Before Sunrise
Remember liking it when I saw it long time back. It is strictly good only.
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Before Sunrise
Remember liking it when I saw it long time back. It is strictly good only.
Quote:
Originally Posted by P_R
Lol! :D illa adhukukaaga dhan andha peru cache nu vechanga nu sonnen.. i read an interesting write up about this movie somewhere.. will post the link soon
City by the sea
- Thanks for the recommend, Groucho. What a truly understated, emotional (without fully breaking down once coz that's how the character is, and the scene in the autoshop when he talks to his son, despairing and from the heart. He just is Vincent LaMarca :notworthy: ), nuanced performance by the great man. Lovely :clap:
Next !Quote:
Originally Posted by groucho070
RanganAr on the film. With a pointer by yours truly in the comments section.Quote:
Originally Posted by P_R
Old dogs...
Expected more from Travolta and Robin Williams. Walt Disney lives up to the reputation of making films for (only) kids.
Bear with my self-serving, shameless plug, Anaylsis by notcoming, that explores my perplexed reaction towards Haneke's critique of different medium (of film in itself, resemblance of surveillance footage, of TV, home videotapes, distorted images - crayon work, indiscernible voice/sound over telephone), that it also serves to quench some of the genre expectations, by unsettling the characters, who firmly posit the bourgeois..Quote:
Originally Posted by Brangan writeup on Cache
Quote:
Haneke does not limit his analysis only to the viewer, but also to the medium in which images are delivered and received. The communication within Caché is noticeably hindered by the long-standing discord between cultures, whether due to prior political policy that still carries weight today or the concealed existing prejudices that have damaged the characters’ facility for compassion and intimacy. While basic discussion appears unsuccessful in Caché, certain methods of contact are able to pierce through the bourgeois shield, though their value varies. Interestingly, the most effective form of communication is the simple color drawing that seems to convey more meaning in its tiny size than any number of complex conversations. In fact, rather than the monotonous images on the irksome videotapes, it is the buried message within the crayon image that provides context for the video, exhumes memories, and provokes Georges to engage in his unwise pursuit. Oddly, more advanced methods of communication seem to deliver contentious results. The stream of images that video offers yields meaning only when context is provided, and the telephone does not require actual discourse while it obscures the identity of the speaker.
Meanwhile, Haneke is more severe when examining the medium of television. The presence of television seems unavoidable in Caché and its style even appears to invade dreams. Haneke is willing to concede that television serves an important function, especially considering it is the only means of deciphering the video-terrorist’s message. The medium is so fundamental to our comprehension of our surroundings that various characters keep piles of videotapes – perhaps as their own form of documentation – which they seem incapable of discarding. Unfortunately, as in previous Haneke films, television’s persistence inevitably leads to our desensitization. While a crude drawing allows us to concentrate on a single image, the incessant flood of images TV provides us usually allows us to ignore what we have become inundated by.
However, Caché also displays a more complex conception of television. Haneke’s most intriguing use of television comes during a family crisis as Georges and Anne frantically search for a suddenly missing Pierrot. During the scene, as a panicked Anne calls another parent, Haneke places his couple at the edges of the screen while he positions a television in the center of his frame. While the couple’s distress increases, the television streams though a series of images from a broadcast of international news. The footage details the ongoing conflicts and hardships of virtually every “brown” culture in the third world, speeding through images of Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs, and briskly moving from Palestine, to Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Kashmir. Understandably, the couple is too distracted to even note these sensational scenes of the world around them, yet the contrast of their problem to the misery of the foreigners underscores the disparity between nations. The choice of what to concentrate upon is clear for Georges and Anne, but a dilemma is created for the viewer. Do we watch the personal crisis of our fictional couple created in an artificial film, or do we gaze at the authentic footage of real people engaged in a constant catastrophe? On some level we must also ask if it is entirely acceptable for our central couple to completely ignore widespread global adversity for a personal problem. Viewers may also wonder if it is appropriate while watching a film to be diverted by a television screen that our eyes naturally gravitate towards.
