To help you ease your way into our world, we have devised a the film difficulty ranking system to rate the difficulty of each film reviewed on our site. The easiest to watch films (the Rom-Coms and Superhero flicks that you watch anyway) will have a rating of 1. Foreign language films automatically add one point, as do black and white films, and films with strange and hard to follow plots. Welcome to Film Difficulty 2.
Film Difficulty Ranking 2: These films are perfect introductions to those new to foreign films. These one’s may have subtitles, or be in black and white, but these films are all easy to follow and enjoy.
If you’re looking for an accessible account of the Cambodian Genocide, this film might be for you. First They Killed My Father depicts life under the horrific Khmer Rouge through the eyes of a 6 year old girl based on the book of the same name. Whilst it’s not as memorable as the book or other films on the subject, it’s the most accessible – it’s easy to watch and it’s on Netflix!
We’ve already reviewed The Lunchbox and Talvar from the India, the country that makes the most movies per year. Watch Mirzya for something different. It has a lot more of the classic Bollywood film than the other two, with more music and more drama and plenty of style. It is also currently available on Netflix, so check out the trailer below and enjoy!
Why Watch Mirzya?
You don’t have to settle for one genre as this film is an epic, fantasy, romantic, thriller, with a few musical numbers!
For some Punjabi Indian mythology
See some epic cinematography (reminiscent of 300)
You want to see a Shakespeare adaptation set in India
The Breakdown
A camera descends on a small town illuminated by fires in the night. The camera swoops into a small imperial residence built from marble, where a blacksmith is working with his daughter. From there, the camera dives into the pit of embers and emerges outside where workers are rhythmically bashing their hammers on iron wheels in slow motion. This is our magical entry point into Mirzya.
From the introduction, the narrative splits into two. The main narrative follows the life of Munish and Suchitra whilst the second narrative follows the mythical Mirza and Sahiban. These two narratives mirror each other for the film.
The style of the mythical scenes will remind you of the style of 300 or . Whilst there is colour, the colours appear pastel-like and very bright to create high contrasts. These scenes also include a lot of slow motion footage showing water droplets falling from characters. Check the epic slow motion scenes here in The Grandmaster for an idea.
Style and mirrored narratives aside, this story also shows the rich/poor divide in India. The poor work menial jobs to serve their rich masters. Meanwhile, the rich live in imperial palaces, play polo, and dress in fancy suits. Instead of rival families, the romance in this film plays across social boundaries.
Conclusion
Mirzya’s mythical foundation creates the magic behind this film. However, the importance of myths is not explored as deeply as in Song of the Sea or Whale Rider. Instead, what’s cool about this film is the style of the mythical sequences and the musical numbers. This is what makes Miryza truly unique and worth watching.
As mentioned in the opening scenes of Beatriz’s War, East Timor was a Portuguese colony until 1975 when the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin) declared independence. However, their independence was short lived, as Indonesian forces invaded 9 days later to take control of the entire island. Indonesia then occupied East Timor for 24 years until East Timor finally regained its independence in 1999.
Beatriz’s War takes place over the 24 years of the Indonesian occupation. It depicts the violence of the Indonesian occupation as well as the fragmented East Timorese resistance happening around Beatriz.
Strong (or Stubborn) Independent Women
Beatriz is both strong and independent. She’s married off in the opening scenes as a young girl but due to the gentle nature of her young husband, she’s always in control. Like her father, the leader of the community, we’re always led to believe that she’s more likely to take a stand and join the fight against the Indonesians than her husband.
However, her strength seems to turn to stubbornness in the second half of the film when her gentle husband disappears in a massacre. Her community mourns the losses of the men and children killed by Indonesian forces, but she stubbornly refuses to believe that her husband is truly dead. She also never accepts her new reality, trying to maintain her old way of life by abiding by traditions. Her stubborn denial is a sign of the trauma caused by the violent occupation.
Fitting a French Legal Case into The History of East Timor
Martin Guerre was a French peasant from the 16th century who was at the center of a famous case of imposture. Several years after he left his wife and child, a man claiming to be him appeared and tricked his wife and son for three years before he was eventually found out. His story has been dramatized many times for film and TV over the years and is also inserted into the second half of Beatriz’s War after the departure of the Indonesian occupiers to emphasize the length of the occupation.
Primarily, the adaptation gives Beatriz’s War a lot of melodrama. It sets of a battle of emotions between Beatriz and her community as to the origin of a man who arrives in their community 20 years later claiming to be Beatriz’s husband. If you can get past the melodrama, the inclusion of the Martin Guerre story also highlights the impact of the long Indonesian occupation. Whilst the occupation physically destroyed a generation, the length of the occupation also helped to mentally blur a generation. With no photos, Beatriz’s image of her husband has faded over 20 years to a point where she can no longer recognize him. The long, traumatic occupation enabled the Martin Guerre story to happen.
What to Watch Next
First They Killed My Father feels like the closest film to Beatriz’s War. Both films follow a girl who sees their country occupied by an opposing force. Both films show the occupation and the genocides that go with it. However, whilst First they Killed My Father focuses on a girl’s perspective, Beatriz’s War takes place over 25 years.
For more films about the atrocities committed by Indonesians, check out Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentaries: The Look of Silence and The Act of Killing. Both documentaries look at the free-living leaders of Indonesian death squad that were responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of innocent Indonesians. The Look of Silence even gets the perpetrators to act out how they did it, with the killers slowly coming to realize the grotesque crimes they’ve committed.
Or if you’re looking for more stories from South East Asia featuring kids in coming-of-age stories, check out The Rocket from Laos and Golden Kingdomfrom Myanmar.
Indigenous Batswana films aren’t easy to find, so if you know of any, please contact me here. In the meantime, check out N!ai, the Story of a !Kung Woman (the exclamation marks represent click sounds). It’s a documentary made by an American anthropologist, so it’s by no means a true Batswana film. However, you will get to see the impact of the white government on the independence of the !Kung people as portrayed through the life of a !Kung woman named N!ai.
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