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.

Review: Adolfo Alix Jr.'s "Adela"

Adela. 2008. Directed by Adolfo Alix Jr. Written by Adolfo Alix Jr. and Nick Olanka. Produced by Arleen Cuevas. Cinematography by Albert Banzon. Edited by Aleks Castaneda. Production design by Adolfo Alix Jr. and Jerome Zamora. Sound by Ditoy Aguila and Marc Locsin.

Cast: Anita Linda, Jason Abalos, Joem Bascon, Angeli Bayani, Perla Bautista, Iza Calzado, Ricky Davao, Cyra Dela Cerna, Katherine Luna, German Moreno, Kenneth Ocampo, Arnold Reyes.

The wonderfully expressive face of veteran Filipina actress Anita Linda is the heart and main attraction of Adolfo Alix, Jr.’s mesmerizing film Adela, which recently concluded its run at the Museum of Modern Art, as part of its ongoing series “ContemporAsian,” highlighting recent films from Asia that have not been widely seen in New York. Alix takes the opposite approach from many recent films from the Philippines that have gained attention on the festival circuit, exemplified by such filmmakers as Brillante Mendoza, who recently boosted his profile considerably by taking home the best director prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for his film Kinatay. Mendoza’s restless camerawork and depictions of the desperate slums of Manila have been echoed by many of his peers, affording their audiences a visceral, vicarious experience of poverty, hustling, and corruption. Alix eschews all of this in Adela, preferring long takes and panoramic master shots when it is not intimately focusing on its title character. Adela is celebrating her 80th birthday (the entire film takes place on this one day) and hopeful that her children and grandchildren will finally pay her a visit, which we quickly learn is a very rare occurrence, as her children have their own lives far away from her. Adding to her solitude is the fact that she has been a widow for many years now; Adela often passes the time by listening to radio plays as she cooks and does other chores in the home. Many years ago, Adela was a popular actress on these radio shows, giving it up both because of her husband’s wish for her to stay home with the children, and the waning popularity of radio dramas due to the advent of television.

Adela, however much she dominates the narrative, is by no means the only character here, and one of the great strengths of Alix’s film is the broad view he affords us of the environment that Adela exists in. Before we are introduced to Adela, we first follow a very pregnant woman who catches her mate having sex with another woman, whom the pregnant woman is in debt to – whether this other woman is her landlady or some other sort of benefactor is not quite clear. As she fights and hits her philandering partner, she suddenly goes into labor, and is helped through it by Adela, who becomes an impromptu midwife, helping the woman deliver her baby. Adela’s other neighbors are just as colorful – other important characters include: a ne’er-do-well who habitually steals from people’s homes and tries to sell off his ill-gotten goods afterward, and who may or may not have stolen Adela’s wedding ring; the boisterous and very effeminate neighbor who gives Adela a manicure; and in the film’s most amusing scene, a neighbor and fellow grandmother whom Adela walks in on as she is having sex with a much younger man, justifying her behavior as a necessary way to stave off loneliness and fulfill her sexual needs. “Besides, I won’t get pregnant, anyway,” she tells Adela. Most pertinently to our understanding of Adela’s character, this friend asks Adela, “Are you happy?” The silence that follows this query speaks volumes.

Anita Linda does so much more than portray this elderly woman; she seemingly inhabits this woman body and soul. And that face! It is as transparent a vessel for displaying emotion as any I have ever seen. This now is the second film I have seen this remarkable actress in; the other is Brillante Mendoza’s latest film Lola, which I recently saw at this year’s Pusan International Film Festival. In the latter film, she is just as riveting, playing a very different character than Adela. Color me a fan: I would love to see her earlier work. She is in practically every scene of this film, and minute by minute we are drawn deeper into her world. Alix’s style is austere and spare, but without the aridness of similar films that employ this kind of aesthetic. The final scene of the film, in which we feel the full force of Adela’s solitude, is what remains with me: the sound of lapping waves, crickets, and passing airplanes as she has a picnic alone, one of the saddest scenes you will ever see in any film. Adolfo Alix, Jr., with Adela, has created a brilliant character study that also doubles as a sharply trenchant depiction of the casual corruption that manipulates the lives of poor people in the Philippines. The political backdrop against which Adela’s story is set concerns the bribery, with food and money, of the people of her village to join a rally in support of Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. It is a testament to Adela’s sense of dignity and justice that she resolutely refuses to participate in this farce, probably because she and the rest of her neighbors will soon be forced to move out of the shacks that sit beside a landfill to make way for a highway extension. It is this awareness of both the macro and the micro of his characters’ circumstances that made Adela such an emotionally and politically astute film.

