef explained to Franek: "It just seemed the right thing to do.  We (as Catholics...) are supposed to honor the dead." (Remember, Franek didn't even come home for his his own parents' funerals ...).

Anyway, the town didn't take too kindly to what Józef was doing.  Those gravestones had been paved over (buried) there in the road for a long time, and the villagers didn't want to dig this all up ...

Why?  Well, that's the rest of the story and the story does follow more or less what truly happened in the village of Jedwabne: It wasn't really the Nazis who got rid of (killed) the village's Jews, it was the Poles of the village themselves.   Why?  Well, in part for their land, and yes (and this is _always_ one of the great "little evils" of dictatorship ...) to settle old scores: "So I was not good enough for you?  NOW DIE, you and your whole family..." 

In any case, what a horror that these two brothers progressively walk into!  And the horror just keeps going: "What do you mean that this house where we were both born, these fields that our family owned, were not really ours...?"

This is honestly A GREAT and VERY BRAVE movie.  It's ugly, it's horrific.  It's something that NO ONE would want to hear about one's past or one's family's past.  But it's also the truth.

And the Truth CAN set one free.  Again this is a great film and ANYONE who tries to use this film against POLES ought to remember that this story (or one similar to it) could be repeated OVER AND OVER AGAIN across Europe and EVEN NO ONE OF EUROPEAN DESCENT who lives in the Western Hemisphere today lives on land that originally belonged to his/her families.  IT WAS ALL STOLEN from the natives who originally lived here.  Every nation, every people has "skeletons" in its closet.


* Foreign language webpages are most easily translated using Google's Chrome Browser.

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