The Bourne Cinema Filmography: Tsai Ming-liang, "The Hole" (1998)

The Hole (Dong). 1998. Directed by Tsai Ming-liang. Written by Yang Ping-ying and Tsai Ming-liang. Produced by Cheng Su-ming, Chiu Shun-ching and Pierre Chevalier. Cinematography by Liao Peng-jung. Edited by Hsiao Ju-kuan. Art direction by Lee Pao-lin. Choreography by Joy Lo. Sound by Yang Ching-an.

Cast: Yang Kuei-mei (The woman downstairs), Lee Kang-sheng (The man upstairs), Miao Tien (a shopper), Tong Hsiang-chu (the plumber), Lin Hui-chin (a neighbor), Lin Kun-huei (the child), Chen Shiang-chyi, Dephne Han, Wei Bo-chin, Jacques Picoux, Yee Chih-yen, Lu Hsiao-lin (Narrators).

One of the most interesting things about Tsai Ming-liang’s filmmaking career, considering what an inimitable and uncompromising artist he is, is the fact that three of the nine features he has directed to date have been commissioned projects. This is true of his two most recent films. I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone (2006), Tsai’s first film to be set in Malaysia, the country of his birth, was commissioned by Peter Sellars to be part of the New Crowned Hope Festival, a celebration in Vienna to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth. Tsai’s latest, Face, was commissioned by the Louvre museum, as the initial installment of its “Louvre Invites Filmmakers” program; this film, as Tsai remarked during a discussion after its screening this past Sunday at Asia Society, will play in the museum for a year.

Tsai’s first commissioned film was The Hole, which was part of French production company Haut et Court and television station La Sept Arte’s series “2000 Seen By …,” a collection of eight films imagining the upcoming end of the millennium. The Hole has a vaguely science-fiction premise: Taipei has been struck by a mysterious virus called the “Taiwan Virus” which has as its symptoms bizarre behavior by those stricken with “Taiwan Fever,” which turns its victims into human cockroaches who crawl on the floor scurrying into dark places, hiding from the light. But as is typical for Tsai, he refuses to conform to any of the hallmarks of films like this. The premise is set up at the beginning of the film where, over a black screen with no images, we hear news reports and interviewees describing this situation. The Taiwan government has issued an evacuation order to the cities infected with the virus, and will cut off the water supply to those who remain; garbage collection has already been halted – in the apartment building where the film has set, residents routinely drop their garbage out of their windows. The film begins one week before the end of the millennium; the government has stipulated that on January 1, 2000, water will be cut off. Many of the voices we hear take the government to task for their inadequate response to this crisis. “They didn’t try to protect us,” says one. “To hell with our government!” says another.

The Hole focuses on two apartment dwellers who refuse to heed the evacuation call: a woman (Yang Kuei-mei) plagued by the constant leaks who obsessively hoards toilet paper and tissues; and her upstairs neighbor (Lee Kang-sheng), who goes to work every morning to the convenience store he runs, although he has no customers. The separation between these two lonely souls is breached one day when a plumber visits the man’s apartment to investigate a leak that the woman downstairs has been complaining about, and leaves a gaping hole in the floor, never to return. The rest of the film concerns itself with the consequences of the plumber’s action, which forces a connection between these two people who have probably never spoken to one another before this event. This hole has all the connotations one would expect, including sexual ones (which is made explicit in one scene in which the man sticks his leg into the hole). This hole is also a portal to a fantasy world, which contains the musical sequences that are the heart of the film. Tsai assiduously eschewed non-diegetic music in his two previous films; in The Hole, he breaks this trend in the most glorious way, with five charming and dynamic musical sequences, all featuring the songs of Grace Chang, a popular songstress of the 50’s and 60’s beloved in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. Although these sequences are influenced by Hollywood and Hong Kong classic musicals, they are much more earthbound, especially in their environments, which are in various areas of this very old, run-down apartment building with leaky, peeling walls. It’s as if the imaginations of the characters in this film are so restricted and limiting that even in fantasy, they cannot truly escape their depressing milieu. Also, it is unclear who these fantasies belong to: the woman downstairs, the man upstairs, or the collective unconscious of the building itself? Tsai provides very witty and humorous transitions in and out of the musical sequences: the first number, “Calypso,” featuring Yang Kuei-mei dancing in an elevator, is preceded by a shot of the hole, with cockroaches crawling out of it; after it ends, we cut to Lee Kang-sheng sprawled out, drunk, in the elevator.