What Haneke recognizes is that television is a compelling medium, but it is also an abstraction that allows viewers to maintain a comfortable distance from the subjects within the images being exhibited. That distance allows TV’s images to distract us, but also provides us the option to discard the product just as easily. Hence the distortion allows a TV audience to regard the Third-World populace within the footage as merely images forever trapped in a box that provides passive programming. Whether or not the reality the image is meant to convey remains elusive, Caché ultimately grants the spectator the power of realization. Since he is a TV personality who constantly watches TV and manipulates images both at work (removing a portion of his show during editing because it’s too theoretical) and at home, it’s reasonable to assume that Georges grasps the nature of television. Yet Georges still ignores visual information that does not directly affect his life. Thus, while Haneke often reprimands television for exploiting suffering and desensitizing viewers to violence, Caché also places the responsibility upon the spectator who decides to disregard the images presented to them. Caché may actually be Haneke’s most balanced representation of television’s function to date, since it seems the director is willing to admit the medium has value even while he critiques its use.
Discerning who actually commands the images within Caché and who exactly serves as the spectator to those images becomes an exasperating issue. It is important to distinguish that the film blends various media together and that the images are manipulated by a number of different parties. It is equally important to notice that the film’s audience and the film’s characters often share the same view, but that the film’s audience remains passive and unable to control the action or image. However, with both perspectives fused, the film’s audience should subject themselves to the same scrutiny imposed upon the fictional characters, and consider why exactly we choose to watch a fictionalized film that distorts, and distracts from, the reality of our surrounding world. Furthermore, Haneke appears to invite disapproval of his own decision to fashion an elaborate thriller, since he occasionally allows television, the very medium he constantly berates, to take control of his film.
:thumbsup: Glad you liked it. Too bad it got buried amidst the Godsends and Analyse Thats :evil:Quote:
Originally Posted by kid-glove
Stumbled on a paragraph fraught with perhapses. Konjam gap vittuttu padikkarEn.Quote:
Originally Posted by complicateur
Liked one commnentator (!) by the name Vijay there, who trashed The Shining. Now I know why I could never explain why I don't think much of that movie, he had used up my words. The distinction between "open-ended" and "ambiguous" he brings up is pretty important methinks. "Either could have been the case, we don't know" is so damn different from "neenga solra maadhiriyum sollalaam, avar solra maadhiriyum sollalaam". aahaa...slippery slope again.
P_R,
I don't thinkis the problem here. But that "either could have been the case" is in itself a defect. I suppose if it works for him as in "Sixth sense", it's okay.Quote:
"Either could have been the case, we don't know" is so damn different from "neenga solra maadhiriyum sollalaam, avar solra maadhiriyum sollalaam"
for starters, he says The “shining” itself doesnt find much use in the plot. Perhaps the title should have been "Overlook hotel claims Jack Torrance" :lol2: I suppose it's fair to say the film is as much about the kid and Wendy as it is about Jack. The shining is of the biggest significance in the plot, in that it brings about their escape and serves to close the history of carnage and the cycle of haunted caretakers, in Overlook. This is very easy to understand, but the commentator :lol2: seems to keep banging about the lack of accessibility.
Bee..R's post is predictable, but serves to provide closure to this utterly redundant debate..
Quote:
Originally Posted by BRangan
Not quite off-topic I hope, Thilak, but have you seen the mini-series version of The Shining? The one King approved?
Not yet. Is it any good?Quote:
Originally Posted by groucho070
Haven't myself. Considering King hated Kubrick's version, I suspect the mini-series must be horrible :PQuote:
Originally Posted by kid-glove
I am not sure I got that. When you say "either" could have been the case then it is adequately clear that the possibilities are, we just don't know what happened. On the other hand, the latter is leaving the audience to figure out what the whole thing is about.Quote:
Originally Posted by kid-glove
It is not the irresolution that I find as problematic as much as the passing off of irresolution itself as an artistic virtue.
When the videos paused and rewound - I fell for it again and again, I loved that. Several brilliant scenes. The threatened one threatening, Georges' discomfort in sharing manifesting in several ways with several levels - all these I liked. But still I find it difficult to like the movie.
I felt similarly about Shining. Spooky fragments, plenty of awesome sequences (the kid's voice, the tricycling, all work and no play, the chase, the inserted frames of twins,blood, the ballroom, photo - I am recalling all this from a single viewing of the movie some 5 years back). But it was not a satisfying film.