Adela trailers:

Interview with Adolfo Alix Jr.:

Interview with Anita Linda:

Alain Resnais, "Wild Grass" -- New York Film Festival Press Conference, 9/25/09

The 2009 New York Film Festival opened with Alain Resnais' loopy and lovely film Wild Grass. You can read my Meniscus Magazine review here. Below are clips from the afternoon press conference on September 25, 2009. From left to right are Resnais, translator Lucius Barre, and actors Andre Dussollier and Mathieu Amalric.

In this clip, Resnais offers his thoughts on the future of film, which he believes is represented by one director in particular:



On Mathieu Amalric's performance:



And here, Alain Resnais discusses the theme of sexual desire in his films, and his disavowal of the label "auteur":

The Bourne Cinema Filmography: Claire Denis, "35 Shots of Rum" (2008)

35 Shots of Rum (35 rhums). 2008. Directed by Claire Denis. Written by Claire Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau. Produced by Bruno Pesery. Cinematography by Agnes Godard. Edited by Guy Lecorne. Music by Tindersticks. Production design by Arnaud de Moleron. Costume design by Judy Shrewsbury. Sound by Martin Boissau, Christophe Winding, and Dominique Hennequin.

Cast: Alex Descas (Lionel), Mati Diop (Josephine), Gregoire Colin (Noe), Nicole Dogue (Gabrielle), Julieth Mars Toussaint (Rene).

One of the very best films you will see this year is Claire Denis' exquisitely rendered 35 Shots of Rum, now playing at Film Forum through September 29. Denis' latest film White Material, which returns her to the African setting of her debut Chocolat, will make its latest stop at this year's New York Film Festival, after its appearances in Venice and Toronto. So New Yorkers will have the opportunity this fall to be blessed with two new films by one of cinema's greatest living artists. Below is my review of 35 Shots of Rum, written when it screened at last year's Pusan International Film Festival.

Claire Denis’ gorgeous new film, 35 Shots of Rum, is as essentially plot-less as her previous feature, the globe-trotting philosophical treatise L’Intrus (The Intruder), but it is less experimental and more grounded in character and emotion. However, it is hardly less of a revelatory experience. The central relationship depicted in this film is that of Lionel (Alex Descas), a train operator living with his daughter Josephine (Mati Diop), in a working-class suburb of Paris. 35 Shots of Rum’s affinities with the works of Ozu, especially Late Spring, have been much remarked on by other commentators: the many shots and scenes that revolve around trains; the brief establishing shots between scenes analogous to Ozu’s “pillow shot” inserts; the delicacy with which unspoken aspects of intimate relationships are handled. The film’s central situation also recalls Ozu. Lionel, a taciturn widower, lives a quiet life with his daughter, and their deep love for one another is expressed through such gestures as one early scene in which Lionel buys a rice cooker for Josephine, who expresses great delight. The film is so patient about revealing the connections between its characters that it takes a bit of time before we realize that they are in fact father and daughter.

Two other characters also figure here: their neighbor Noe (Gregoire Colin), a rather eccentric young man who is attracted to Josephine, and Gabrielle (Nicole Dogue), Lionel’s ex-girlfriend who remains close to Lionel and Josephine, and seems to wish to rekindle her romance with Lionel, who in turn keeps her at arm’s length. Everything else in the film flows from this initial situation. But rather than imposing a dramatic plot, although almost any other filmmaker would have turned these potential conflicts into melodrama, Denis allows these characters to interact and lets their actions evolve organically. This is not to say that nothing happens in the film; actually, there is a definite progression that occurs, and it leads to a great deal of emotion. This occurs most significantly with what happens to Lionel’s colleague Rene (Julieth Mars Toussaint), who after being compelled to retire, finds himself adrift and unable to replace the order and sense of purpose that his job provided him.

The way in which Denis depicts the milieu of her film is quite extraordinary. The popular notion of the Parisian suburbs, many of which are inhabited by those of African and Arabic descent, is that of poor and angry people who every now and then erupt into riots against police and other authorities. The depiction of these neighborhoods in French films often plays upon these problems and concentrates on their conflicts with the larger French society. Denis, however, takes quite a different tack, concentrating much more on her characters as individuals rather than representatives of their race. These are ordinary working-class people who experience the normal joys and pains of anyone else, although presented here in an aesthetically beautiful way. Denis, to be sure, does not ignore a global perspective: she includes a key scene in which Josephine participates in a classroom debate about how African nations are adversely impacted by having to repay massive debts to Western nations. However, we are mostly immersed in the lives of the central characters, and it is always a pleasure to be in their company.