The Hole, despite the pre-millennium tension that permeates it, and the familiar crying and despair that exists in its world, is Tsai’s most light-hearted and hopeful film. And although Tsai would disagree, a shaft of light suggesting a passage to heaven, a proffered glass of water, an outstretched hand, and a final love song from Grace Chang, all lead to what is as close to a happy ending as you’ll find in Tsai Ming-liang’s oeuvre.

The Hole screens at Asia Society on November 21, 3pm as part the series “Faces of Tsai Ming-liang.” Click here to purchase tickets.

Yang Kuei-mei performing "Calypso" from The Hole:

Grace Chang performing "Calypso" from the film Air Hostess (Wen Yi, 1959):

The Bourne Cinema Filmography: Tsai Ming-liang, "Rebels of the Neon God" (1992)

Rebels of the Neon God (Qing shao nian nuo zha). 1992. Written and directed by Tsai Ming-liang. Produced by Hsu Li-kong. Cinematography by Liao Pen-jung. Edited by Wang Chi Yang. Music by Huang Shu-jun.

Cast: Lee Kang-sheng (Hsiao-kang), Chen Chao-jung (Ah-tse), Jen Chang-bin (Ah-ping), Wang Yu-wen (Ah-kuei), Miao Tien (Father), Lu Hsiao-ling (Mother).

One major element of Tsai Ming-liang’s films, remarked on by many commentators, is water; Tsai’s films are practically drenched with it. Water, in all its forms, courses through the films; in rainstorms, bottled water, toilets, flooding, bathtubs, and tears. It is omnipresent, yet mysterious and often menacing. It doesn’t give up its secrets easily, or at all. In this way, the water in Tsai’s films is very much like the characters in them, who do many things, often in silence, that are as mysterious and inexplicable to us as to themselves. In Tsai’s first feature, Rebels of the Neon God, by far the most conventional (relatively speaking) of his nine features to date, many of the characteristics that are unique to his films can be found, despite a repetitive musical theme and a jarringly over-romanticized “let’s blow this town!” ending (both imposed on him by his producer, and thoroughly cleansed [washed?] away in his subsequent films).

Rebels of the Neon God marks the first screen appearance of Lee Kang-sheng, who has appeared in all of Tsai’s features, and usually functions as the brooding, melancholic matinee idol at its center. (A scene in Rebels in which Lee’s character contemplates a poster of James Dean, cements this status in his films.) Although this was Lee’s first theatrical film, it wasn’t his first collaboration with Tsai; he appeared in two of Tsai’s television films, All the Corners of the World and Boys. But Rebels offered Lee the first real showcase of the qualities that make him so magnetic and mesmerizing in the context of Tsai’s films. In the very first scene in which he appears, his character, Hsiao-kang (the name he is usually given in Tsai’s films, a variation on Lee’s own name) rocks back and forth listlessly, watching the rainstorm outside his window, paying no attention whatsoever to his studies, which he will soon end. Noticing a cockroach crawling near him, he picks it up and spears it with his protractor. He then throws the wounded insect out of the window; soon after, another bug (or perhaps the same one) appears outside the window. Hsiao-kang hits the window to make it go away, but breaks the window and cuts his hand. As he scurries to the bathroom, his overly doting mother (Lu Hsiao-ling) and his perpetually angry father (Miao Tien) rush over. “Don’t you have anything better to do with yourself?” his mother asks in exasperation. As it turns out, the answer is no, not really. All of Hsiao-kang’s subsequent actions come from the same inchoate impulse to hurt and inflict harm on others, much as he does to the poor cockroach that has the misfortune to cross his path. Later in the film, he graduates to inflicting harm – not directly, but by proxy – to a human being. Hsiao-kang’s mother believes she has an explanation for his nature; he is the reincarnation of the god Nezha, who was also unruly and hated his father. Hsiao-kang’s father thinks his wife is simply nuts, and sees his son as an unredeemable bad seed; and indeed, Hsiao-kang does very little to prove his father wrong.

