Week Ending 12/29/23
Happy New Year!
I said I hoped to get at least two on the list of foreign films I posted last week watched because I wanted to stay conservative while getting to a lot more. Well … I only watched two. One (PERFECT DAYS) because it was a GWNYFCA nominee I needed to finish. The second (THE PROMISED LAND) because someone on my Twitter feed mentioned it—I’m glad they did because I liked it enough to put in my current Top Ten of 2023 (running tomorrow at The Film Stage).
The reason I only got to two despite watching more films is that we’re at the stage of the FYC game where expiration dates come into play. Some studios pull access the day of your group’s nominations. Some give you until the end of the year. Some until the end of January. It becomes a juggling act wherein I needed to see the below Sony Pictures Classics titles before Wednesday while having another month to check out IFC’s THE TASTE OF THINGS. I only had three more days to watch NAPOLEON, but an unspecified amount of time to fire up GODLAND.
Add the fact I needed to catch four films for final GWNYFCA voting and priorities start to get moved around. Would I ever have considered watching THE ERAS TOUR if it hadn’t been included on our ballot? No. Should it be on the ballot considering it’s a straight concert film and not a documentary? Well, if other members thought it should, then it should. That’s the only prerequisite that matters.
It’s a pretty solid list of films again, so definitely take a look if you’re wondering what to watch next. I’m bummed HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE didn’t get more than a breakthrough director nod, but ecstatic ALL OF US STRANGERS snuck into the Best Film race. That’s the beauty of an aggregate vote: most disappointments will be met with a pleasant surprise.
Winners will be announced live at the Dryden Theatre on 1/6/24.
What I Watched:
FREUD’S LAST SESSION
(in limited release)
A man of faith (Matthew Goode’s C.S. Lewis) visits a dying nonbeliever (Anthony Hopkins’ Sigmund Freud) at the latter’s behest to discuss the existence of God. Did this meeting actually happen? No one knows (the film confirms as much before the credits). But what would they have said if it did?
The premise behind Matt Brown’s adaptation of Mark St. Germain‘s play is an intriguing bit speculative fiction wherein they mold what they know about both men into a spirited dialogue. However, since it is all hypothetical, can you ever really supply a concrete truth from the exercise? Can who these men are upon meeting truly change once they say their goodbyes? Not really.
The truth we as an audience find is therefore a generic one: mankind is a flawed species that ultimately has no one to blame for its inevitable demise but itself. That’s the one thing these two characters can agree upon, whether it’s a result of there being no God to save us or God simply watching to see if we finally save ourselves.
So, despite solid performances and an entertaining script built upon flashbacks that show Freud and Lewis’s own flaws and hypocrisies, the film mostly just moves in circles. It’s a series of “gotchas” that ultimately finishes with a knowing smirk settled upon both men’s faces to mark their enjoyment in the fact that they held their own to not lose the debate … even if no one actually wins it either.
- 6/10
MENUS-PLAISIRS - LES TROISGROS
(in limited release)
It takes about three hours and forty minutes, but Frederick Wiseman finally shows us a moment where chef Michel Troisgros is captivating a table of customers at his Michelin-rated restaurant with the story of his family. We have gleaned a bit of it before then (that oldest son César manages that establishment with his father still very much involved while youngest son Leo manages the family’s second restaurant), but it’s nice to have it laid out with context and detail beyond our assumptions based solely on narrative clues.
Before then, MENUS-PLAISIRS - LES TROISGROS is all vibes. The clanking of glasses and clinging of silverware while everyone in the kitchen sautés and sears as orders are called out from the front. Something needs more salt. A plate is missing a component, yet no one is quite sure what beyond its absence. Chefs are working out how to adjust for food allergies (or taste like a client admitting he doesn’t like chocolate). And the organic meat, produce, and wine suppliers give us a brief explanation of their processes (the cheese monger even gives us a tour) to round everything off.
This is admittedly my first Wiseman film and I can see why so many people adore his work. Mostly, I can see why PBS adores it since the system-based, fly-on-the-wall documentary aesthetic provided really lends itself to the educational sphere above entertainment. It won’t be for everyone as a result. I personally don’t see a need to dive into the filmmaker’s past works solely based on his involvement. The style complements the scope of his subjects, but it doesn’t necessarily hold itself as a reason to watch on its own. You must be curious about the place and ready for an insane investment of time.
My enjoyment came from making fun of the customers and their pantomime of “affluence safely confined to a world of affluence” with no fear of my judgment at the moment of being filmed. I do not see the appeal to ever eat at an establishment like this, but I do totally respect the Troisgros clan as artists and their restaurants as their galleries.
