Author Archives: asliomur

Sins are lived twice and men are mirrors in The Place Beyond The Pines

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Sins are lived twice and men act as mirrors of each other, regardless of how disparate their histories and futures. They atone of their transgressions in mere glances. This isn’t just a movie, a film, or simply a script – this is real life. As sloppy, unforgiving and secretive as a hard life lived breathlessly. I’m reminded of the Bible verse, “And the sins of the father, shall be revisited upon their sons.” You’ve never seen more potent and visceral acting coming from Ryan Gosling as Luke Glanton or Bradley Cooper as Avery Cross. Eva Mendes is so earthy and true to the young mother stressed to her soul, with a dozen fears and worries piling up, her facial expressions are words in themselves. No matter how many times Ray Liotta has played the classic tough-guy persona of questionable ethics, it always comes across as brand new. That’s a gift.

THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES (co-written & directed by Derek Cianfrance from BLUE VALENTINE) plays out in a mini-Detroit, Schenectady, New York. Schenectady means ‘the place beyond the pines’ in Iroquois. And it acts as the perfect place where desperation and generations of men and boys are confronted with the actions of their fore bearers. No one is born free of sin or transgression. We carry the past against our will. Our names are enough to imprison us. We might try to escape like Luke, but we soon learn, “If you ride like lightning, you’ll crash like thunder.” I have come to understand, as the child of a fatherless upbringing, that the absence (and presence) of our fathers will perturb us in more ways than we are willing to admit. We are a part of a legacy, both good and bad, and in between. One decision on the part of those before us can change everything.

Luke Glanton is a stunt motorcycle driver with a traveling circus. He rides inside a spherical cage named The Globe of Death at breakneck speeds with five others, to riotous applause. To add to the authenticity of these characters, Gosling did his own stunts, along with Cooper. Gosling was trained by Rick Miller (“Every time Batman gets on a motorcycle, that’s Rick Miller”). His gig, as Luke and The Heartthrobs, is always on the go and when we meet Luke, we see he likes it that way, until Romina (Eva Mendes) re-appears in his life. Romina hasn’t told him their one night stands left her pregnant and a single mother to a chubby baby named Jason, with deep-blue eyes like his father. She’s moved on now with another man. He’s desperate to take care of his responsibility and not be anything like his own father. Luke is tattoo-addled and never wears his shirt right side in. He’s turned inside out, wearing his heart on his sleeve, sensitive to the touch, but his deceiving looks of a hard shell or cactus prickles are only a protective barrier. He’s looking to belong, to be loved in return. To feel what it’s like to do right by his progeny. But he ends up just like he hoped he wouldn’t – in trouble and alone.

This film is bubbling over with 1990s aesthetics like cut-off jean shorts, bleach blonde hair, ”wife beaters”, Metallica t-shirts, plastic hair claws and scrunchies, tie-dye, neon, track suit jackets, tapered jeans and white sneakers – THE PINES lets you return to the past, almost in act of recognition and remembrance. It’s refreshing in a sea of sugary blockbusters you’ll soon forget, with an assemble of actors often praised more for their looks and sex-appeal and not their talent, THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES allows us to reach beyond what we think we know and embrace the shadows of an eery forest. In THE PINES we see no pure evil, bad intentions or unselfish goodness from the characters. We see men and boys mirroring each other; a “good” man and a “bad” man can be identical.

A dark triad reveals itself in rookie policeman Avery Cross, who we meet mid-way in the film. He’s naive, pragmatic but overpowered by Machiavellian desires. Avery is at an impasse of truth and denial, his whole life is unraveling. He’s also struggling with his morality and his connections to the man he’s supposed to have nothing but animosity towards. He can see bits of himself in Luke. Their sons are even the same age. Cooper is always a genius as a jock or “one of the boy’s club” but he’s met his match with Gosling as a balancer of unchecked privilege and a conscious awakening of corruption at his precinct, which he does, as any well-groomed popular kid would, use to his advantage.

Watching THE PINES has conjured up my reactions to Gosling’s other stellar work in DRIVE, BLUE VALENTINE and LARS AND THE REAL GIRL. Gosling has so much cinema and humanity left in him. I hope his plans of retirement are a hoax.