Hsiao-kang’s story parallels that of another aimless youth, Ah-tse (Chen Chao-jung) who lives with his brother Ah-ping (Jen Chang-bin) in an apartment invaded and menaced by water; the floor is constantly flooded because of the stopped-up drain on the ground. Tsai finds some unlikely visual poetry in the image of slippers, cigarette butts, and crushed beer cans drifting lazily along the apartment floor. Ah-tse and Ah-ping spend many nights as petty thieves, robbing payphones of coins and arcade games of their motherboards, to fund playing video games and hanging out at bars and roller rinks. One night, Ah-ping brings home Ah-kuei (Wang Yu-wen), a comely girl who works the counter at the roller rink, and whose uniform is a blouse and the shortest skirt or pair of shorts she can find to wear. Ah-tse masturbates to the very loud noises of Ah-ping and Ah-kuei having sex, incidentally echoing a key scene in Tsai’s next feature, Vive L’Amour. Later in the film, Ah-ping proposes sharing Ah-kuei with his brother. The three of them eventually spend their nights getting drunk and riding their scooters. Besides the water, an important constant of Tsai’s films are motorbikes, usually driven by the male characters. This is an instantly iconic image, and one that many filmmakers have used to portray the free-spiritedness of youth. In Tsai’s hands, this image is complicated, and indeed subverted, and this vehicle becomes an illusion of freedom, a mode of travel that leads nowhere, only to never-ending circles of confinement, speeding furiously yet going nowhere. It’s not that big a leap to consider this to be Tsai’s metaphor for the larger Taiwanese society itself.

The film hinges on a thoughtless act by Ah-tse – smashing the rearview mirror of the cab Hsiao-kang’s father drives, with his son beside him – that turns out to have very severe consequences. Hsiao-kang inverts the dynamic of the god that is his forebear, exacting a disproportionate revenge on the harm done to his father by attacking Ah-tse’s beloved scooter, effectively emasculating him. This comes after Hsiao-kang, now out of school, spends days and nights stalking Ah-tse and his friends, for reasons that are not clearly defined – is it homosexual longing, a theme that will come to the fore in Tsai’s later features? Or is it jealousy of Ah-tse’s apparent freedom from the strictures of parents and school that imprison Hsiao-kang? Tsai doesn’t tell us, and certainly his characters won’t, even though there is much more dialogue in Rebels than his other films. As always, Tsai leaves it to the viewer to judge what it all means.

Tsai’s original script ended with the destruction of Ah-tse’s scooter. Tsai’s producer at the time, Hsu Li-kong, insisted that the film would be too short, and came up with the tacked-on, clichéd ending that, along with the film’s score, more than ever seems a travesty perpetrated on Tsai’s film. Thereafter, Tsai worked with foreign producers, mostly French, who provided him the freedom to pursue his creative visions unfettered (Tsai had, and continues to have, a very antagonistic relationship with the Taiwan film industry). His next film, Vive L’Amour, gave Tsai his first opportunity to present his inimitable style in its purest form, unencumbered by commercial constraints. And, over the course of nine films, he hasn’t looked back since.

Rebels of the Neon God screens at Asia Society on November 13 at 6:45pm as part of the series “Faces of Tsai Ming-Liang,” a mini-retrospective that also includes Vive L’Amour (Nov. 17, 6:45pm), The Hole (Nov. 21, 3pm), What Time Is It There? (Nov. 21, 5pm), and a preview screening of his new film Face (Nov. 15, 2pm), followed by Q&A with Tsai Ming-liang and Lee Kang-sheng. The screening of Face is sold out, but there will be a standby line.

Best Korean Films of the 2000s: Lee Myung-se, "Duelist" (2005)

Duelist (Hyeongsa). 2005. Produced, directed and production designed by Lee Myung-se. Written by Lee Myung-se and Lee Hae-gyeong, based on the comic book "Damo" by Bang Hak-gi. Cinematography by Ki S. Hwang. Edited by Go Im-pyo. Art direction by Lee Hyeong-ju and Jo Geun-hyeon. Costume design by Jeong Gyeong-heui. Sound by Park Jun-oh. Special effects by Jang Sung-ho. Martial arts choreography by Jeon Mun-shik.

Cast: Ha Ji-won (Nam-soon), Kang Dong-won (Sad Eyes), Ahn Sung-ki (Ahn), Song Yeong-chang (Song).

One of cinema's supreme visual stylists is Lee Myung-se, whose films have the vibrancy and kineticism of action painting, and who seemingly reinvents movies with each new film. Lee is an exacting and precise artist, with painstaking attention to detail, colors and mood, so much so that he has made only two films this decade, each one an art film in the truest and greatest sense. The first is his 2005 film Duelist, the latest incarnation of a story that first began life as a popular manhwa (Korean comic book) entitled Damo, which was subsequently turned into a hit television series of the same name. Both the film and the TV drama featured the same actress, Ha Ji-won, as the central female detective. Below is what I wrote on this film when it screened at the 2006 New York Asian Film Festival.