Oh! And I’ll never forget that you must drain the blood from a brain before you blanch it. See, I’m cultured now.
- 7/10
NAPOLEON
(in theaters)
So, which one is it? Did Ridley Scott learn from his experience with HOUSE OF GUCCI that forcing bad accents only makes biopics worse? Or does the lack of French accents in NAPOLEON reveal that it was the GUCCI actors who decided to do whatever it was they thought they were doing and he let them?
Perhaps it’s simply a product of style and how Scott wanted to deliver the respective comedic tones that run through both—if said tone is intentional, something I must believe since he’s too seasoned and particular a filmmaker for it not to be. He wanted GUCCI to be a cartoon and NAPOLEON the rise and fall of a bratty, boorish idiot. To his credit, both do prove entertaining. Sadly, they also both fail to be much more than that.
David Scarpa’s script focusing on Napoleon’s (Joaquin Phoenix is hilarious) life through the prism of his relationship with Josephine (Vanessa Kirby) is an intriguing one considering the letters they wrote to each other (which, as the movie explains, were stolen and sold upon her death). I like the idea that these two were always better together despite their deficiencies where fidelity was concerned and that he ultimately paved his own demise by choosing legacy over love.
I don’t, however, think the film does a great job keeping this focus considering Kirby is all but absent for the majority of the second half—a pawn shown in the background or remembered solely through Phoenix uttering her name as he writes about his latest insecurities. Josephine isn’t given enough to make the whole as electric as it is when the two of them are debating the merits of their union in the private and public spheres of their ambition. I wish she were since the rest is rather forgettable. Boring even when it comes to moments like Waterloo’s inevitability (save Phoenix’s always funny petulance).
I’ll give Scott credit for the battle on the ice, though. It’s a fantastic scene rivaled only by Phoenix and Kirby goofing around as they portray their characters’ silly flirtations. Maybe Scott will eventually tear down the Oscar-bait-y façade his projects seem unable to relinquish and just make the full-blown farce it seems he so desperately wants. I hope it’s coming so we can reevaluate this current era of his career as a lead-up to its insanity rather than a muddled mess.
And if, as rumors say, a four-hour “director’s cut” is released on AppleTV+, I don’t think I’ll watch. Because it’s not 2005. We were deprived of Scott’s vision when KINGDOM OF HEAVEN debuted and subsequently granted the opportunity to see it afterwards. Last I checked it’s 2023 and Apple had the ability to just release what they’re apparently going to release anyway on streaming right away, rendering this cut an intentionally inferior product in the hopes curiosity rather than desire gets viewers to double dip. It’s a potential precedent making me consider whether I should avoid Apple titles altogether.
- 6/10
PERFECT DAYS
(limited release in 2024; Japan’s 2023 International Oscar submission)
Kôji Yakusho embodies the character of Hirayama with so much personality and childlike awe for the little pleasures in life that we know he’s going to eventually put an “x” somewhere on that tic-tac-toe board he finds tucked away in one of the bathrooms he cleans. This is a man who stops what he’s doing to admire reflections dancing on the ceiling. Who takes pictures of trees with film and revels in the classic rock cassettes he’ll never sell because they aren’t just a fad to him. How can he not choose to make some stranger’s day with a friendly game?
This is who director Wim Wenders and co-writer Takuma Takasaki have created to live at the center of their PERFECT DAYS. Hirayama is a creature of routine who takes pride in his life and work regardless of how easy it is for others to dismiss the choices he’s made to build it into what it has become. He doesn’t have to clean public toilets with a meticulousness that can never be preserved due to the fluid nature of the facility itself. After eventually meeting his niece (Arisa Nakano) and sister (Yumi Asô), we can presume he walked away from a charmed existence. But the leaving shouldn’t define him, so we never find out for sure.
Nor should we when the film specifically asks us to take Hirayama at face value. It doesn’t matter what his past was or what his future holds. “Now is now.” And while it may look as though he’s alone, he’s not without people who care for him even if it’s just as “the regular customer who gets a glass of water each day.” Hirayama enjoys reading, listening to music, and watering the saplings he finds and relocates to his tiny apartment. But his interests being solitary doesn’t mean he is too. Yes, he hardly talks. But he listens. Watches. Reacts. Young Takashi (Tokio Emoto) could learn a thing or two if he ever fell silent long enough to pay attention.