The complexities of the male identity find a spotlight in THE PINES. The place of responsibility, defiance of authority, violence, self-reliance, insecurity, fatherhood, shirking fear, privilege, abandonment, loyalty, lies and independence make a second entrance in the lives of Luke’s son, Jason (Dane DeHaan, who reminds me of a young Leonardo DiCaprio), and Avery’s son, AJ, (Emory Cohen). They act as incarnations of their respective fathers, but with a whole new set of priorities and unflinching desires.

THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES is a collection of outcasts destined to be together.

Secrets are dangerous things in The Company You Keep

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Jim Grant (Robert Redford) on the run. Image via Sony Pictures Classics.

Robert Redford’s “The Company You Keep” is (almost) a hippie-modern retelling of “Les Misérables” in the format of “All The Presidents Men”. Redford is both actor and director for the first time since his 2007 film “Lions for Lambs.” ”The Company You Keep” (to open in theaters on April 12, 2013) re-spins the tale, by way of Neil Gordon’s novel of the same name, of the infamous Weather Underground, a radical-left movement of the 1960 & 1970s.

In the 1970s, in the thicket of the Vietnam war, students and young people took to the streets of the United States, France, China, Angola, and beyond, with fervor unseen before. Police and rioters clashed and the iron hands of government attempted to obliterate their vigilante-style protesting. They felt lied to and confused, finally breaking free from the chains of history and familial obligations, a new era of irreverence was ushered in. Questioning all that you’d been spoon-fed to date was de rigueur. Lines were blurred. Anarchy became reasonable method of dissent, to some.

The Weather Underground directed by ”Weathermen” (as their adherents were called), Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, among others, committed varying acts of “terrorism” that led them to the top of the FBI’s Most Wanted List in the 1970s.

Jim Grant (Redford) is a lawyer with a soft spot for charity cases and pro-bono work. His wife has died a year ago and he’s raising his 11-year-old daughter, Izzy (Jackie Evancho) alone. An idealistic and scrappy journalist, Ben Shepard (Shia LaBeouf), with a sly smile and friends in high places, has just been given a project from his editor on the recent arrest in Upstate New York of an ex-Weathermen, Sharon Solarz. He doggedly pursues every lead and ends up on the phone with Grant, who knows far more than he lets on. This evasiveness only makes him more persistent.

Ray Fuller (Stanley Tucci) & Ben Shepard (Shia LaBeouf) @ The Albany Sun Times. Image via Sony Pictures Classics.

Jim Grant is like Jean Valjean, trying to right a wrong of his past and exonerate himself. Ben Shepard is Inspector Javert, whose passion for justice blinds him from the grey snuggled in between the black and white histories we wish to forget.

Redford’s characterization of the journalist, Shepard, is questionable in some parts but the scenes of a be-speckled La Beouf flipping through micro-fiche, his chewed up pens and paper files using traditional journalistic sleuthing skills are charmingly reminiscent of the hungry reporters, Woodward & Bernstein, in Redford’s own “All The Presidents Men”. Shepard’s Google searching, Mac e-mail address & old, beat-up Dell laptop remind you that it is 2013.

Shepard is out for the truth, no matter what. When Shepard discovers who Grant is, he is desperate for the story. Grant heads to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, reconnecting with his past, in ways he had hoped he would never have to. But still had planned for, just in case … like any shrewd Weathermen.

Mimi Lurie (Julie Christie of Doctor Zhivago fame) is living the serene life in Big Sur with her lover, Mac McLeod (Sam Elliot), only to be catapulted from her hiding perch. She’s the only ticket to safety for Grant, but she’s a phantom with no desire to turn herself in to the law and has no repentance for her past lives. Among the group, she’s the most elusive. Grant’s left hopping from friend to friend in his efforts to reconnect. Most want nothing to do with him, but are willing to help, because at one time they were, after all, “brothers” in the movement.

“The Company You Keep” renames it’s main protagonists and avoids too much direct usage of the history revolving around the people we all know they are referring to: Bernadine Dohrn & Bill Ayers. The films main critics were turned off of the film when Redford said he didn’t feel the need to meet any of the original Weathermen to make this film. He did, however, meet Dohrn & Ayer’s son, Zayd.