Blairwitch-la illAdha irresolution-A, you don't know what the deuce is happening. That is a brilliant brilliant film. I am not sure I am as interested in watching The Shining.
The problem is, the need to objectify Torrance's breakdown or what is happening, or anything in life, to one singular factor - the supernatural, the cabin-fever, or Torrance's personal situation.
The film is positing - the haunted history (in that it'sall-encompassing, all the way up to the reincarnate-suggestive snap) of Overlook, and Torrance's burden of raising his family, the yearning for alcohol, the writer's block, etc - as different causes . The plot is brought out with each of the above, and not just one singular purpose/reason.
But the problem raised by the comment there, is that it should be very specific and not the combination of the above. Strangely, he/she feels some of it is not even required like the "Shining", which btw IS.
Moreover, I feel there is a certain mechanism in trying to show a fully-wrought plot hinged on a very specific, isolated, Freudian reading, like the Rosebud for example :lol2: , and that it masks lack of talent and limitation.
Personally, that was a :fatigue:, but I intend to watch it again.Quote:
Blairwitch-la illAdha irresolution-A, you don't know what the deuce is happening. That is a brilliant brilliant film.
And yes, I know you are open to films with irresolution in its make-up. But with the action and thrills, you manage to enjoy. Ah, alright. I get it.
I'm not with you, in terms of "Shining" or "Cache" being just about irresolution or its ambiguity, or that it is necessarily liked for its irresolution.Quote:
It is not the irresolution that I find as problematic as much as the passing off of irresolution itself as an artistic virtue.
And, it's bombastic to go on about what constitutes artistic virtue and what does not. Some of my favorite works of art (be it books, or films) happen to have artist's deliberate ambiguity (not "irresolution", which is not saying the same thing) as one of its virtue (artistic or not), but I'm not hinging my liking entirely on this virtue. And of course, if life is sometimes inexplicable, irresolute, and absurd, some of it is bound to make its way to art. Or, if the artist wants to play within the medium, by introducing his own wand like in Haneke films, to bring out hidden secrets and experiences, it offers another interesting possibility of film making.
I'm not sure what's the fuss is about, apart from the fact that it's another subjective case of taking-in ones life experiences, and cultivated opinion/taste, to offer your own understanding of what is right or wrong, and apply it to what Art (or anything in life) should or should not be, in your view.
Not one single factor. A combination is fine too :-). Why, what...some lines in that direction. (I guess you are saying that much is already there in the film). May be this, may be that, may be both, may be all....leaves me cold.Quote:
Originally Posted by kid-glove
Eh ! Rosebud is unimaginative and Shining is !!! Thanks for the example - Rosebud was perfect dangle and deny - for me. Finally when giving up saying no-one thing can be something you can reduce a man's life to and then showing Rosebud, you don't know how much to value it. You can reduce and thing it was deathbed longing for days of yonder. Or that it was a deathbed blabber and wild goose chase was all it was. It offers multiple 'readings'. Perhaps I like it more because both readings are 'sanctioned' by that last line of the film.Quote:
Moreover, I feel there is a certain mechanism in trying to show a fully-wrought plot hinged on a very specific, isolated, Freudian reading, like the Rosebud for example :lol2: , and that it masks lack of talent and limitation.
Hmm Shining had action and thrills too and I enjoyed them. Its just that it feels odd to like parts of the film without liking the whole.Quote:
Originally Posted by k-g
Ok it is not liked "only" for that. I meant irresolution itself gaining regard when it is some cases relatively easier to write.Quote:
Originally Posted by k-g
Exactly ! In fact to be able to do that one would have to be one helluva writer. I am trying to remember what's the last non-humorous absurd work I liked. ...still thinking.Quote:
Originally Posted by k-g
That much I accept. Usually I wouldn't have paid attention to claims of'making a statement about the medium itself' through film without much consideration. But Cache was offered some pretty interesting viewing precisely here.Quote:
Originally Posted by k-g
Of course ? What else is to be expected ? "It's a great movie, but I hate it" is something I can never bring myself to say. Sometimes I can perhaps say: I can understand why someone can like it. But even that is something I find very awkward thing to say.Quote:
Originally Posted by k-g
When I dislike I try to understand why I don't. Quite obviously I bring up other dislikes of mine in comparison and connected by some weak strand of attempted reasoning.Or atleast I am trying to understand what it is that someone who likes a film likes in the film.