The loose structure of 35 Shots of Rum allows for some exquisitely lovely moments, most notably a key scene of the film in which Lionel, Josephine, Noe and Gabrielle all retreat into a bar during a rainstorm after their car breaks down on their way to a concert. Although the bar is already closed, the owner generously allows them shelter. A nearly wordless scene ensues, during which much occurs: Noe and Josephine’s relationship becomes subtly much more than a casual friendship; Lionel sees this happen, and tacitly accepts this despite his slight unease, while Lionel in turn acts upon his attraction to the statuesquely beautiful bar hostess, eventually spending the night with her. The four central characters dance to the tune of the Commodores’ song “Nightshift,” which is quite appropriate to the elegiac tone of much of this film. This is a beautifully choreographed and constructed scene, conveying everything through glances and gestures, and it is a great testament to Claire Denis’ prodigious artistry.

However, Denis is by no means a solo act. She has surrounded herself over the years with an ace group of collaborators who are essential partners in creating one of the great bodies of work in cinema. One of the most important members of her crew is Agnes Godard, one of the world’s greatest cinematographers, who seems incapable of composing a bad shot. She imbues all of the film’s environments with a textured, tactile quality that illuminates everything it touches. Denis’ regular screenwriting partner Jean-Pol Fargeau contributes greatly to a scenario that feels loosely improvisational yet exactingly precise at the same time. And of course, as always with Denis, much credit is due to the excellent cast she has assembled, which includes two Denis regulars: Alex Descas, a ruggedly handsome man who imparts tremendous gravity and great emotion to his role; and Gregoire Colin, who goes far beyond the quirks of his character to deliver a very poignant performance. Newcomer Mati Diop also impresses as the daughter who is protective of her father almost to his detriment (much like the typical Ozu heroine usually played by Setsuko Hara). Nicole Dogue skillfully expresses her character’s sense of regret over her life decisions, and her wish to have to same closeness with Lionel that his daughter enjoys. In every gesture and action Denis’ ensemble cast radiates a deep beauty that makes watching them a joyful experience.

35 Shots of Rum, along with Beau Travail and L’Intrus, is one of Denis’ greatest works, conveying the ebbs and flows of life with uncommon sensitivity. And by the time Lionel partakes of the titular drinks, an act that signifies his philosophy of life, one begins to wish one could spend many more hours in the endlessly fascinating world of this film.

35 Shots of Rum is at Film Forum through September 29. Click here to purchase tickets.

Review: Yoon Je-kyun's "Haeundae"

Haeundae. 2009. Produced, written and directed by Yoon Je-kyun. Cinematography by Kim Yeong-ho. Edited by Shin Min-gyeong. Music by Lee Byeong-woo. Production design by Hwang In-jun. Costume design by Kim Jong-weon. Sound by Eun Heui-su and Andy Wiskes. Visual effects supervision by Jang Seong-ho and Hans Uhlig. Visual effects by Polygon Entertainment. Special effects by Hong Jang-pyo.

Cast: Sol Kyung-gu (Choi Man-sik), Ha Ji-won (Kang Yeon-hee), Park Joong-hoon (Kim Hwi), Uhm Jung-hwa (Lee Yoo-jin), Lee Min-ki (Choi Hyeong-sik), Kang Ye-won (Kim Hee-mi), Kim In-kwon (Oh Dong-choon), Song Jae-ho (Eok-jo), Kim Ji-yeong (Geum-ryeon), Seong Byeong-sook (Dong-choon's mother), Kim Yoo-jeong (Ji-min).

The disaster movie is a tried-and-true mode of popular cinema, the apotheosis being such 70’s films as The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure, as well as the all-time box-office king, Titanic. The formula is simplicity itself: take a diverse assortment of characters (preferably cast with as many big stars as possible), spend some time introducing them and examining their conflicts, add a man-made or natural disaster that upends everything with state-of-the-art special effects, stir very thoroughly with some tragedy, pathos, triumph, bravery, and sacrifice, and voila, you’ve got your movie. The next step, hopefully, is watching the tons of cash roll in. Now Korea has one such movie to call its very own: Haeundae, set in and named after the famous beach in the southeastern port city of Busan, a very popular tourist attraction, not only for Koreans but for visitors from Asia and the rest of the world. It is currently a massive blockbuster hit, and is now the fourth highest-grossing film in Korean history, after The Host, The King and the Clown and Taegukgi. The film itself is a crude, clumsily written and edited, yet brutally effective piece of big-budget spectacle, which follows the disaster-movie formula to the letter. It takes its sweet time following its large cast of characters, crisscrossing their stories and connections until the disaster hits, which in this film is very skillfully staged. The filmmaking, which up until that point is rather standard and unimaginative, rises along with the massive tsunami to be thrilling and genuinely emotional. The best aspect of the film is the actors, especially the wonderful Ha Ji-won and the equally excellent Sol Kyung-gu, who do a great job selling this material, even when it is beneath their talents, which is quite often.