The most gorgeous of this year's selections is Lee Myung-se's masterpiece Duelist. Lee is best known in the U.S. for his 1999 film Nowhere to Hide, which enlivened its cops-and-criminals story with a wall-to-wall visual arsenal of silhouettes, impossibly vibrant color and kineticism, and the elemental forces of wind and rain. In Duelist, released six years after Nowhere to Hide, Lee ups the ante considerably, reducing narrative to a bare minimum, concentrating on exquisite color, balletic swordplay, wind, rain, and leaves, and the pursuit of its lovers/antagonists throughout the film. Like Nowhere to Hide, Duelist is also a detective story, set this time in late 19th century Korea. The detective Nam-soon (Ha Ji-won) and her older partner Ahn (Ahn Sung-ki) are in dogged pursuit of Sad Eyes (Kang Dong-won), an elusive, androgynous figure who is the henchman of Minister of Defense Song (Song Yeong-chang), who is amassing power by counterfeiting currency. That's about it as far as plot goes. However, most of the negative public and critical reaction to the film, contributing to its meager box office, which generally ran along the lines of the lament "There's no story!", seem to me to be beyond missing the point. The film's press materials contain this statement by Lee, which point to the proper way to approach this film: "I thought of two words - movement and rhythm, and two paintings - 'Dance' by Matisse and 'Manhattan' by Mondrian." (Lee is most likely referring in the latter case to "Broadway Boogie-Woogie," Mondrian's most famous painting.)

Those who insist that films should be all about narrative and character development are blinding themselves to the thrilling experience of pure cinema that Lee offers in Duelist. In much the same way that Matisse and Mondrian sought to liberate painting by using their materials to portray pure movement and color without insisting on verisimilitude, Lee utilizes the plasticity of the film medium - sound, color, music, motion - to liberate cinema from the shackles of 19th century notions of narrative derived from literature and drama, highlighting the reasons cinema is indeed a distinct art from either.

The ultimate theme of Duelist is transcendence and transgression, of boundaries, borders, and gender roles - Nam-soon is as tough and violent, if not tougher, than her male colleagues, at one point going undercover in male drag, while Sad Eyes is all flowing robes, long hair, and soft features. Duelist is in essence avant-garde cinema thinly disguised as genre cinema, and given the emphasis he puts on color, the physicality of its nature, and its relation to the material of film itself, Lee seems to be positioning himself as Korea's answer to Stan Brakhage.

Duelist trailer:

Scenes from the TV drama Damo:

The Bourne Cinema Filmography: Frederick Wiseman, "La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet" (2009)

La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet. 2009. Directed by Frederick Wiseman. Produced by Pierre-Oliver Bardet, Frederick Wiseman and Francoise Gazio. Cinematography by John Davey. Edited by Frederick Wiseman and Valerie Pico. Sound by Frederick Wiseman.

Documentarian Frederick Wiseman’s latest film, La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet, is a typically rigorous institutional examination, this time of the famed Paris Opera Ballet, getting up close and personal behind the scenes, observing rehearsals, administrative meetings, and many other minutiae of the day-to-day activities of this venerable institution. There is nothing especially earth-shattering or revealing that happens during the course of this film; the closest we get is a meeting with the dance troupe and the ballet’s artistic director about changes in retirement and pension policy that the French government is considering. Neither does this film break with Wiseman’s tried-and-true methods of filmmaking: fly-on-the-wall observation, eschewing interviews with subjects, soundtrack music, or onscreen identification of the subjects. Wiseman holds true with the cinema vérité techniques he has been practicing since Titicut Follies, his 1967 debut. He is less interested in personalities and drama than in process, procedure, and daily institutional life. This film focuses on lengthy, unhurried (La Danse clocks in at 158 minutes) and thorough observation of all the workers at the opera, from the dancers, choreographers, and administrative personnel, down to the cafeteria workers and janitors. Wiseman even gives us some shots of the basement and sewers underneath the opera house, as if to show us just how complete his document of this building is.