The result is a simple tale of controlled monotony broken up by sharp interludes of intrigue sparked by changes both small (a homeless man not being where he usually is) and large (favors and hiccups steering Hirayama off course). It’s a quietly sweet look at a person unbeholden to the constraints of an ever-evolving society’s demands—a man who knows himself and is comfortable living within the means of that identity. No more. No less. It doesn’t mean he won’t still get sad or frustrated that few join him on that path, though. That’s merely the price he pays for the opportunity to always be surprised. Because no tears Yakusho sheds will ever diminish the warmth of his smile.
- 8/10
THE PROMISED LAND [Bastarden]
(opens in limited release on 2/2/24; Denmark’s 2023 International Oscar submission)
This one hits hard. And precisely when you least expect it. Because Nikolaj Arcel’s THE PROMISED LAND (adapted by him and co-writer Anders Thomas Jensen from Ida Jessen’s book) is billed as a revenge film pitting Mads Mikkelsen’s poor military captain Ludvig von Kahlen against Simon Bennebjerg’s sadistic nobleman Frederik De Schinkel. While that is what the plot provides for a majority of the runtime, the narrative proves so much bigger. Not in external scope, but in the internal growth of a man beholden to unjust rules.
Kahlen has already overcome his peasant status by earning a rank in twenty-five years that men of means receive in just a few months. His hope is to leverage that standing into a chance at more—namely infertile land that Denmark’s king wishes to settle but has yet to bear fruit. So, he makes a deal with the government. If he produces enough yield on his own dime to attract settlers and expand the kingdom, they will give him a title. Kahlen covets that recognition and he will stop at nothing to prove worthy of it.
Enter De Schinkel, a cruel landowner who lords over that region precisely because no one can pose a threat without the ability to farm. His power is thus predicated on the heath remaining a wasteland, so he looks to bribe Kahlen into leaving and eventually strong-arm him out when he refuses. Kahlen is a pragmatic idealist who believes if he works within the system, he can ascend within it. De Schinkel is a spoiled brat who knows that his wealth allows him to bend that system to his whims. It’s David vs. Goliath on multiple fronts.
But while Mikkelsen is as terrifying as he’s ever been whenever De Schinkel pushes him to the edge of civility, the real fight on-screen is that between Kahlen and himself. Because no matter how unfeeling he wishes he could be to mimic those he wants to treat him as an equal, his past ensures that his shrewdness won’t devolve into malice. It’s not for a lack of trying—he simply cannot work alongside good people long enough to prove De Schinkel and Denmark wrong without endearing himself to them. Without, in some cases, discovering that he loves them too.
What at first seems like a bit of added intrigue to the personal land war being waged—kindness and respect for a housekeeper (Amanda Collin’s Ann Barbara) and orphan girl (Melina Hagberg’s Anmai Mus)—soon reveals itself to be the central point. Because Kahlen has a choice to make: become that which he desires at their expense and thus become their undoing or stand up for their humanity and dignity at the expense of his dream. Will he feed into the broken system that abandoned him or rise to become an alternative to it?
It’s not a simple question and Kahlen doesn’t automatically choose the correct answer. He tries to straddle the line—doing right by those he should while also not risking his own desires. But half measures only work for the side that doesn’t care if he lives or dies anyway. They’ll destroy those who cannot survive without him giving everything he has. So, the while the path forward leads to violence, the real challenge is showing where that violence comes from. Arcel and company aren’t just satiating our bloodlust in this conflict, they’re dealing with intent. “Need” and “want” are not equal.
The beauty of THE PROMISED LAND isn’t in its ability to open our eyes to this reality, but revealing it to Kahlen. We’re watching his brain get rewired as he witnesses the consequences of greed and self-righteousness and awakens himself to the fact own actions are driven by the same sins. It leads to a devastatingly brutal climax before shifting towards an emotional epilogue bringing everything together in the simplest yet most profound way possible by filling the void of tragedy with a wealth of hope. Because a man isn’t a title on a piece of paper. He’s the imprint left upon the hearts of those who love him.
- 9/10
THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGE [Das Lehrerzimmer]
(in limited release; Germany’s 2023 International Oscar submission)
From the first scene inside the titular lounge, Ilker Çatak’s film (co-written with Johannes Duncker) portrays how the faculty is just as cliquish and immature as the students. They gossip. They judge. They villainize and conspire. It eventually gets uncomfortable enough that Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch) tells the assistant principal (Rafael Stachowiak’s Dudek) they need to stop speaking Polish and stick to German so as not to alienate themselves. She’s new to the school after all. This is her first semester and she’s on the outside looking in. She doesn’t yet know that crossing over might take her soul.
THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGE starts with a tribunal of sorts. Someone has been stealing money and supplies and, for reasons undisclosed, the staff believes it is a student in Nowak’s class. So, she, Dudek, and Thomas Liebenwerda (Michael Klammer) confront the class’s “representatives”—two students who are in effect singled out to rat on their friends. Nowak does all she can to defend the kids and tell them they don’t have to say anything. Liebenwerda pulls out an attendance list and asks them to nod when he reaches a suspicious name.
That’s all it takes to label a child guilty. No proof. No witness testimony. No confession. Just assumption. And one that’s easily negated as far as facts are concerned once the parents get involved. Yet it sticks nonetheless in the court of public opinion. That child is marked now. Being the child of immigrants, he already was. The teachers can apologize or shrug off the effect of such stigmatizations (casting Liebenwerda as a Black actor adds crucial layers to his actions as persecutor throughout the film) all they want, but they don’t truly care.
The only one who does is Nowak. Sadly, that knowledge is worthless when you’re on an island alone amongst a group of catty fear-mongers worse than children because their age and “experience” embolden them to believe they have irrefutable authority. It leads Carla to take matters into her own hands by staging a scenario that might allow her to clandestinely catch the real perpetrator in the act. The unfortunate reality of the overall circumstances, however, demand that she involves others after doing so. Others that escalate, confuse, and exacerbate an already tenuous ecosystem.
It’s a tense and heartbreaking journey as the ripple effects of what occurs threatens to destroy futures. The psychological damage is immense as accusations are hidden, facts are shrouded by ambiguous language, and rumors are allowed to run rampant. What then is the truth? Is truth even a legitimate concept anymore when half the population has been trained to use opinions and self-satisfying desires as a means to “refute” empirical evidence? And, to make matters more complex, truth should become secondary to the most important aspect of the whole: the safety of children.
Nowak might be the lead, but it is young Oskar Kuhn (Leonard Stettnisch) who sits at the center of this drama. His mother (Eva Löbau) wants revenge on the school, using him as a pawn to get it. The school wants blood from the thief who took “hundreds of pencils,” neglecting him to procure it. And then there’s Carla watching the world implode around her best student. Carla, the person who unwittingly started the whole ordeal and now regrets how her role allowed the collateral damage (the kids) to steal control of the narrative and create even more.
Benesch is fantastic. The exasperation. The compassion. The guilt of causing pain and the anger that those around her think it was warranted. Even when she tries to do the right thing, those in power deny her so as not to show weakness. To them, sacrificing one kid is worth sweeping it all under the rug. Listening to the loudest voices causes less trouble than listening to the voices of reason. Because, at the end of the day, schools aren’t made for kids. They aren’t built to educate and better society. They’re institutions of capitalism. They babysit so parents can work, training the next generation of workers. So, who cares if one gets left behind?
- 8/10
THEY SHOT THE PIANO PLAYER
(in limited release)
You could turn Jeff Harris’ book about Tenório Júnior into a generic documentary with disembodied voices and archival footage or you could take his numerous recorded interviews and turn them into animated talking heads with Javier Mariscal and Fernando Trueba‘s style from CHICO & RITA giving it an energy to match the Bossa Nova and Samba beats of the era.
THEY SHOT THE PIANO PLAYER is thus two things at once: an account of how Harris’ journey to write a book about Brazilian music evolved into a historical account of the disappearance of one of the scene’s been pianists as well as how that shift in perspective evolves into a metaphorical representation of South American life under an ever-increasing blanket of dictatorship.
The animation is great. The music is better. And the story is fascinating if only to ensure this revered yet unknown artist outside of the memories of legends doesn’t become completely lost to time. It’s a tragic politically-motivated crime like many that we hear about from that period—the majority of which see the US government as a complicit partner with blood on its hands.
Jeff Goldblum playing Harris can be distracting (sometimes I wondered if the filmmakers piped in reaction words for laughs like new scenes beginning with Goldblum just goofily and breathlessly saying “Hello”), but his involvement obviously adds marketability for a subject that might not have gained traction without it. Which is a shame since it is an intriguing bit of convergence between music and politics—another blindly persecuted artist by a totalitarian regime preemptively silencing any potential dissent.
- 7/10
Cinematic F-Bombs:
No new additions to the archive this week, so here’s Peter Billingsley not saying “Fudge” in A CHRISTMAS STORY. cinematicfbombs.com
New Releases This Week:
(Review links where applicable)
Opening Buffalo-area theaters 12/29/23 -
DEVIL: THE BRITISH SECRET AGENT at Regal Elmwood
Streaming from 12/29/23 -
TIME BOMB Y2K – Max on 12/30
Now on VOD/Digital HD -
BURNING LAND (12/26)
PROVO (12/26)
HOUSE IN TIME (12/29)
From the press kit archive:
