Almodovar loves women. He thinks they are amazing, powerful, beautiful creatures that one ought worship on high. He is fascinated by their otherness, their bodies, their faces, their tears, the way they walk, the choices they make. He is thrilled by their hidden resources of strength, their inherent toughness, and simultaneously moved by their defenselessness and vulnerability. His women totter bravely through life on impossibly high heels and the camera watches their incredible hips sway awkwardely as they struggle with their burdens. It's a fascinating vision of women, not less so because it's so obviously a fantasy. There's something kind of touching about this man who so badly wants to understand what the world looks like from a woman's point of view, and is so very very wrong. Yes, part of me is appalled by this othering of women, and irritated by the objectification lurking beneath this idolatry. But on the other hand, I can't help but be drawn to a film that has such a coherent and well realized idea behind it. He has a very clear and consistent style. As a result, his movies kind of seem like variations on a theme - you've seen one and you sort of get the gist - but they're enjoyable nonetheless.
Penelope Cruz does a truly epic job as the main star. Her gigantic eyes are brimming with tears for half the movie, and her body, one feels, practically deserves to be credited on its own, because so much of the action of the movie revolves around watching her incredible curves move.
Volver is an elegant movie. It's very precise; all the loose ends are tied up. It's got a pleasing sort of geometry to it, which I'm a total sucker for, even if it does make for a rather predictable film. It's also quite funny, in a lovely, absurdist sort of way. I suppose the film is meant to be a meditation of mother-daughter relationships, but honestly, I didn't find that particularly compelling. Your reflections on human relationships just aren't that convincing when all of your characters are walking abstractions. Some of them are more successful than others - the pot smoking cancer victim subplot didn't do much for me, honestly. But Almodovar makes up for it by casting women who have truly fascinating faces, so even if you don't find a characters particularly compelling, you enjoy looking at her anyhow. I mean, it's his greatest strength, as a director - he's interesting, visually. It's eye candy.
I suspect that most people who loved this movie - because many people did, I think - appreciated very different aspects of it than I did. All in all though, I recommend it. It's ann entertaining way to spend 2 hours. It's interesting, in that it's a movie that makes a curious kind of impression on you. I am already forgetting large parts of the plot, and yet, I have a strong sense of the film still in the back of my mind. Hmmm.
21 April 2007
13 April 2007
Soy Cuba
Visually, this is probably the most incredible movie I have ever seen. The shots are mindblowingly beautiful. One generally notices when the things on screen look quite pretty, but this was the first time that I have actually gasped from sheer delight. I found myself gazing intently at the screen, devoting the sort of attention to the lush visuals that one normally reserves for incredible paintings. I am so very happy to have been able to see it on the big screen, because it truly deserves nothing less.
As for content, it's also quite well done. The film is basically 4 vignettes about the people of Cuba (and their suffering). It's obviously politically motivated - the movie was made in 1964 for goddsakes - but it's not obnoxiously polemical. A lot of what the film wants to do, it does in a kind of gestural mode, by heightening the aestheticization of its treatment of the subject. What I mean by this, is that it conveys meaning in the way that a particularly powerful photograph does. The composition of the shots is absolutely epic, particularly of people's facial expressions. It's baroque - it's heightened, it's incredible. There's something really fascinating about this narrative mode - you get very few details, just the bare bones that sort of orient you in a given scene, allowing you to extrapolate motives, desires, etc. There's not much dialogue - it's more like the actors are embodying the particular mood of the character. As though someone said, "you are a sculpture depicting shame. what do you look like? go!" It's amazing.
All in all, really, a mindblowing work. Really a must-see for everyone.
As requested in comments, some stills:
As for content, it's also quite well done. The film is basically 4 vignettes about the people of Cuba (and their suffering). It's obviously politically motivated - the movie was made in 1964 for goddsakes - but it's not obnoxiously polemical. A lot of what the film wants to do, it does in a kind of gestural mode, by heightening the aestheticization of its treatment of the subject. What I mean by this, is that it conveys meaning in the way that a particularly powerful photograph does. The composition of the shots is absolutely epic, particularly of people's facial expressions. It's baroque - it's heightened, it's incredible. There's something really fascinating about this narrative mode - you get very few details, just the bare bones that sort of orient you in a given scene, allowing you to extrapolate motives, desires, etc. There's not much dialogue - it's more like the actors are embodying the particular mood of the character. As though someone said, "you are a sculpture depicting shame. what do you look like? go!" It's amazing.
All in all, really, a mindblowing work. Really a must-see for everyone.
As requested in comments, some stills:
02 April 2007
Children of Men
Most future of doomy-doom movies take as their starting point the problem that the world is ending. Not so with Children of Men, or at least, not exactly - in this case, it's not the world that is ending, but humanity itself. The year is 2027 and humans have lost the ability to procreate. There hasn't been a new child born in over 18 years. Meanwhile, the world, apparently, has become a warzone. In the midst of all this, we have Clive Owens, our protagonist, who is on a mission to convey a young woman, who is miraculously pregnant, to the coast of England. The idea is that he will deliver her to The Human Project, which may or may not exist. Why is he doing that? What is The Human Project? Why is it so difficult to travel in these times? I haven't the foggiest idea.