The premise of Haeundae is that a massive tsunami, on the order of the one that hit Southeast Asia in 2004 (referenced repeatedly in this film, and which was Busan native Yoon’s initial inspiration), is on track to directly hit Haeundae Beach and the rest of Busan. This tsunami is diligently tracked by seismologist Kim Hwi (Park Joong-hoon), who advocates for a tsunami warning system of their own, and not depending on the one in Japan, a project not without nationalist overtones – “We can’t let the Japs beat us!” one of Kim’s colleagues exclaims at one point. Kim is divorced, and has a contentious relationship with his ex-wife Yu-jin (Uhm Jung-hwa), who refuses to tell their daughter (presumably born after their marriage ended) that he is her father, out of lingering anger over his neglect of their family in favor of his work.

While the scientist nervously tracks the waters, in scenes accompanied by ominous shots of threatening undersea earthquakes, the film turns its attention to several characters by the seaside. Yeon-hee (Ha Ji-won) runs a small raw-fish stand, and is in love with Man-sik (Sol Kyung-gu), who has been akin to an older brother since their childhood; she was taken in by Man-sik’s family after her father’s death. Man-sik is fairly thick-headed, and fails to notice Yeon-hee’s feelings for him. He has a penchant for getting drunk, and this aspect of his character mostly played for laughs, most notably in a scene in which he gets arrested for drunkenly harassing a baseball player at a game.

There is also a colorful assortment of other characters, such as a group of vacationing girls from Seoul, including Hee-mi (Kang Ye-won), a haughty girl rescued by coast guard Hyeong-sik (Lee Min-ki) after she falls off a yacht, which begins a slapstick romance between the two. The town’s vendor association is up in arms over a proposed shopping mall that will drive them off the beach. Much low comedy is supplied by ne’er-do-well slacker Dong-choon (Kim In-kwon), who at one point poses as a blind man to make money.

The film benefits greatly from its vivid portrayal of Busan, a place very distinct in character from Seoul. And just as the broad comedy and corny whimsicality starts to become a bit too much to bear, the big wave hits. And it’s an impressive one, and the lengthy setting up of characters and incident in the first half of the film begins to reap dividends, making the emotional aspects of the story moving, if not any less obvious or heavy handed. Haeundae is an entertaining enough night out at the movies, its crude and clunky scenario elevated by spirited performances by its cast, and expertly staged special effects (supervised by CG whiz Hans Uhlig, who worked on two of this film’s Hollywood natural disaster forebears, The Perfect Storm and The Day After Tomorrow), which in the end make this material more potent than it really has any right to be. And there are a few inspired sequences, most notably a Buster Keaton-type bit where Dong-choon deftly dodges a series of falling freight cars displaced by the wave, and another scene in which he causes an inferno with a faulty cigarette lighter. Just don’t expect great art in the bargain.

For a film that successfully marries its behemoth budget with a smart, politically acute, and genuinely heartfelt story, look no further than the current all-time Korean box-office champ, Bong Joon-ho’s The Host. Bong’s film proved conclusively that one need not pander to the lowest common denominators of both Korean and Hollywood filmmaking to be both an artistic and popular success. One wishes for the sake of art that Yoon had heeded this lesson. Unfortunately, the massive box office receipts of Haeundae will no doubt convince him that bigger, broader, and cruder is better.

Haeundae is currently playing at the AMC Loews Bay Terrace 6 in Bayside, Queens and AMC Loews Ridgefield Park 12 in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey. It opens this Friday in Manhattan at the AMC Loews Village 7.

Haeundae trailer:

Two segments from Arirang TV about the film:

Review: Leslie Cockburn's "American Casino"

American Casino. 2009. Directed by Leslie Cockburn. Written and produced by Leslie Cockburn and Andrew Cockburn. Cinematography by Phil Geyelin, Gregory Andracke, Bill Cassara, Bob Goldsborough, and Sam Painter. Edited by Peter Eliscu. Music supervised by Susan Jacobs. Sound by Daniel Brooks, Tom Craca, Michael Karas, Erik Knox, Charlie Macarone, Lupe Mejia, David Mitlyng, Mark Wilson, and Everett Wong.

Just in time for the one year anniversary of the global economic collapse comes Leslie Cockburn's powerful and timely documentary American Casino, which opens tomorrow at Film Forum for a two-week run. Below is what I wrote on this film when it screened at this year's Tribeca Film Festival.