In this particular case I am interested particularly because so many parts of the film (first of his that I have watched) were good. Trying to understand if what I disliked about the film overall are kind of his signature.
Anyway Husbands and Wives downloading...:-)
Just to clarify P_R, I'm not knocking "Rosebud" (in fact, I thought it was an essential crevice into Kane, and I rate the film as much as anybody), and with the way it was staged, you're sure it's more than just a deathbed blabber. It worked for me, any way. I'm just saying not all films ought to have an enhancement like "Rosebud" to corroborate what happened. It worked in "Citizen Kane". I'm also disconcerted about the comparison (on any scale) to "Sixth Sense" in BR's blog. Even if it offered a closure.
Alright. This kind of inference could be unimaginative if it's just about the only thing. But when used without trepidation ("may" or "perhaps"), all the elements played out as aptly as in "The shining", it doesn't leave me cold. I'm left titillated and stimulated.Quote:
May be this, may be that, may be both, may be all....leaves me cold
As for me, I'm going to check out "Cassandra's dream" again, after that discussion on "Match point". I didn't like it all that much before, but now I'm guessing it would make films like Lumet's "Before the devil knows you're dead" look silly.
Fallen Angels. Went above my head. The dingy clubs, lights, soundtracks and angles - certainly gave a tone to the film. Should watch again.
Death Sentence.
Seeing some -ive reviews, I didnt watch this DVD which i bought long time back.
Gonna stop reading reviews b4 watching a moviefrom now on. This is certainly not a movie to miss.
Waking Life
Pretty good.
Rules padi pudikka koodAdhu, but I liked it very much.
I love you man - Very cliche'd and yet unexpectedly funny. Especially Jon Favreau.
Marley & Me..
Awesome.. If you are a pet lover, this movie is surely gonna bring you down to tears.
Black water..
An aussie horror movie which keeps you on the edge throughout. Recommended...
"Heat", in a single sitting. I took two the first time.
Michael Mann :notworthy:
Deniro :notworthy:
Pacino - Good, in bursts.
Genuine piece of inspiration and possibly the pinnacle of city cop/burglar flipside-of-the-coin procedural-cum-action films
No surprise to me that Nolan took this (and Mann's Collateral, thief, among others), and Blade runner as influences, when he made "The Dark knight". Bravo
Deniro topples Pacino in nuance and depth of his character. Pacino's part is a deliberate antithesis of sorts, but a bit ineffective imho
Waltz with Bashir
Good.
As I just saw Waking Life recently - I found it less engrossing.
B(K), regarding the paaltiks, I thought the "denial" was brought out quite well. idhukku mElayumA avinga kittErndhu edhir paartheenga :lol2:
I guess it's the lack of oppressed (Palestinian and Lebanese, in this case) POV in mainstream, that worries B(K)
Oh okay.Quote:
Originally Posted by kid-glove
I thought it was the "we were only seeing from the sidelines, the phalangists were the ones massacring in camps in Lebanon" that was the problem. That is Israel's stated official stand. The film gave the feeling that it was exploring fublic conscience but did not go beyond.
adhai thaan solraarnu nenchchEn.
Anyway, I thought the 'personal exploration' part , struggling with the dominance of subjectivity, inability to make one simple sense of it all, were the things I liked about the film.
Waltz, and Waking Life - I surely wouldn't've enjoyed them if they were not animated films.
Adhu (excepting) oru frablem, in this context!
Perhaps why they were both animated, although through different means, drawing and rotoscoping respectively.Quote:
Originally Posted by P_R
Forget the phalangists, what were Israel doing there in the first place? (engalukku onnum theriyadhu ellam avinga dhaan senjaanga line-a argument ku othuppom).Quote:
Originally Posted by P_R
Ivanga enna anga poi naathu nadava ponaanga?