The heart of the film is the lengthy rehearsals of the opera repertory shows. These lithe, wiry dancers painstakingly perfect their movements, and under their trainers, refine everything down to the very smallest detail. And while the repetitive scenes of this process can at times be a bit wearying, it is still fascinating to watch, all of it happening at an intimate level that very few of us are privileged to witness in person. Behind the scenes, there are some telling moments that impress upon us the extreme physical demands ballet puts on a person’s body. One older dancer relates to the festival director her concerns that she is being scheduled for too many performances that will tax her physical abilities. “I’m not 25 anymore,” the dancer opines. This scene contrasts with another near the conclusion, in which a young, fresh-faced newcomer to the company gets advice from the festival director. “Don’t be afraid,” the director advises her.

All in all, La Dance: The Paris Opera Ballet is an interesting (if overlong) and worthy addition to Wiseman’s impressive body of work. It screens at Film Forum from November 4 through November 17; Wiseman will appear in person at the 8:30 screening on November 4. Click here to purchase tickets.

The Best Korean and Japanese Films of the 2000s: Inaugural Post

Yesterday I received an email from the Korean Film Council (KOFIC), a Korean government-supported, quasi-independent organization that funds, supports and promotes Korean films domestically and abroad. If you have even the smallest amount of interest in Korean cinema, I highly recommend checking out their website, where you will find a wealth of material on both current and older Korean films. You should especially explore their "Publications" section, where you will find PDFs that you can download of their published material on Korean film history, films, and directors, and their periodicals on the Korean film industry. This is an invaluable source of information, and one which I refer to frequently.

KOFIC's newest publication is Korean Cinema Today, a bimonthly periodical with articles, reviews, and interviews concerning the current state of the Korean film industry, and especially Korean films that have been selected for major film festivals. Their next issue will be a special one that will look back on this past decade, the first of the 21st century, and included in this issue will be a reader's poll of the 10 best Korean films of the decade. The email I received was in reference to this, asking me to choose the best 5 films of the decade. If you would like to participate in this survey, you can do so here. (Click the button at the bottom to send your message.) If you include your name, nationality, and mailing address, your name will be included in the printed list of participants, and they will send you a copy of the published issue.

KOFIC's project has inspired me to do something similar for this blog. So for the next several months or so, I will be posting periodically on my picks for the best Korean films of the 2000s. Since Japanese films are also a major presence on this blog, I will be doing the same for Japanese cinema. Some of the posts will be republished here from elsewhere, others will be original posts. These will exclude films that have already been reviewed on this blog, or that I have written for other sites that I have chosen not to republish here. Of course, there are far more than five films that are worthy of inclusion on my list for the best of the decade. There will be no rankings or evaluations of which ones are better than other films. I'll leave it to you readers to decide that for yourselves.

Here are links to my reviews of my first best-of-2000s selections:

Korean Films

Radio Star (Lee Joon-ik, 2006)

Our School (Kim Myung-joon, 2006)

Woman on the Beach (Hong Sang-soo, 2006)

Voice of a Murderer (Park Jin-pyo, 2007)

Ad-Lib Night (Lee Yoon-ki, 2006)

The Happy Life (Lee Joon-ik, 2007)

Forever the Moment (Yim Soon-rye, 2007)

Epitaph (Jung Bum-sik and Jung Sik, 2007)

Treeless Mountain (So Yong Kim, 2008)

Old Partner (Lee Chung-ryoul, 2008)

Breathless (Yang Ik-june, 2008)

Joint Security Area (Park Chan-wook, 2000)

Japanese Films

I Just Didn't Do It (Masayuki Suo, 2006)

Memories of Matsuko (Tetsuya Nakashima, 2006)

Sway (Miwa Nishikawa, 2006)

Dear Pyongyang (Yonghi Yang, 2005)

Matsugane Potshot Affair (Nobuhiro Yamashita, 2006)

The Mourning Forest (Naomi Kawase, 2007)

All Around Us (Ryosuke Hashiguchi, 2008)

Confessions of a Dog (Gen Takahashi, 2006)

Halfway (Eriko Kitagawa, 2009)

Dainipponjin (Big Man Japan) (Hitoshi Matsumoto, 2007)

Yasukuni (Li Ying, 2007)

For the record, these are the Korean films I chose for the KOFIC poll:

Turning Gate (Hong Sang-soo, 2002) -- the above still is from this film.