The title of Leslie Cockburn’s nothing-if-not-timely documentary American Casino says it all, an apt description of the world created by the reckless Wall Street financiers who have brought the U.S. economy (as well as the rest of the world’s) to its present sorry state. Much like Charles Ferguson’s Iraq War documentary No End in Sight, Cockburn employs a straightforward, just-the-facts approach to her devastating play-by-play indictment of the barely legal shenanigans that led to our current mess. From the initial stock market free-fall and the attendant billions in government bailouts to Jon Stewart’s recent mano a mano with Jim Cramer, none of this is new information for anyone who has at least been semi-sentient for the past year or so. But what makes Cockburn’s film an especially valuable addition to the burgeoning collection of economic crisis postmortems is that she goes beyond the facts and figures to show us the human faces behind the numbers. Cockburn offers specific, poignant examples of people who existed as simply a line on a brokerage firm’s computer screen, reminding us that these were not simply irresponsible and naïve would-be homeowners, but people with lives of value that are real, and in some cases, tragic. Cockburn also details the aftereffects of the spreading cancer of mass foreclosures and how they led to depressed neighborhood property values, crime, and disease. Class and race were very much a part of the picture also, as Cockburn persuasively demonstrates: the deregulated toxic sub-prime loans that were, and remain, a major part of this crisis were deliberately targeted towards minorities and low-income homeowners, many of whom actually qualified for prime loans. These were the chips that were the currency of the “American Casino,” since through derivatives, credit-default swaps, and other such unregulated financial products, bets would essentially be made on which consumers would default on loans made to them, and billions were made on both sides of the equation. Cockburn’s briskly paced yet sobering documentary makes its case powerfully, and is a humanist work in the best sense, always keeping the individual victims of Wall Street’s games as its central focus.

American Casino is scheduled to run at Film Forum from Sept. 2 through Sept. 15. Click here to purchase tickets.

The Bourne Cinema Filmography: Byun Young-joo, "The Murmuring" (1995)

The Murmuring (Najeun moksori). 1995. Directed by Byun Young-joo. Produced by Shin Soo-yeon. Cinematography by Kim Yong-taek. Edited by Park Gok-ji. Music by Oh Yoon-seok and Cho Byung-hee. Sound by Jang Ho-jun and Lee Young-kil.

This August 15 marks the 64th anniversary of the end of World War II, which is given different names in the countries involved. In the U.S., it known as Victory over Japan Day; in Korea, it is called Liberation Day, since Japan’s surrender meant the end of colonial rule. Among the many continuing legacies of the war is the plight of the “comfort women,” an estimated 200,000 women (some as young as twelve) from Korea, China, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines, and other countries who were kidnapped or otherwise tricked into sexual slavery, forced to service Japanese soldiers. The misery for these women did not end with the war; they continued to be victimized by both sides of the conflict – by Japan’s continued refusal to this day to give an official apology or offer adequate compensation to survivors, and by the shame placed upon them by their home societies, forcing them to spend decades living in isolation and shamed silence. It wasn’t until the early 1990’s that former comfort women began to come forward and tell their stories, and more importantly, to petition the Japanese government for reparations. The vast majority of comfort women (80-90 percent) were taken from Korea, a colony of Japan during the war, and their stories form the basis of Byun Young-joo’s extraordinary documentary trilogy on the comfort women of Korea: The Murmuring (1995), Habitual Sadness (1997), and My Own Breathing (1999). Taken together, this trilogy (called the “Low Voice” trilogy, after the Korean titles of the first two installments) is one of the monumental works of world documentary, entirely the equal of such films as Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah and Marcel Ophuls’ The Sorrow and the Pity. Much like Shoah, Byun eschews the normal clichéd methods of documentary filmmaking, such as archival footage, dramatizations, and expert talking heads, concentrating on contemporary footage of her subjects bearing witness to a horrific period of their own lives and their country’s history. The one time Byun breaks with this is in a brief pictorial montage showing Japanese atrocities in China, which serves to remind us that the comfort women’s experiences existed in a larger context of Japanese war crimes, and was equally as brutal and deserving of close examination.

Byun’s first documentary, A Woman-Being in Asia (1993), dealt with the sex tourism industry in Asia, focusing on prostitution on Jeju Island. Byun and her crew were mostly dissatisfied with the results, feeling they had come into it with too much an imposed point a view, and a subsequent ambivalence toward the subject matter that filtered down to how they dealt with their interviewees. However, Byun serendipitously stumbled upon the subject of her next film when one of the prostitutes she interviewed revealed that her deceased mother was a comfort woman who became a prostitute after the war to pay for her own mother’s operation. Her decision to pursue this subject resulted in this trilogy.

The subtitle of The Murmuring, released in the 50th anniversary year of the end of World War II, is “A Woman-Being in Asia: The Second Report,” signaling that this new film was both a follow-up to and an improvement on her first film. Largely influenced by Japanese documentary pioneer Shinsuke Ogawa, Byun radically changed her methods of relating to her subjects in this film. Much of the film takes place in a house known as “Nanum,” or “House of Sharing,” a group home in Haehwa-dong, Seoul supported by Buddhist groups, where a number of former comfort women reside. Byun spent a few months before filming simply living with the women, until she gained their trust and they felt ready to tell their stories on camera. The stories they tell are truly heartbreaking; the women were taken at a very young age, and were commonly tricked with the promise of employment. One woman speaks of trying to kill herself on the way back home from Japan, because of her shame and knowing that she was effectively ruined for marriage; in terms of the rigid Confucian patriarchy that prevailed then, the fact that she served Japanese soldiers against her will mattered little. Most of the women living in the house suffer from numerous physical ailments, much of it resulting from their sexual enslavement; many returned with venereal disease and have scars on their stomachs from surgery. One woman talks about her wish to die, to end her continued suffering. Byun films these women in simple, functional camera setups, allowing them the visual and temporal space to tell their stories. Some confess their shame about telling these stories, which is quite understandable considering that it was only a few years before, in 1991, that Kim Hak-soon was the first comfort woman to publicly tell her story on television, making it possible for others to come forward.