The whole narrative was exactly the same as the American dream-peddling "we always mean good. We screwed up. See, we are taking a hard look at ourselves" noble crap. Either a complete purging of context or a twisting of the roles of the oppressor and oppressed
P.S: It was a very beautiful film
As for war psyche, anti-war etc etc, andha madhiri padam edutha ella directors-ayum 'Idi Smotri' pakka veikkanum.
:rotfl:Quote:
Originally Posted by Bala (Karthik)
Depressing film. :( By the time the film ends, Floria's soul and everything within is crushed, and only his body is moving. In that final steadicam shot (the film, in tradition of Tarkovsky and Sheptiko, has many of them) accompanied by Mozart's Requiem, he is almost a corpse, among the corps who tread through, as the Great Patriotic war comes to close. The Partisan resistance is still neglected in pop culture, and not propagated by the Americans, brits or their over glorified war films. For every American soldier killing a german, eighty Soviet soldiers and plenty more civilians died. There could be a slight statistical misappropriation, but it's still worth mentioning. The documentary series "Russia's war - Blood upon the snow" is an essential viewing. Maybe there are more authentic books, but the series is eye-opening and informative.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bala (Karthik)
The childish naivety and lack of seriousness as he dugs up a rifle, and then joins the partisan resistance. Over the course of the film, the traumas of losing his mother and sisters, and then losing fellow partisans in resistance and the livestock (a cow is shot dead, for live) in a exchange, and topped by the cruel setpiece where the majority in Byelorussian village are burnt alive (incl Children). Floria's coming of age (if you put it lightly) is in his brutal realization of what is to be in Partisan resistance. Klimov's message isn't really a political or patrimonial or even patriotic (even if is touted to be a patriotic struggle in historical terms), but more of a personal obligation and ultimately survival. Killing of Nazis and the self-betraying Russians, doesn't undo his loss any less (this of course, manifests into the infamous montage of Hitler's actual footage, played in reverse, as Floria shoots his framed image. The vain attempts to deny history, if ever only in his imagination). As I said, everything within is desensitized by the end (and is a lot more telling and direct than "Full metal jacket" could ever achieve, unless it centered on the Vietnam girl). Is what I like to think of it.
The soundtrack, especially after the boy Floria goes a part deaf because of air explosion towards the end of first act, is unbearable. There is an effective mix of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyrie (used in the final montage too) and different classical music to the sounds of woods, in rhythm with military echos and sounds. It's hellish, and I suppose, that's why it stands out as a cathartic experience that only cinema as a medium could dish out.
Regarding the war psyche, "The Cranes Are Flying" is a good point to start. But I'd like to think of "Come and see" in lineage of director Klimov's wife Sheptiko's "The Ascent", in themes of war psyche, courage, cowardliness, break of sanity, the role reversal, betrayal among Partisan resistance.."Come and see" attempts to touch on betrayal when some of Russians get shot along with Nazi officers by the Resistance. But it isn't as much concerned about inner working of the resistance as in "The Ascent". And of course, Tarkovsky's "Ivan's childhood", in Russian anthology.
And staying with war psyche, resistance and allies, the films by Rossellini, the first two parts of Neorealist trilogy (the third, which is on a flip-side to Resistance, on guilty conscience of Nazi, suffers from confusion and serious flaws) are absolutely scathing and brings out different themes within its multiple characters and storyline. Bergman's Shame speaks of a personal and relationship crisis laced by crisis of war. Ultimately, it's the shame of survival through different levels and the shame of submerging guilt, in both the characters, that interests Bergman.
:lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by Bala (Karthik)
As far as this story was concerned it was the memory of a guy who was in his teens in 1980. "Israel shouldn't be existing in the first place"-lErndhu aarambikka mudiyAdhu. (Why ?...ah well)
But apart from the overall story, there were so many parts that showed how Israel just sent boys were just into mindless violence. The tanks shooting either side of the grove, "pray and shoot', the dumping of the bodies, the story about the photographer who just thinks of the images (best part of the film for me), who 'wakes' up seeing the dead horses...these seemed quite critical of the mindset of 'being' in war.
