If you’re looking for a heart warming family to guide you around contemporary Japan, check out Shoplifters. Everyone is welcome to join this oddball family and find beauty in life’s simple pleasures.
From: Japan, AsiaContinue reading “Shoplifters – Let this Oddball Family guide you around Japan”
Watch: Trailer, Hulu, Rent on Amazon, Buy on Amazon
Next: Boyhood, Kikujiro, Little Miss Sunshine
Toni Erdmann Film Difficulty Ranking: 2
“Don’t lose your humour”
Toni Erdmann starts with a postman delivering a package to Mr. Erdmann. He rings the doorbell, and seconds later Mr. Erdmann answers and confusedly asks the postman who the package is for. It is addressed to Toni Erdmann. Mr. Erdmann then says that his brother must have ordered it – he’s fresh out of jail for using mail bombs. He disappears into the house whilst the postman stands there worrying about if the package is another mail bomb. Mr. Erdmann reappears, this time dressed in glasses and goofy teeth, posing as his ‘brother.’
Mr. Erdmann sees his daughter a few scenes later at his wife’s house but she is always on the phone setting up meetings and working. She is only in Germany for a few days, having taken a few days off from her job in Romania. To surprise her, Mr. Erdmann decides to fly to Romania. He obviously hoped to find a happy daughter because of her very successful career, but we can tell that this is not the case. We know she has not found happiness by the sad frown on her face (she never smiles), the dying plants in her apartment, and her fatigue (from her awful sleeping pattern).
Her life is full of superficiality. She is too focused on her career to be happy, she does things she doesn’t want to do, like take her clients’ wife shopping, and loses herself at fancy parties. Mr. Erdmann tries to awaken her through his strange humour. He dons a wig, glasses, and fake teeth and pretends to be her CEO’s ‘Life Coach’. Of course, she doesn’t see the funny side of his antics. However, he hilariously keeps making fun of himself and her fake life to try and help her out of her sombre life.
In a world where there is a glut of unfunny American comedies that all seem the same, Toni Erdmann is a breath of fresh air. Through the laughs which rise to a crescendo in the last 20 minutes, there is also a message: never lose your sense of humour. Mr. Erdmann certainly hasn’t and spends a month trying to make sure his daughter has not lost hers.
Are you ready to watch an amazing visual recreation of the Holocaust? You will see it all from the point of view of Saul, a Jew forced to help in the Nazi death camps. The camera shoots the whole film with Saul’s head in close up. We see everything he does, as if we are controlling him in a video game. If you liked the long takes of Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men, or Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, you will appreciate this film.
The film starts with a blurred image full of green vegetation. You can just about make out two people with their shirts off, digging a hole by a tree. A man approaches the camera and his head comes into focus. The camera sticks to him, always showing his head in close-up focus and everything happening around him out of focus. He herds people onto a train and into the Nazi Death camps where they are frantically stripped and sent to their deaths in the gas chambers.
The man who the camera has stuck to is Saul, a Sonder Kommando. The Sonder Kommando were strong men, usually Jewish, selected by the Nazis to clear the gas chambers. We see them clearing dead bodies, rifling for valuables in the dead’s clothes, and digging burial plots. They were effectively slaves for the Nazis. If they didn’t obey the Nazis, they were shot and replaced. However, like the prisoner in A Man Escaped, there is hope where there is life and always opportunity to rebel and escape.
The director, Lazlo Nemes, chooses to focus on one man, Saul, throughout the film. The camera stays glued to Saul’s face for the whole film. Our view is restricted by Saul’s movement – even the background is rarely in focus. It gives us a unique point of view which immerses us in the horrors of life in the Nazi death camps. However, the blurred background hides a lot of the gore and violence from clear view (even though we know what is happening). I believe the director leaves these blurred to show that Saul has become accustomed to the horror/violence. He knows it is there, but doesn’t want to see it any more, so he blurs it out of his memory.
As hinted at before, Saul blurs out the horror and violence of the Holocaust as he doesn’t want to see it. As a result, his perspective and life retreats into himself as he tries to leave reality. He makes it his duty to ceremonially bury a boy killed by the Nazis who is left for experimentation. He prioritises this over everything else (escape, rebellion, and protection).
“You have failed the living for the dead” – One of the Sonder Kommando to Saul.
Beauty and the Dogs is one traumatic roller coaster ride. There’s no respite from the very first cut and once you’ve strapped in you have to watch until the end of the ride.
From: Tunisia, AfricaContinue reading “Beauty and the Dogs (Tunisia) – One Victim Against the Police”
Watch: Trailer, Amazon Buy
Next: Irreversible, The Insult, Dogville
In the late 2000s a group of black boys aged 12-14 robbed other children’s phones on around 70 occasions in Gothenberg. This film tracks one of their robbery scams to see how they did it whilst cleverly making the victims (and the audience) look (and feel) helpless. Watch it here (Amazon).
Play starts with a still shot of the centre of a shopping mall. Two 10 year old white boys enter the middle of the frame talking about what they need to buy next. Then, the camera slowly pans to the left, settling on a group of 5 black kids. They’ve spotted the two white kids and play rock, paper, scissors to decide who is going to go rob them.
Turns out, their trick is a lot longer than you might expect. One of the black boys asks one of the white boys for the time. Then when the white kid pulls out his phone, the black kid tells him that his phone looks just like the one that was robbed from his little brother. Cue a tour around town to find his ‘little brother’ to verify if the phone is the one that was robbed from him.
The race and class separation between the two groups is obvious. One group, with two white kids and one Asian kid, is obviously more well off than the group of black kids that rob them. They are in the mall shopping for new clothes and video games. In contrast, the black kids are just messing around. They’re not there to spend money, they’re there because they have nothing else to do. Robbing the richer kids is their entertainment. It gives them something to do and gets them enough funds to afford dinner.
For more on the identity dynamics, I recommend reading IndieWire’s review of Play here.
First of all, the bystanders in this film are pretty useless. Every time they see the group of kids in trouble, they refuse to help and just carry on with their own lives instead. The static frames make the bystanders look even more useless. Instead of cutting between close-up shots of the victims and antagonists, the static frame shows us their surroundings. You can see bystanders sitting or standing at the edge of the screen, pretending to be oblivious to the action. Their cowardice makes us question ourselves: would we be like them and just ignore kids being bullied near us?
The static frames also convey the victims helplessness. Once the victims enter the frame they’re stuck. They can leave the screen, but they will always return to it. Similarly, the audience is forced to watch the victims being bullied and robbed. There are short breaks from the main narrative, such as a group of Native Americans singing in the street, but our focus will always be diverted back to the kids being bullied. It’s as if the director wants us to feel helpless whilst trying to show us enough bullying to encourage us to help the helpless.
Play is brilliantly daring. It’s controversial and clever – it highlights cowardice and staunch social boundaries (class and race) and provokes debate. However, one word of advice, just like a lot of other controversial art (gangsta rap) you’ve got to look deeper than the surface.
For a funnier but even more awkward film from Ruben Ostlund, I strongly recommend Academy Award Nominee, Force Majeure (Amazon).
I’d also strongly recommend watching both Girlhood and La Haine. They’re two more films that focus on underprivileged kids looking for their way in life in societies where they’re marginalised.
Or, if you’re looking for more Swedish film, you must check out anything by Ingmar Bergman. Start with Wild Stawberries or The Seventh Seal (Amazon).