Byun also documents the weekly protests organized by The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, which still continue today. Since January 2002, they have stood outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul every Wednesday at noon, year in and year out, regardless of the weather, to make several demands of the Japanese government. They insist that Japan make an official apology and acknowledge their responsibility for the plight of comfort women; give whole-hearted compensation to the women and their relatives; erect a monument to the women who died (about 70 percent died before the end of the war); and include this history in Japanese textbooks. To this day, none of these demands have been met, and therefore the protests continue. Byun shows in the film that Korean governments are also partly responsible for this state of affairs, since for many years they were very reluctant to press the issue, loath to jeopardize trade agreements and other compacts with Japan.

Byun also traveled to China to interview Ha Koon-ja and Hong Gang Lim, two comfort women who were never repatriated to Korea, effectively exiled because of their shame. These interviews provide some of the most powerful moments of the film: Ha tearfully recounts being forced to serve as many as twenty soldiers per day, and Hong, starkly framed so that her face floats in the darkness, relates the brutal story of having her vagina mutilated because of soldiers' complaints that, because she was taken so young, that she was “too small.” This section of the film also contains the footage of other Japanese war atrocities.

However, as sad and horrific as the stories these women tell are, this is only one part of Byun’s film. The Murmuring is also a very inspiring portrait of the women’s resiliency in the face of their hardship. They are still able to laugh and enjoy other people’s company, and most importantly, to sing. There are many scenes in the film of the women singing the liberation and love songs of their youth, both in the house and at the weekly protests. This speaks to an inner spirit that the horrors of war cannot extinguish. The women also express themselves through painting, which also gives them an outlet to cope with their memories and to heal their damaged psyches. The Murmuring is a rich and revealing film, quite literally so in the film’s last shot, as the camera pans across the naked torso of one of the women. Byun’s film is a beautifully constructed vessel allowing the “low voices” of these women to speak out fully and tell the collective story of this tragic period of history, a story that has yet to reach a fully satisfying conclusion.

Links for resources and more information:

Nanum (House of Sharing)

The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan

Washington Coalition for Comfort Women Issues

Review: Ronald Bronstein's "Frownland"

Frownland. 2007. Written, directed and edited by Ronald Bronstein. Produced by Marc Raybin. Cinematography by Sean Price Williams. Music by Paul Grimstad.

Cast: Dore Mann (Keith), Paul Grimstad (Charles), David Sandholm (Sandy), Carmine Marino (Carmine), Mary Wall (Laura), Paul Grant (Exam-man).

Whether you love or hate Ronald Bronstein’s debut feature, the unclassifiable and astonishing slice of New York miserablism known as Frownland, one thing is irrefutable: there has never been a film quite like this one. There are some discernible strands evident in Frownland’s cinematic DNA. This film has been associated with so-called “mumblecore,” referring to a loose confederation of recent American independent filmmakers, many of whom make their features with close friends and other collaborators, working outside the mainstream industry, and whose films boast a lo-fi aesthetic and an off-the-cuff, improvisational feel. Comparisons can also be made with the kitchen-sink dramatics of John Cassavetes – the pathologically inarticulate protagonist could be a much more extreme male counterpart to Gena Rowlands' troubled character in A Woman Under the Influence. There are also excerpts within the film of a Buster Keaton film, which highlights the fact that much of Frownland has no dialogue, as well as the wickedly deadpan humor that sits cheek-by-jowl with the misery on display. The film’s eerie electronic score and its grotesqueries of human behavior also bring to mind David Lynch’s Eraserhead. However, such comparisons in this case can take you only so far. Bronstein’s film, more than anything else, is as pure and uncompromised an artistic vision as any I’ve ever seen. The viewer is pulled into the grubby world of its singularly maladroit and unpleasant main character and the other people in his orbit, and is forced to relate to the work on its own terms, take it or leave it.