A Good Lawyer's Wife (Im Sang-soo, 2003)

Memories of Murder (Bong Joon-ho, 2003)

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (Park Chan-wook, 2005)

Secret Sunshine (Lee Chang-dong, 2007)

Certainly I could have picked five completely different films that would have been just as good, but I'm fairly satisfied with the above list as representative of the best Korean films of the decade, within the limited parameters of KOFIC's survey. What are your picks for the best Korean and/or Japanese films of the 2000s? You can submit your responses in the comments below.

The Bourne Cinema Filmography: Peter Greenaway, "Rembrandt's J'Accuse" (2008)

Rembrandt's J'Accuse. 2008. Written and directed by Peter Greenaway. Produced by Femke Wolting, Bruno Felix, and Kees Kasander. Cinematography by Reinier van Brummelen. Edited by Elmer Leupen. Music by Giovanni Sollima and Marco Robino. Production designed by Maarten Piersma. Costume design by Marrit van der Burgt. Sound by Bram Boers.

Cast: Peter Greenaway (Himself), Martin Freeman (Rembrandt van Rijn), Eva Birthistle (Saskia Uylenburgh), Jodhi May (Geertje), Emily Holmes (Hendrickje Stoeffels), Jonathan Holmes (Ferdinand Bol), Michael Teigen (Carel Fabritius), Natalie Press (Marieke).

Peter Greenaway’s new film, Rembrandt’s J’Accuse, in which he subjects Rembrandt’s famous 1642 painting The Night Watch to intense forensic, visual, and historical analysis, is one of Greenaway’s very best films, and certainly his best in well over a decade. I have been greatly disappointed by most of Greenaway’s recent output, for example The Tulse Luper Suitcases, in which Greenaway puts into practice his long-standing theories about what he sees as cinema’s currently impoverished state, which he sees as essentially illustrated literature, and how Western culture is text-based instead of visually-based, leading to what he sees as a woeful lack of visual literacy in the public at large. (Early on in Rembrandt’s J’Accuse, Greenaway gives voice on screen to these opinions once more, in the scolding, schoolmarmish tone that is probably his most off-putting and least attractive quality.) Greenaway’s recent films have become increasingly impenetrable and hermetic, seemingly made only for an audience of one – Greenaway himself. The alternative he has come up with to conventional cinema, using text, calligraphy, and frames within frames within frames to form an ornate collage, however visually elegant it often is, turns out in practice to be not quite as compelling as he thinks.

So it is with genuine pleasure (and relief) that I say that with Rembrandt’s J’Accuse, Greenaway has finally come up with a film that puts his visual and intellectual arsenal to brilliant effect, turning Rembrandt’s The Night Watch into evidence of an elaborate murder conspiracy. (Call it CSI: Amsterdam.) Greenaway appears on screen throughout to state the case for the prosecution, namely that Rembrandt’s painting is his “J’accuse,” or accusation of guilt towards the perpetrators of a conspiracy on the part of a group of Dutch military officers to murder their captain to gain more power for themselves. The officers planned to disguise this murder as a military accident. Greenaway is our guide to the evidence for this conspiracy, all of which he believes can be found within the frame of Rembrandt’s painting. His running voiceover and visual presence (usually in a box in the bottom center of the screen) relates 31 clues to the murder conspiracy (Greenaway’s well-documented obsession with numbers and lists continues unabated in this film) that can be found in the painting. Fully-staged reenactments with actors are peppered throughout to illustrate Greenaway’s thesis.

Greenaway identifies The Night Watch as the beginning of Rembrandt’s popular and economic decline, which he sees as a result of the successful attempt by the powers that were to suppress and bury Rembrandt’s accusation and force him into a later life of poverty and obscurity. As Greenaway intones at the film’s conclusion, “It is imperative that we reopen the case.” Greenaway uses the canvas of Rembrandt’s masterpiece to create one of his own, a film that is simultaneously a documentary, a murder mystery, an art history lecture, a political history of Amsterdam, and a seminar on the arts of both painting and visual analysis, and is endlessly fascinating and compelling.

Rembrandt’s J’Accuse is at Film Forum now through November 3. Click here to purchase tickets.

The Bourne Cinema Filmography: Lars von Trier, "Antichrist" (2009)

Antichrist. 2009. Written and directed by Lars von Trier. Produced by Meta Louise Foldager. Cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle. Edited by Anders Refn. Production designed by Karl "Kalli" Juliusson. Art direction by Tim Pannen. Costume design by Frauke Firl. Sound design by Kristian Eidnes Andersen.