An interesting feature of this film is that it doesn't do what most movies set in the future do - tell you what in the hell is going on. Generally, when you have a movie set in a totally alien time/landscape, there's some attempt to fill you in on the missing info. This actually spoils the "realism" of it, because people generally don't explain basic facts about their world and the time they're living in during quotidian conversation. So it's kind of refreshing to have a film set in the future that could actually have been made at the time; that pretends that the viewer knows what's going on. Of course, this lack of explanation is also a rather convenient feature that allows the creator of that world to avoid having to figure it all out, perhaps. Why is there all this political turmoil? Who's fighting who?
On the other hand, this makes it rather frustrating for the viewer, because it's a wholly disorienting experience. One has absolutely no idea why the world is the way it apparently is, and therefore, why certain characters behave the way that they do. Why, for instance, does Kee (the pregnant woman) have to be transported in secret to the coast? Why hasn't news of this miraculous pregnancy been made public? Well, one answer to that, perhaps, is that these are characters struggling to reclaim a basic kind of humanity in a world that has gone completely bonkers. Were Kee to make known her pregnancy, she would most likely become an object for science, politics, ideology, etc. But all she wants to do is have her baby - and this, in a way, is exactly what needs to happen for this topsyturvy world to get back on its feet. It's a struggle for normalcy against all odds - wasn't it Gandhi who said "Be the change you want to see in the world" ?
So in this sense, perhaps, this movie is actually about what makes us human. My friend Russ, who went to see the movie with me, saw it as illuminating the way in which "civilized" behavior depends upon the looming future being present in the form of children, not in some kind of sappy Hollywood way, but in a very tangible presence that makes people question their own behavior and its effect on others. I think that an interpretation of the film in terms of its views on ethics is a bit tricky, but I do agree that there's some evidence for it.
This sense of a fully real alternate world is made all the more convincing by the incredible cinematography and remarkably consistent and well thought-out visual component - there's a staggering amount of detail, also never explained (giant floating pigs?) that make the world seem both familiar and alien, but quite real. I think this is also a part of the narrative strategy - the movie is telling a story in a wholy different way. The way that information is organized is puzzling - one doesn't know how to read it. There is, for instance, a sort of subplot to do with feet. There are LOTS and LOTS of shots of feet. Characters keep losing shoes, finding new ones, stubbing toes, washing feet, etc. Why? What is it doing there? It's subtle, and it seems to have some kind of meaning, but lord only knows what it is. Likewise, there's a lot of darkly absurdist dialogue that is quite funny, but again, confusing. And certain recurring repetitions, bits of dialogue that seem like they ought to be important because they keep coming up, and yet I have no idea why.
All in all, a very intriguing film, but an utterly baffling one.
An interesting feature of this film is that it doesn't do what most movies set in the future do - tell you what in the hell is going on. Generally, when you have a movie set in a totally alien time/landscape, there's some attempt to fill you in on the missing info. This actually spoils the "realism" of it, because people generally don't explain basic facts about their world and the time they're living in during quotidian conversation. So it's kind of refreshing to have a film set in the future that could actually have been made at the time; that pretends that the viewer knows what's going on. Of course, this lack of explanation is also a rather convenient feature that allows the creator of that world to avoid having to figure it all out, perhaps. Why is there all this political turmoil? Who's fighting who?
On the other hand, this makes it rather frustrating for the viewer, because it's a wholly disorienting experience. One has absolutely no idea why the world is the way it apparently is, and therefore, why certain characters behave the way that they do. Why, for instance, does Kee (the pregnant woman) have to be transported in secret to the coast? Why hasn't news of this miraculous pregnancy been made public? Well, one answer to that, perhaps, is that these are characters struggling to reclaim a basic kind of humanity in a world that has gone completely bonkers. Were Kee to make known her pregnancy, she would most likely become an object for science, politics, ideology, etc. But all she wants to do is have her baby - and this, in a way, is exactly what needs to happen for this topsyturvy world to get back on its feet. It's a struggle for normalcy against all odds - wasn't it Gandhi who said "Be the change you want to see in the world" ?
So in this sense, perhaps, this movie is actually about what makes us human. My friend Russ, who went to see the movie with me, saw it as illuminating the way in which "civilized" behavior depends upon the looming future being present in the form of children, not in some kind of sappy Hollywood way, but in a very tangible presence that makes people question their own behavior and its effect on others. I think that an interpretation of the film in terms of its views on ethics is a bit tricky, but I do agree that there's some evidence for it.
This sense of a fully real alternate world is made all the more convincing by the incredible cinematography and remarkably consistent and well thought-out visual component - there's a staggering amount of detail, also never explained (giant floating pigs?) that make the world seem both familiar and alien, but quite real. I think this is also a part of the narrative strategy - the movie is telling a story in a wholy different way. The way that information is organized is puzzling - one doesn't know how to read it. There is, for instance, a sort of subplot to do with feet. There are LOTS and LOTS of shots of feet. Characters keep losing shoes, finding new ones, stubbing toes, washing feet, etc. Why? What is it doing there? It's subtle, and it seems to have some kind of meaning, but lord only knows what it is. Likewise, there's a lot of darkly absurdist dialogue that is quite funny, but again, confusing. And certain recurring repetitions, bits of dialogue that seem like they ought to be important because they keep coming up, and yet I have no idea why.
All in all, a very intriguing film, but an utterly baffling one.
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