The term “sad sack” doesn’t even begin to describe our (anti)hero, Keith (Dore Mann), a man as deferential and easy-to-please as he is off-putting and annoying. At the film’s outset, he is interrupted from a blissful night of watching a monster movie while eating popcorn off an open oven door by a frantic phone call from his sometime girlfriend Laura (Mary Wall, Bronstein’s wife). The next scene establishes Keith’s method of communicating, or more accurately, mis-communicating with others: instead of complete sentences or thoughts, what emerges from Keith’s mouth are half-formed syllables and painfully extended pauses, as he physically struggles to get words to come out. This is extremely exasperating to those with the misfortune to have to speak with him in the film, as well as some viewers in the audience. Laura is no less inarticulate, her violent, snot-laden crying jags precluding any sort of coherent speech on her part. She bolts from the car in disgust, and Keith does something very bizarre and, at first, inexplicable: he pulls his eyes open and makes groaning noises for what feels like an interminably long time. Soon it becomes apparent that he is doing this to induce fake tears, to impress Laura with his supposed sensitivity to her distress. This scene is a great example of the humor that exists in abundance in this film, an aspect of Frownland that gets criminally short shrift in most reviews of this film. Much more than the miserably depressive work it has been made out to be, Bronstein brilliantly balances hilarity and pain in a uniquely beautiful way.

Keith has what is probably one of the most unrewarding professions possible: door-to-door solicitation for a dubious charity supposedly benefiting multiple sclerosis. He recites the same script to each prospect about a (probably fictional) brother who suffers from this disease. He is perpetually on the verge of being fired by his ever-exasperated boss Carmine (Carmine Marino). His home life offers no respite from the misery: his roommate Charles (Paul Grimstad, who also composed the film’s score) is an imperious aspiring musician who spends his nights composing cheesy electronic music, and barely tolerates Keith’s presence in the house, this despite the fact that he is unemployed and not keeping up with his share of the rent and utility payments. Keith, ever afraid to give offense, delays broaching the subject. This leads to a hilarious scene in which by all rights Keith, as the aggrieved party, should have the upper hand, but instead is subjected to a wicked role reversal by Charles, who rather than being the least bit apologetic, unleashes a vicious round of invective on his hapless, squirming victim.

Keith has what passes for a best friend in Sandy (David Sandholm), who treats him as little more than a nuisance to be rid of as soon as humanly possible. In a very telling scene, Keith worms his way into Sandy’s apartment one night after coming there to retrieve a name tag he left behind and asks to watch a Buster Keaton film with him. Keith promptly falls asleep, and Sandy takes advantage of this to fast forward through the tape to the end, after which he wakes Keith up and sends him home. Keith: “Can I call you later?” Sandy: “I’ll be asleep for a really long time.”

Having neither a plot nor a resolution and structured as a connected series of tragicomic vignettes, Frownland is most remarkable in the way it continually keeps us off balance by not allowing us to be complacent in any sense, in characterizations or atmosphere. As unpleasant as these characters are, and as few redeeming qualities they may have, it is possible to have at least some sympathy for them. Much of the humor in the film, as well as the despair, stems from their unsuccessful attempts to communicate with others and make sense of the world around them. Shot in raw, textured 16-millimeter film, subsequently blown up to 35-millimeter, which emphasizes the grain, giving the images a nearly tactile quality, Frownland is framed mostly in uncomfortably intimate close-ups, a potent representation of how literally in-your-face this film is. Cinematographer Sean Price Williams’ background is in documentaries, and he brings this aesthetic to Frownland with exhilaratingly inventive results, following the film’s unhinged protagonist, as well as its other characters, with a chaotic intensity that matches their troubled psyches. A deeply personal (and largely autobiographical) labor of love shot piecemeal over five years by Bronstein, a NYC-area freelance projectionist, Frownland is as singular and unforgettable an experience as you will ever have at the movies. It is a bold, bloody, spit and snot-covered middle finger to the hordes of faux-quirky Juno and Little Miss Sunshine clones that are laughingly described as “independent.” It’s not for everyone, by any means, but for those that are sufficiently open-minded and adventurous, Frownland reaps rich artistic rewards.

Frownland will screen again at 7:30 this Saturday at the Museum of Modern Art (where Bronstein works as a projectionist – did he project his own film at the screening I attended this afternoon?), as part of the series, “Recent Film Acquisitions: Continuum.” It will also be released on DVD September 29, on Factory 25, a new music and DVD label.

Frownland [trailer]

Frownland [excerpt]

Review: Li Ying's "Yasukuni"

Yasukuni. 2007. Written and directed by Li Ying. Produced by Zhang Yuhui, Zhang Huijun, and Hu Yun. Cinematography by Yasuhiro Hotta and Li Ying. Edited by Yuji Oshige and Li Ying. Sound by Takayuki Nakamura.

Li Ying's eye-opening and intensely visceral documentary Yasukuni, a controversial film about the equally controversial shrine commemorating fallen WWII soldiers in the heart of Tokyo, opens today for a one-week run at Film Forum, timed to the August 15th anniversary of Japan's surrender. Below is what I wrote on this film when it screened at last year's New York Asian and Japan Cuts film festivals.