Purging of context to a large extent yes, but this one atleast continued to show who were the vulnerable and the highhandedness of Israel.Quote:
Originally Posted by B(K)
Russiap padam, aduththa vaaram..
The core of the film is mental repression of the protagonist, the writer-director himself, who overlooked and indirectly took part in the massacre. There is a guilt of partaking in heinous massacre, especially because he shoots flares to sky that actually would lit up the refugee camp for the Phalangists. This indirect and direct role and the associated guilt, would repress his memory. That's why the ending is so revelatory and powerful, as the animation breaks into real footage. This whole confused dream-like inhibition turns into a reality, and a rude awakening for him, the representative of million other blanking-out Israelis
Quote:
but this one atleast continued to show who were the vulnerable and the highhandedness of Israel
Had this repression been *without this particular massacre*, it would have worked but then that would be "my" story and not the maker's :lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by kid-glove
Adhavadhu, prachanai enna na, looks like if this massacre had not happened, repression edhuvume irundhirukkaadhu because now it means that other this incident, what they had been doing was not a massacre! I mean he should honestly believe in it to consider it as a blot in an otherwise noble mission.
How will it be if there's a movie about a Nazi unit, which invades another country, and a guy feels repressed about him/them conniving/being a silent spectator to a band of local anti-semitics butchering a group of jews. "Naangala irundha 5 pera ganniyamaana murayila konnuruppom, ivinga 50 pera sara mariya konnuttaingale. Therinjum theriyamalum naangalukkum idhula involve aiuttome. Enakku memory loss vandhiruchu because i couldn't deal with the trauma". Is there any holocaust film which just deals similarly with the Nazi psyche, and sympathetically at that!
P.S: I watched the film from the scene where the Israeli army is progressing along an area full of trees and a "insurgent" kid suddenly attacks them with his bazooka.
As for the ending, i can only hark back to Battle Of Algiers and its powerful climax scene (not very different from this one). Yeah, that was also "neutral" but then "neutral" is a good enough start, at least they show the 'other side' as a reality
:thumbsup:Quote:
Originally Posted by kid-glove
Floria's death begins as early as he is left behind by his commander. This was not like watching a movie. We are right there.
I've seen only Stalker from Tarkovsky's works and i felt his influence right throughout the movie. Russian padangal innum neraya paakkanum.
:lol: I got that part, B(K). That this film suffers from the historical oppressor (Israel) excepting itself in this massacre. Indha excepting is a major problem in this conflict, as I said in one of the posts...
Oh, certainly agree re. Battle of Algiers, again, it all comes back to the lack of oppressed POV.
Regardless of its compromised scope in politics, the core of Waltz is a reasonable achievement in itself, in context of Isreali film history. Lot of Isrealis tend to blank-out when it comes to this particular issue and in general, because they do not cut slack (much like US, and of course, their ally in this issue) to Palestinian civilians because of long, violent history of PLO terrorism. It's can of worms, to be honest.
However, this film tries to muster some reckoning and open some Isreali eyes. Which as it is, poses a major risk to its filmmaker.
P.S: Palestinian POV films are hard to get your hands on. I have only seen "Paradise now". I'd like to know if there are any good ones to see..
The TV reporter talks about how he called up Ariel Sharon in the night and how he first asks 'did you see it ?' and then just says 'thank you for letting me know' and not even 'I will look into it'. That clearly showed Israel was actively in the know of things and massacre had the blessings of those in power in Israel.
So I don't think Israel itself was excepted as much as the bunch of soldiers who (only!) aided the massacre. At one point in the v-o he talks about how those in the control room on top of the high-rise building "certainly had a better view than we did"
Anyway, since it didn't begin from the beginning and talks about one particular incident, it is fated to not reach the heights you mention in 'your story' :-)
I particularly liked how the soldiers were non-soldiers in this film. Man is always thrust into situations bigger than he can handle and doesn't have a clue, but builds up memories as if he was 'in control' all along. The mottai swimming escape sequence, the concept of betrayal and retreat - swinging both ways - was well done.
btw we get to see only the good (grey-matter) foreign films.
avinga oorula oru vijayakanth, arjun ellAm iruppAingaL-la. Imagine how their films would be !