Cast: Willem Dafoe (He), Charlotte Gainsbourg (She).

Lars von Trier's latest (and most extreme) provocation, Antichrist, opens today at the IFC Center. Below is what I wrote on this film when it screened earlier this month at the New York Film Festival.

At the New York Film Festival, it’s almost guaranteed that there will be at least one controversial film to set the Alice Tully Hall denizens’ tongues wagging. The Danish cinematic enfant terrible Lars von Trier has supplied a few of these throughout the years – Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark, Dogville, Manderlay. It’s safe to say that his latest, Antichrist, is without a doubt his most extreme provocation to date. Reportedly the result of a lengthy depression von Trier suffered in the period before he made it, this film astonishes with its free-associative, dream-like (or, more accurately, nightmare-like) style. Though it seems like most of the film doesn’t make a lick of sense, it is never less than riveting, even though most viewers will very much want to look away, especially in its extremely violent latter sessions. Von Trier has often been tagged with the label of “misogynist,” and Antichrist will do little to assuage these detractors. However, as with all things von Trier, the reality is not quite that simple.

The scenario is spare and archetypal: a couple, known only as He (Willem Dafoe) and She (Charlotte Gainsbourg), after the death of their young son, venture into the woods, to a place they call Eden, where He, a professional therapist, attempts to cure She of her extreme grief over her child’s death. These are the only two characters in the entire film, and von Trier unleashes an arsenal of nightmare imagery and WTF moments to depict this couple’s psychic journey. There are talking animals, genital mutilation, and other extremes, and at first it seems that von Trier is having a laugh at our expense. But it eventually becomes clear that what we see is far from a joke, and that this is as close a peek into an artist’s id as any that has ever been created. Gainsbourg won best actress at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and while evaluating performances in a film such as this almost seems beside the point, one can’t help but admire the fact that both actors are more than game for everything von Trier throws at them.

Divided into four chapters – “Grief,” “Pain (Chaos Reigns),” “Despair (Gynocide),” “The Three Beggars” – bracketed by a prologue and epilogue, Antichrist begins with a gorgeously shot slow-motion monochrome sequence depicting the death of the couple’s child. Accompanied by the music of Handel on the soundtrack, we see the child make his way out of the crib and fall to his death out of the window, unnoticed by his parents having passionate sex, very graphically shown – par for the course for von Trier, ever the provocateur. At the outset of the film proper, which switches to a muted color palette, She collapses during her son’s funeral and is subsequently admitted to a hospital. He pulls her out of the hospital, believing that the hospital is prescribing her too much medication, and that he could do a better job at curing her of the extreme grief and guilt over their son’s death. He intends to be analytical and logical in how he goes about doing this, to the extent that She at one point accuses him of being indifferent to their son’s death.

When the two retreat to “Eden,” a small log cabin deep in the woods, He puts She under hypnosis, to exorcise her guilt as well as her deep fears of the woods themselves. But very soon, his carefully planned strategy begins to unravel. She becomes increasingly erratic and less responsive to her husband’s admittedly unorthodox treatments. Through flashbacks and her husband’s discovery, we learn that She has been working on a thesis titled “Gynocide,” about the history of man’s brutality to women throughout the ages. (The film’s credits include a “misogyny consultant.”) Her studies have brought her to an unexpected and disturbing conclusion: women are the source of evil in the world. And in the increasingly brutal final reels of the film, she sets out to prove her theory in very graphic ways that will torture her husband, as well as the audience.

The above description may make Antichrist seem much more coherent than it actually is, at least initially. Von Trier also indulges in some rather clichéd and tacky depictions of the hypnosis sessions. And yet there is an elemental power to the flow of images in the film that, to this viewer, eventually proved irresistible. Von Trier clearly means to give the audience a taste of the psychological torture he experienced during his depression. Given the catcalling and booing that greeted its premiere at Cannes, it would seem that I am in the minority opinion. How one responds to this film ultimately depends on how one responds to its creator. If you are a hardcore von Trier fan (as I must confess I am), then you will fund much to savor. If not, well, as they say, caveat emptor. As one of the film’s chapter titles state, “Chaos Reigns.” That statement could stand as a credo for von Trier’s entire oeuvre, and it has never been truer than his latest work.

Antichrist can be seen (if you dare) at the IFC Center beginning today. Click here to purchase tickets.