Li Ying’s extraordinary documentary Yasukuni examines one of the most politically contentious spots of land in Japan: the Yasukuni Shinto shrine in central Tokyo, a memorial to Japan’s fallen soldiers during World War II. Or, to be more accurate, it is the final spiritual resting place of some of the most notorious war criminals of the Pacific War. In August 15, 2005, on the 60th anniversary of Japan’s surrender, Japan’s then prime minister Junichiro Koizumi caused a major international scandal by going to pay his respects at the shrine. This act, in effect, gave official imprimatur to a site that, while celebrated and venerated by many, for many others – Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese, Okinawan – is a symbol of Japan’s war of oppression and subjugation of the Asian continent. To those and others who oppose the shrine, this would be akin to placing a Nazi memorial in the middle of Israel. Koizumi justified his actions, as we see in the film, by claiming that it was “a matter of freedom of belief.” The speech he gives to the crowd at Yasukuni elaborates on this. He claims that his prayers represent a wish for all wars to end, and a gesture of respect to those who fought bravely and died for their country. However, the glorification of the military on display in the exercises of the shrine worshipers who prance around wearing WWII-era gear, and exhort with megaphones the glory of those soldiers, gives the lie to Kozumi’s claims of pacifist motives.

What is most remarkable about Li’s film is his approach to this material. As a Chinese, he clearly has strong feelings about the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers during the war. However, he eschews a Michael Moore-type in-your-face confrontational approach, which proves to be a wise strategy. There is no narration; he structures the film as a series of mini-plays, all of which illustrate what this shrine means to people at all points of the political spectrum. There are those who support Koizumi’s praying at the shrine, and see it as simply a benign war memorial. There is also Chiwas Ari, the Taiwanese woman who gives us a very different perspective, speaking powerfully to the role that those countries colonized by Japan played in the war. Colonial subjects were forced to fight on the side of Japan, and some of them are enshrined in Yasukuni along with native Japanese. Chiwas Ari’s impassioned plea for the return of her father’s remains is a virtual aria that is incredibly moving. For comic relief, we have the clueless American whose ham-fisted attempt to support Koizumi, combined with the stunningly boneheaded idea to wave a big American flag in the middle of the shrine, sends this quixotic figure packing by an angry crowd. The protestors who interrupt the speeches at the anniversary event are set upon by some of the crowd in a disturbingly violent confrontation, as they are chased away and beaten by members of the angry mob. Li’s chaotic camera framing, as it does in much of the film, puts the viewer in the center of the action, giving us a visceral sense of the physical dangers of dissent in this space. This is history as blood sport.

Far from the action, tucked away from all the fighting, is Naoji Kariya, the last living Yasukuni sword-maker, still continuing to practice his craft in isolation. The mythology of Yasukuni is bound up in the sword, which is the spiritual symbol of the shrine. Li constantly prods him for memories of the war, and the long, painful silences that follow Li’s questions tell their own story. Whatever memories he has remain hidden away inside him, and hidden from us. He is a curious figure; a metaphor, perhaps, for the historical memory of Japan. He seems unwilling to confront the past, yet is unable to move forward, stuck in a limbo where everything is reduced to rote, refined physical movement, craft divorced from meaning. The swords he has crafted over the years likely were used to commit some of the worst atrocities visited by Japanese soldiers upon their victims, one example of which is the chilling account of a 100-man beheading competition engaged in by two soldiers who were executed and later enshrined at Yasukuni. But Kariya willfully separates himself from this reality, and his stoic silence in response to Li’s queries about the war represents an unsettling side to vaunted notions of Japanese propriety.

The film’s concluding montage steps away from the warring factions and provides evidence from the historical record that demonstrates the truth behind the propaganda peddled by the shrine’s war museum, and the attempts to whitewash history by the petitioners who wish to “refute” the 1937 Nanking massacre, which they claim is a fiction created by aggrieved Chinese. The response to this film by Japan’s ultra right-wing factions all but demands its own follow-up feature. Harassment and death threats directed toward Li and his producers, along with relentless pressure from conservatives, caused the film’s initial Tokyo release to be cancelled in early 2008. (It finally premiered in Tokyo in May 2008, with heavy police security at screenings.)

Ten years in the making, Yasukuni is more than simply a film. Li puts his considerable journalistic and artistic skills in the service of the best use of the power of images: to illuminate, to enlighten, to cut through self-serving rhetoric and propaganda, and reveal unadorned truth.

Click here for more info on Yasukuni and to purchase tickets.

Yasukuni trailer:

Li Ying's press conference following the cancellation of his film's initial Tokyo release:

A report from Al Jazeera English on Yasukuni: