Rowan Sullivan, Author at FilmRoot

496

The Lobster

Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Greek director, Yorgos Lanthimos creates a darkly funny dystopian like you have never seen before. With 1 part Napoleon Dynamite, 1 part Gattaca, and 2 parts art-house, The Lobster deserves its recognition at the Cannes Film Festival 2015.

Why watch The Lobster?

You have watched loads of dystopian films like The Hunger Games, Bladerunner, and The Matrix and want to see a refreshing turn in the genre.
For laugh out loud awkwardness throughout.
What’s your spirit animal? Now’s the time to think of it!
Look ma… no subtitles!

A long shot of a woman driving starts of this slow burner from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos. We watch her driving, with the sound of windscreen wipers and the car engine being the only sounds we hear. She stops, gets out of the car and walks over to a deer or horse and shoots it dead. Bam – the title credits appear! Welcome to another art-house film!

The premise of this one is intriguingly unique. Being single is banned. All ‘loners’ are taken to this Hotel where they have 45 days to partner up with one of the other temporary residents there. If you fail – you are turned into an animal of your choice (Colin Farrell wants to be… a Lobster). Sound fun!? You’ll find out some of the other strange rules as you watch and you’ll also notice the hilarious awkwardness of everyone there. Single people can be hilarious!

To heighten the awkwardness director Lanthimos uses a few camera techniques. Firstly he uses still long-takes to make everything feel awkward. Just as in the editing in Androids Dream emphasises the absurdity of everything on screen with fixed long-takes The Lobster makes everything look darkly comedic by making you look at the dancing/singing/hotel masturbation for longer than you need to. Secondly, most obviously in the hunt, Lanthimos uses slow-motion to emphasise the absurdity of what the whole hunting event. The people look even more stupid running around with tranquilizers in suits in slow motion. What’s more is that this slow-motion is accompanied by orchestral music, making it all appear even more like a weird ritual or charade.

Lastly, the actors and actresses top off the awkwardness with their speech. Every line is uttered clearly and quickly, and is always followed by a brief silence before the person being talked to actually replies. Their conversations are stunted and artificial which makes their relationships look artificial as well.

For a dystopia like you’ve probably never seen before (unless you’ve seen previously reviewed sci-fi Androids Dream) I’d definitely recommend this one. Just don’t expect a fast-paced thriller – expect an artistic and innovative take on the genre.

497

Ran – Film Analysis (Intro to Japanese Film – Week 2)

If you talk about Japanese film it is impossible to avoid talking about Akira Kurosawa. Kurosawa has been one of the most influential film-makers in the history of film. He inspired Star Wars (Hidden Fortress), made the original Magnificent Seven (Seven Samurai), and influenced many American westerns, therefore it was no surprise that he was given a the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1990.

More reasons why you should pay attention to Kurosawa!

He’s an artist first and foremost! He was infamous for waiting weeks for the right cloud formations!
His Samurai epics are, well, EPIC!
His admirers include Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Hayao Miyazaki, Satyajit Ray, Ingmar Bergman, Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu, Spike Lee… (probably easier to mention the non-admirers if there actually are any).
If you want to get into Japanese film you must have seen at least one Kurosawa film!

what’s great about Ran?

Ran is the film that Kurosawa always wanted to make. He even said that the character Hidetora was himself, a director nearing the end of his career trying to end it well. The film translates roughly as Chaos or Turmoil which reflects Kurosawa’s life preceding it’s release in 1985. He had faced loads of trouble trying to get financial backing for his ‘perfectionist’ films and many of his younger rivals boasted that he was finished. A suicide attempt was evidence of Kurosawa’s fall from grace. Ran and the massive $12 million budget granted by French producer Silberman (biggest in Japan) became Kurosawa’s curtain call.

Tribute to Shakespeare?

As many viewers have commented, Ran is the Japanese version of Shakespeare’s King Lear. However, Kurosawa only noticed the similarities between his story and Shakespeare’s when he realised the similarities between King Lear and the story of Mori Motonari (the Japanese warlord that originally inspired Ran). After noticing the similarities, there can be no doubt that Shakespeare influenced Kurosawa – the evidence is permeated in many of the characters. However, Kurosawa definitely adds a lot of grit to Shakespeare’s version.

Firstly the addition of new characters bring new dimensions to the story. Taro’s wife Lady Kaede for example is one of the most interesting characters in the story, playing a revenge crazed wife to both Taro and Jiro. She can whip out some knife skills just as well as she can manipulate those she draws close to her. There is also the religious Lady Sue (wife of Jiro) and her brother Tsurumaru, who was blinded by Hidetora years ago in war. Lady Sue, Tsurumaru, and Lady Kaede are symbols of the world that Hidetora has created through violence. A world that is slowly returning his evil deeds.

The backstory of Hidetora is also much more complex than King Lear. Hidetora won his fortune and fame in violent conquest, whereas King Lear’s background is undisclosed. Therefore whilst King Lear has done no evil, Hidetora is a monster. We witness his destruction through Lady Kaede and Tsurumaru, through his forces, and later through his regret at what he has done. This extra dimension to the lead character makes Kurosawa’s version even more epic. We witness the downfall of the once feared Japanese Warlord into a insane peasant.

Lastly, Hidetora’s Kyoami is an interesting addition. Whilst King Lear does have the company of a fool in King Lear, Kyoami is different. As written on Jim’s Reviews, Kurosawa ‘made a fascinating decision to make Kyoami sexually ambiguous. The character is played by transgender Japanese pop star Peter and becomes the healing opposite of the chaos of the film by balancing both masculine and feminine energy, great courage as well as flexibility and tenderness. As we see, those qualities are especially important in a rigidly hierarchical society, founded on machoism, like the one disastrously promoted by Hidetora.’

2. Landscape is Divine

The Landscape in Ran plays a central role in the film right from the start. The landscape is the television for the Gods above, they watch everything that happens from the sky.

Starting on the plains of Japan’s wild Southern Island Kyushu, Kurosawa cuts between still horseman surveying the vast landscape. The deep green grass of the plains contrasts with the light blue sky, marking the divide between the earth and the heavenly realms. The use of a telephoto lens (zoomed in from a point far away) also emphasises the division between the horsemen on the earth, and the gods watching in the sky. The telephoto lens therefore offers the same point of view as the gods in the sky. The clouds gathering indicate that the Gods are getting restless, an ominous sign for those horsemen, lit up by sunlight, that something may happen to them.

As in the opening scene, there are many scenes filmed from far away. We are given the viewpoint of a fly on the wall. We don’t sympathise with the characters as they always appear distant. Even Saburo (the only son that loves his father) is deliberately made to appear like a spoiled child so we do not sympathise with him. Our role is to view this film as if we are Gods. Only then can we see the selfishness, greed, and violence of humanity as if we are looking in the mirror.

One of the most powerful scenes in the film is the first battle. The entire battle is filmed without diegetic sound (sound where the source is visible on screen). Instead the entire battle is accompanied by Toru Takemitsu’s haunting score. In the same way the telephoto lens detaches us from the characters giving us a God-like perspective, the lack of diegetic sound detaches us from the battle on screen. The violence appears both shocking and inevitable, we cannot hear it, but we can see it and feel it’s devastation in the orchestral score. The view point again emphasises human violence and destruction.

Kurosawa’s use of long camera lenses (to zoom in from afar), division of the sky and earth, and silence in the battle puts the audience in a god-like perspective. We see humanity how the Gods would, without sympathy and attachment, showing humanity as greedy, selfish, and violent.

3. Kurosawa’s use of BIG casts

Obvious in Ran as much as any other of Kurosawa’s films, Kurosawa has become a master at exploiting movement in film. Just think back to the battle scenes in Ran and think of how the impact of the battle might have changed if there had only been 20 extras on each side.

As a break from reading, I encourage you to watch this excellent video from Every Frame a Painting showing you how Kurosawa exploits movement in his films.

What’s Next for Week 3?

Next week we will delve into another Japanese master, Hayao Miyazaki. This master of animation has won global acclaim for his highly imaginative films which have stretched the boundaries of animation and storytelling. Whilst his most famous animation may be the incredible Spirited Away, I’m excited to share with you my favorite next week. It’s beautiful, emotional, and must have helped inspire Avatar, bring on Princess Mononoke!

See you next week for more analysis and our next assignment!

498

Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight For Freedom

Winter on Fire from Netflix is a perfect example about how technology is helping to catch some incredible footage of popular protests that might not have been captured before. I recommend this film to anyone with or without a Netflix account!

Why watch Winter on Fire?

For an insight into the current situation in Ukraine – do you want to know why Ukraine descended into chaos in late 2013?
To understand what it means to be European and part of the EU (pretty relevant today with the Brexit vote looming).
Peaceful protests – what can they achieve?
To see how film-makers can influence you!

In the opening minutes we are introduced to a 16 year old standing amidst dead bodies and gunfire who says that he belongs on the front lines. This is our baptism of fire – we can immediately see that the country has descended into chaos. Cut to a very brief introduction to Ukraine and President Yanukovych pictured alongside the word ‘criminal.’ From there we are taken to the first gatherings of the crowd at Maidan after the President declared he would not enter the EU.

First off, the footage of the whole protest from late 2013 to early 2014 is incredible. Afineevsky had a team of 28 cameramen and camerawomen shoot clips throughout the protests and of many people involved. We are introduced to kids, religious figures, and men and women from an array of backgrounds. The scope of the protests are matched by the scope of the footage.

Even the action captured is incredible and extremely hard to watch at times due to the violence. Nothing from the protests seems to escape the camera.

On the other hand, Afineevsky masterfully influences the viewer. After the film I felt compelled to do something to support Ukraine and the people’s fight for freedom. The footage of large groups of people singing and working together to build a make-shift community successfully gets viewers on the side of the protestors. Even the music rouses us to support the protestors – it builds when crowds gather and start working together, and turns more dramatic when the people are met by the police.

The whole film becomes a battle of ‘the people’ vs. violence and corruption. Obviously we are going to choose the people! The people interviewed and the narrators all support the protestors. In this respect, it would have been nice to have another point of view. Evidently there were people against the protestors goals, but there is no attempt to give them any voice.

This is the second powerful documentary that Netflix has produced showing big city protests, the first being The Square (2013) showing the Egyptian Revolution at Tahir Square. Both Winter on Fire and The Square were nominated for Academy Awards. Both show protests against the government and how they progress. Both are recommended viewing!

499

Tokyo Story – Film Analysis (Intro to Japanese Film – Week 1)

In a time when Japanese films were just reaching foreign shores, Tokyo Story director, Yasujiro Ozu, was considered too Japanese to be exported. His simplistic style and go-to themes reflect his very modest life. Ozu never married, living with his mother until the end of his life after he returned from service in the Second World War. His gravestone today bears one single Japanese character; the character of nothingness.

So why should you care about Yasujiro Ozu?

He was one of the leading film-makers in Japan’s golden age of film (1950s).
His techniques broke Hollywood’s unwritten rules of cinematography (how a film is shot).
His films appeal to everyone with universal themes of family, time, and loss.
Tokyo Story is ranked No.3 on Sight & Sound’s best films of ALL TIME!

What makes this film great?

1. Rule-Breaking Cinematography

You might have noticed the low placement of the camera in most of this film. The height of the camera is set to around 3 foot off of the ground, the same height as someone kneeling on a Tatami mat (the ‘tatami shot’). In Hollywood, a camera looking up at characters gives them power, in contrast, in Tokyo Story, this low camera feels respectful and open, as no character dominates a single scene.

You might have also noticed how in conversation, Ozu points the camera straight at the talking characters. In Hollywood, we would normally see characters talking from behind the shoulder of the character they are talking to, but here the focus on the talking character places us (the viewer) in the center of the conversation. It also completely exposes the characters to our judgment.

Another feature Ozu deliberately does not use is camera movement. There was only one moving shot in the whole film (apparently more than his other films), where the camera moves along a fence to show the elderly couple evicted by their children. Some of you might be put off by this, but fortunately for us, Ozu magically creates 360 degree spaces. The still shots force us to absorb everything he puts in front of us.

The still shots add tone by lingering at the beginning and end of each shot. For example, characters often leave the room before the director cuts to follow them into the next room. Again, this is completely different to Hollywood films which employed ‘invisible editing’ where the cuts between each shot are so smooth that you often don’t notice them. So maybe if you are confused about what cutting is, then you’ve probably just grown up surrounded by smooth Hollywood editing. (Follow this link to learn more about editing). The lingering shots in Tokyo Story force us to think about what has happened, a lot like the when a theater stage is changed in-between scenes.

Together, the effects that Ozu uses help to build the tone of the film. The camera conveys respect, serenity, and tradition. This probably sounds pretentious so I’ll quickly explain. The camera is respectful because it never cuts from that is speaking and usually looks each character straight in the eye when they are speaking. The camera is serene in the silence and empty spaces shown at the beginning and end of shots (through the lingering). Lastly, the camera represents tradition through the ‘tatami shot’ and its lack of movement (the only movement in the film signifies a progression of time. No progression = no modernization = tradition!). So there you have it! Cinematography (the art of camera-work) does an awful lot!

2. Themes! The battle of the Old vs. the New in Tokyo Story

Tokyo Story shows what it was like to live in Japan in the post-war period. The Second World War drained a lot of resources from Japan and ultimately ended in defeat for Japan in 1945. Images of Tokyo are used to break up scenes of the family. It is mostly shown as industrial, with pictures of factories billowing smoke and railways. The city is busy with development and modernization which reflects in its inhabitants. All of the elderly couple’s children in Tokyo are too busy and pre-occupied to spend time with them. Their jobs in Tokyo have become their lives.

The modernization of Tokyo has favored work at the expense of tradition. This is obviously pointed out on a bus tour the elderly couple are taken on which shows ancient temples surrounded by modern buildings. The past is also forgotten by the children who are too wrapped up in their careers and self to spend time with their elderly parents. The grandchildren are even more distant, too sheltered to know who their grandparents are or the traditions that they represent. The traditional central role of the family has been destroyed within these three generations, family is no longer important.

Ozu was a supporter of tradition, evident in his ‘Tatami shots’ and late adoption of film with sound (even most of his sound films feature very little background music). It is therefore not surprising that he chooses an elderly couple and a respectful daughter in law to sympathize with. With their mother’s death in the final act, tradition breathes its last breath. After a brief sob, her daughter Shige disrespectfully asks her father if she can take her mother’s Kimono, a symbol of Japanese culture. With this Shige dilutes Japanese tradition and culture further as it is replaced by self-obsession.

3. Acting – Small-talk in Tokyo Story

Quickly, I would also like to point out the subtlety of the acting in Tokyo Story. Firstly, the grandparents convey a lot without speaking. For example, the grandpa, played by Chishu Ryu, conveys so much by gently nodding. It may sound silly, but think about it. Before leaving for Tokyo he nods with excitement at the neighbor when answering her questions about his upcoming trip. In Tokyo he nods respectfully and fairly formally when greeting his children that he has not seen in a long time (showing the distance between the generations). Later, his nods convey disappointment when his family asks him to stay somewhere else. Lastly, his nods convey deep sadness when talking to his neighbor and Noriko after his wife passes away. Do I still sound crazy?

As film critic Roger Ebert said of Tokyo Story: “given the opportunity as a family o share our hopes and disappointments, we talk about the weather and watch TV.” The formalities in family conversation during the film reflect Ebert’s statement. When speaking with their children, the parents make polite conversation. They only talk about their hopes and disappointments to their daughter-in-law Noriko and with the help of alcohol. The nods of the Grandpa are the only clue to his true feelings, marking the break in the two generations.

What’s Next for Week 2?

I hope you enjoyed Tokyo Story as much as I did. Next week we will take a look at Japan’s most famous film director, Akira Kurosawa. Stick around for Samurai epic Ran, Kurosawa’s favorite film of his storied career. A mixture of Samurai genre and Shakespeare (King Lear), this film is truly epic in size (the beautiful landscapes and enormous casts are astonishing) and is worth watching just for the spectacle alone.