And the film doesn’t really need Dohrn or Ayers to make it believable. It doesn’t need special effects or any pomp and circumstance of a blockbuster – indeed, “The Company You Keep” despite a starstruck casting, is more like an independent film that takes to task the most powerful country that ever warred, the United States, without the punch of a revenge-fantasy or political agendas or disillusioned youth tossing fire bombs or even street protests. It’s critique, in it’s own underestimated way, is empathetic, not biting. Where “The Company You Keep” loses me is in how mellow it is and how confusing the culpability of it’s main characters is. Redford said it’s not easy for him to maintain two roles at once, of artist or actor and visionary or director – and this is evident in “The Company You Keep.”

Ex-Weathermen Donal Fitzgerald (Nick Nolte) gives up his freedom. Image via Sony Pictures Classics.

The film has a cast that won’t quit and Sundance-pastoral imagery as a backdrop for personal conflict and choice and the political secrets that unravel both ”good” and ”bad” intentions in every character – in Redford’s cinema there is no 100% good, no 100% bad. Only Redford can deliver such lines, fair and balanced, leaving out the gratuitous admonishment but peppering in the red-haired grandfather wisdoms of a life lived with some regret. Where the film falters, ominous organ music plays so you know you are supposed to be in suspense.

But this film has reminded me of three things: it can be hard to vilify old people, even “terrorism” can be excused if explained by the right person, and as Grant says, “Secrets are dangerous things, Ben.”

Damsels in Distress, L.A. Gangsters & Dick Tracy Redux.

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Films based on books based on “real” people’s lives are often not an easy sell.

Ruben Fleischer’s GANGSTER SQUAD, based on Tales from the Gangster Squad by journalist Paul Lieberman, plays all the parts expected. It’s Tommy guns, Studebaker shoot-outs, furs and flash bulbs, the overdone trope of Jessica Rabbit damsels in distress, blockbuster gangsters, male bimbos, quaint ’40s imagery of La-La Land and doltish line delivery with a questionable casting selection.

GANGSTER SQUAD follows a rag tag group of law enforcement, led by Josh Brolin’s WWII vet Sgt. John O’Mara, on a mission to eradicate the city of the organized crime element that has tightened a noose around the public. They’ve all been somehow affected by the Chicago gangsters & their enemies that have moved in on the West Coast and exacted control over all portions of society. O’Mara convinces his wife, Connie (The Killing’s Mireille Enos), to help him complete his ‘gangster squad’ to hunt down the criminals, who’ve wielded their will with impunity. Enos, alongside Brolin, brings her even-tempered demeanor that is one of the only performances of merit.

The ‘squad’ is made up of several actors you’ve never seen on the same screen at once, which makes for an initially intriguing surprise. Tough, vice-cop, Coleman Harris (Anthony Mackie), the brains behind the operation, Conway Keeler (played by a thinner, more mature-looking, authentic & believable Giovanni Ribisi), cowboy with a cool-hand, Max Kennard (Robert Patrick) and his Mexican sidekick & seemingly butt of many a joke, Navidad Ramirez (Michael Peña) is begrudgingly accepted into the circle and Sgt. Jerry Wooters, played by Ryan Gosling who is, as usual, bimbo-ish and street-smart, simultaneously.

I should note that I eat up mafioso films likes its nobody’s business. I’ve seen them all from the old Italian capers to the Americana classics to the new wave, comedic & beyond. I appreciate a great car chase, shoot-out & revenge fantasy, like so many others. And this film, on the surface, seems to accomplish all of it. But its so unbelievable and grandiose, gratuitous violence and ridiculousness – in large part due to Sean Penn’s overacting and gargantuan nose piece that commands more attention than his ranting and raving, sadistic ex-boxer, Jewish-American gangster, Mickey Cohen – that the explosiveness fizzles out shortly after the characters have introduced themselves. Emma Stone’s vampy addition was ill fitting and awkward. While she certainly has a strong hold on the teen-queen genre of movies, and she does a great job as the giddy girl-next-door, her place in GANGSTER SQUAD was un-needed and airy, too light to matter to the script. Stone, and Penn, for that matter, seemed more like comedic-relief and cartoon stereotypes than plausible characters.

GANGSTER SQUAD, originally meant for release in late 2012, was held back and some scenes re-shot after the cinema shooting in Aurora, Colorado. Warner Brothers thought the planned Mann’s Chinese Theatre shoot-out scenes would be too much for audiences, and rightly so. Even with the delay, and re-shooting, GANGSTER SQUAD was in need of substance and a true blue story of what these men were really like – the big name ticket certainly won’t save it. We’ve already seen DICK TRACY and THE UNTOUCHABLES. Tell us a new story. I know it’s there.

The grand-daughter of real-life Sgt. John O’Mara said the film was not entirely authentic to her grandfathers legacy and the events that unraveled on screen were fictitious fodder.

You flew!

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I have wandered through the vastness of your entire life

just by touching your forearm as we drive

I have sneezed you into a victorious alignment

with the highest of stars

I saw you before you saw yourself

I learned of your movement

and the palpitations you incurred minutes

before your release

I wanted to understand your language

so I could hold your lightness in my palms

and sing to the same symphony

but instead I watched you fall from my inner place

and become of the air

shunning the ground as a means of transport

or maybe out of defiance

You flew!

Fluttering atop your tongue

Words foreign to my ears

Words that circled your lips like pennies as alms

I emptied your pains from this carousel of existence

I watched you form

Unsung melodies

that ricocheted

from your heart

to my

own

I flew!

Zero Dark Thirty & The Geronimo Quest for UBL

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© Zero Dark Thirty, 2012, Permission granted for usage by Sony Pictures (SPE).

© Zero Dark Thirty, 2012, Permission granted for usage by Sony Pictures (SPE).

ZERO DARK THIRTY could have been a tragic disaster of film but Kathryn Bigelow wouldn’t let that happen.

The film leads us ominously from a black screen with only sounds and voices of 911 telephone calls on September 11, 2001 to the much maligned quest for and eventual capture-kill of Usama Bin Laden a.k.a Osama Bin Laden (the film simply nicknames him “UBL”).

Jessica Chastain introduces us to Maya, the lesser-known-but-immensly-powerful-and-important woman behind this story or as Maya calls herself – “the motherfucker” that hunted UBL down. Despite Chastain’s many awards and stunning roles as a Mossad agent on a mission for revenge in THE DEBT or as a mother in the midst of family upheavals and existential epiphanies in Terrence Malick’s THE TREE OF LIFE, this is surely Chastain’s breakout performance.

The film co-stars James Gandalfini (who plays a perfect version of Leon Panetta), Jennifer Ehle, Jason Clarke, Joel Edgerton, Mark Strong, Kyle Chandler and Édgar Ramírez.

Maya, a diminutive, young CIA intelligence agent with no experience in torture or successful capture is recruited to Pakistan to assist a team of agents in the interrogation of al-Qaieda operatives and name-finding, along with the next planned bombings or “terror attacks.” She quickly conforms to holding cells, cloaked prisoners, water-boarding, dog collars, chains, punishment boxes, withholding food and water for names and numbers, blaring loud death metal rock all night as the prisoner is chained to the ceiling, attempting to sleep standing up and various other humiliating fear tactics meant to break the persons psyche. Her initial timidity belies who she is capable of becoming. Sure, much of the violence is related to her by proxy, but her commandeering is still it’s own version of (mental) assault.

Stationed in a covert base overseas, Jessica Chastain plays a member of the elite team of spies and military operatives who secretly devoted themselves to finding Osama Bin Laden in Columbia Pictures' electrifying new thriller directed by Kathryn Bigelow, ZERO DARK THIRTY. / © Zero Dark Thirty, 2012, Permission granted for usage by Sony Pictures (SPE).

Stationed in a covert base overseas, Jessica Chastain plays a member of the elite team of spies and military operatives who secretly devoted themselves to finding Osama Bin Laden in Columbia Pictures’ electrifying new thriller directed by Kathryn Bigelow, ZERO DARK THIRTY. / © Zero Dark Thirty, 2012, Permission granted for usage by Sony Pictures (SPE).

After one of her colleagues is killed in a suicide bombing by a suspect meant to provide information on the whereabouts of UBL, Maya’s ferocious hunger to kill all those involved and UBL, himself, is re-awakened. She becomes obsessed, even when her superiors ignore her leads and ideas. Her tenacity is met with sharp-tongues and a schooling in what goes on in the boardrooms at Langley. ZERO DARK THIRTY, part revenge-porn for U.S. audiences insatiably hungry for justice on screen, part jarring political drama is spell-binding, anyway it’s sliced. The explosions are, dare I say, well-timed, never gratuitous and somewhat cryptic.

Only such a film could captivate a packed, stuffy, hot, filled-to-capacity theatre of people for 157 minutes – most of the time, one could hear a pin drop (or a cricket chirp). It’s hard to tell if ZERO DARK THIRTY is lost on viewers, or if the film simply overwhelmed them, but it surely offers something no one else has given; an ending to the saga that gripped many nations for so long – finding UBL & uncovering the Pakistan he inhabited. It’s a way for “Americans” to have a passive, front-row seat to what occurred in their name, and as a NAVY Seal reports from their stealth fighter jet, “For God and country,” on May 2, 2011 at ‘zero dark thirty’ or ’30 minutes past midnight’ in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

ZERO DARK THIRTY, directed and co-produced by Kathryn Bigelow, Megan Ellison, Mark Boal, has received a lion-share of criticism and questioning. Largely due to scenes of torture. Those that pan it based on those scenes are missing Bigelow’s point, which also happens to be one of anti-tortue. In order to show what occurs in the shadows, she must bring it into the light.

The film, as Bigelow has publicly stated, takes many ideas ingrained in U.S. politics to task but also has heart, empathy and respect for those “ordinary” peoples doing unordinary jobs like executing justice on behalf of thousands and millions. The real-life “Maya” disappeared and went under ”protection” after her mission completed. Chastain never got to meet “Maya.”

The film is at times eerily reminiscent of Robert Redford’s beautiful SPYGAME, Angelina Jolie’s recreation of the Daniel Pearl abduction

Jessica Chastain as Maya. © Zero Dark Thirty, 2012, Permission granted for usage by Sony Pictures (SPE).

Jessica Chastain as Maya. © Zero Dark Thirty, 2012, Permission granted for usage by Sony Pictures (SPE).

in Rawalpindi, in A MIGHTY HEART, William Goldman’s ALL THE PRESIDENTS MEN or even Bigelow’s own, THE HURT LOCKER. And like THE HURT LOCKER, her characterizations assert the multi-dimensional – visible with such additions like a CIA-head who is a practising Muslim convert, the complete opposite in ‘Islamic lifestyles’ in places like Kuwait or Pakistanis aiding their U.S. guests. Though the film is not intimate with the locals like Jolie’s A MIGHTY HEART or Redford’s SPYGAME, a fair desire to step away from stereotypes is evident. This film carries far more than originally meets the eye.

Storytelling on film with Armine Anda

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Armine Anda stands for press pictures at the Seattle International Film Festival, where she screened JOAN AND THE VOICES for U.S. audiences for the first time. Image courtesy of Armine Anda. No reproduction or usage without consent of author.

She herself looks like a character from the fairytales she chiseles into paper and film.

Diminutive and with expressive almond eyes that belie her age, actress Armine Anda (her stage name) is Joan in the 2012 feature film, JOAN AND THE VOICES.

She met me at a café in Seattle, on another grey sky day, to talk about her film, fairytales, her books, Armenian poetry and cinema, plus, the war and woman who inspired JOAN AND THE VOICES.

Wearing a blood red slicker and black messenger bag slung cross-wise, she smiled a wide, remembering smile as she walked in and ordered a mint tea, before she gushed of her time spent wandering the streets of Seattle during her visit for the Seattle International Film Festival, where she screened JOAN AND THE VOICES. The film, her first feature film as of a producer, had its world premiere at the Busan International Film Festival in South Korea in October of 2011 and its European Premiere took place at Göteborg International Film Festival in Sweden. It was the Official Selection at the Seattle International Film festival earlier, LET’S CEE Film Festival in Austria and the GOLDEN APRICOT Yerevan International Film Festival.

“I liked the people of Seattle. They are kind, warm and helpful. What I liked about the city most was that the old and new live in harmony. I never could believe that a 100-year old buildings could exist in harmony with 100-floor buildings. Maybe it’s also represents the people of Seattle,” she says.

You can tell from her expressive gaze, she sees things everything as both familiar and brand new.

Her interest in storytelling led her to host a children’s television program called Blium Blium Stories and writing books like Inhabitants of Ankimoor, which recieved the Orange Book Award in 2011, and film production with Hoshkee Film, and global collaborators. Her other works of fiction include Saal Stories and Marzipan Spirit.

BLIUM BLIUM STORIES BY ARMINE ANDA

She is currently working on multiple film projects, most notably, THE ILLUMINATORS, under direction of Canadian Armenian film maker Atom Egoyan (ARARAT, EXOTICA).

Vatinyan’s debut feature, after substantial work in experimental theatre exploring themes of JOAN AND THE VOICES, recreates Joan of Arc (the main inspiration of the picture) and her valiant struggles to rebuild her country and fight, physically and mentally, for justice.

JOAN AND THE VOICES recreates Joan of Arc (the main inspiration of the picture) and her valiant struggles to rebuild her country and fight, physically and mentally, for justice. Armine’s Joan (or Jannan in Armenian) in the film is a vagabond census collector, with haunting sounds and images that follow her on her journey to collect information aimed at helping rebuild a nation from its ashes. Her actions are not logical nor rational, but rarely are the great ones.

The film is particularly special because Armenia only has one or two films a year released to general audiences internationally. Many often go overlooked. But films like 1973’s TGHAMARDIK (The Men), 1966‘s BAREV, YES EM (Hello, That’s Me) and the vast works of Sergei Parajanov do rise to the surface of international film circles. Now, JOAN AND THE VOICES is among them. For Anda, BAREV, YES EM by Frunze Dovlatyan, is the film that has buried itself into her cinematic pursuits. “It’s my most favorite Armenian film,” she writes. But it’s another film that has made a significant imprint on her writing. “THE LORD OF THE RINGS … the book … really surprised me. So much so that I started to write without even thinking about it too much,” she explains.

Anda studied drama at the Yerevan State Institute Of Theatre and Cinematography where she encountered Mikayel Vatinyan, her only other co-star in this dialogue-free film that documents an Armenia, post Nagorno-Karabakh territorial war with neighbour Azerbaijan in the 1990s — an issue that still divides the two ex-Soviet Republics. Despite the brutality of history, war and diaspora created by the survivours of the Armenian Genocide, Anda is spirited and welcoming. She carries history in her the folds of her eyes but she is light and airy.

Anda balances many titles including actress, producer, and writer. She began her career in theatre and television. She worked as an actress in a silent film comedy show called “No-Film” with Vatinyan. Her first role as producer, is the animated film BOJO, where she again collaborated with Vatinyan. Vatinyan has worked in many experimental theatres garnering lead parts and awards that follow performing the works of Bulgakov, Chekhov, Anouilh, and Cervantes. In 2000, he co-founded the theatre “IO” directing the trilogy entitled “IO”, “IOzart”, and “Suitcase.”

When asked what she wishes for Armenia, as a nation, after all that has happened, she responds, “My biggest hope is that people believe in their happiness.”

Messages are hidden everywhere in Joan And The Voices

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Armenia is like a pomegranate. Concealed with a tiny opening at the top. Inside, the many seeds of antiquity. Safely suspended in it’s red flesh, a curiously unstructured structured fruit, a random formation of 613 seeds — a pomegranate is it’s own small land of poetic secrets, like Armenia.

JOAN AND THE VOICES. Official film poster courtesy of Armine Anda, Hoshkee Film Armenia // Copyright 2011it’s red flesh, a curiously unstructured structured fruit, a random formation of 613 seeds — a pomegranate is it’s own small land of poetic secrets, like Armenia.

JOAN AND THE VOICES, the feature debut by director Mikayel Vatinyan, should really be entitled Armenia and Her Voices, a pseudo-silent film. The film wrestles with rhythms and sounds, voices and the grind of an Armenia in the rubble, after the Nagorno-Karabakh territorial war with Azerbaijan in the 1990s. It represents a deep unknowable dark, in the caves and recesses of our minds — memories haunt us eternally. In JOAN AND THE VOICES we are reminded that there is sound and song in all we do. There are messages everywhere.

The film pays close attention to the sound of coal being sifted, grain hitting machinery while it’s grinded, young folk dancers stepping in time, teenage boys playing the kemanche*, children reciting poetry and lines from the Trial of Joan of Arc, birds chirping in the forest, flitting from branch to branch, the sound of digging up treasures beneath the crisp fallen leaves — a hauntingly elegant picture. But with all these sounds — nearly no actual speech or dialogue. There are no created or fantasized characters — Armenia has plenty of real ones — farmers, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, children, students, teachers, artists, and everyday people that encapsulate the viewer. You don’t need to hear the context of each person’s history, joys, jokes, wealth, losses and struggles. You already hear it in their eyes and movement, as the leading actress and co-writer / producer of the film, Armine Anda who plays Joan (Jannan in Armenian), goes about factories, schools, coalmines, villages and towns collecting information and statistics of the people who live there. She is Armenia. But most of all, she is Joan of Arc. Wielding a power, greater than she may be aware of, that she uses to rebuild her broken land after the blood shed and chaos. Even in her confusion, her only fear is that of “betrayal.”

The images are sometimes disorienting and there is not much need for subtitles. Filmed amidst glorious ancient places within Armenia, including Artsakh, Goris and the edge of Ararat, among many other random places along the way. The deafening silence of history creaks through as a recurring image of a man (Mikayel Vatinyan) struggles to get up again, after lying wounded and weak in a bunker or cave, of sorts. Sometimes he hears the sound of heavy boots running in the gravel and rocks, and even the assasination of a man, right after he screams. The wounded man pants for breath, crushes ice blocks to quench his thirst. He’s half nude and caked in layers of mud and dirt, disguising his identity. He never looks up and we never know if he does stand. There are times it is as if he remembers his mother or grandmother soothing his aching body and carefully placing him in a warm bed. He returns to the present, as he drifts asleep covered in the dirt of misery, and cloaks himself with what is left of his jacket and clothing. He is Armenia.

JOAN AND THE VOICES. Postcard image courtesy of Armine Anda, Hoshkee Film Armenia // Copyright 2011

In several stops along her journey, Joan (Jannan) leaves behind remnants of herself: a mirror, for reflection; rosary beads, for meditation. She’s nomadic and constantly going someplace else, but she is never disaffected. She hears Armenia beating within her, like a dhol, the Armenian drum. Fearlessly she battles a fight, the most vicious of all — the one within — of her place in the vestiges of a temporarily incapicitated land.

Broken hearts mend each other under a Three Quarter Moon

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Sometimes in the thick of our troubles we are blinded to those of others.

Irritable clean freak, Nuremberger taxi driver Hartmut Mackowiak, played by Elmar Wepper (a well-known television actor in Germany) is engrossed in a crisis. His wife, Christa (Katja Rupé), of 30+ years is leaving him for a “Volvo driver” with better clothes.

Hartmut starts work each day with the same chip on his shoulder and prejudiced views of immigrants in Germany. But one day his life changes in ways he could never have anticipated. A single mother and Turkish cruise ship entertainer (Ivan Anderson) comes to Nuremberg to leave her precocious daughter, Hayat Yılmaz (Mercan Türkoğlu), in her mother’s care until her stint is up and she returns to land. Hartmut’s hateful diatribe on foreigners, while driving them from the airport, leads Hayat’s mother to call him a “Nazi” under her breath. Hayat never forgets the word (and has no idea what it means), as she is learning German for the first time. After delivering the mother and daughter to the grandmother’s home, in what Hartmut calls “Gostanbul” (as in the neighborhood is basically Turkey within Germany) he departs thinking he’ll never have to encounter them again.

Hayat’s mother is off to her cruise ship gig and the grandmother resumes caring for Hayat in her mothers absence. One morning the grandmother collapses, leaving Hayat to find help (in minimal German) and fend for herself. The only person she remembers is ”the Nazi”, Hartmut. She spots him, randomly, outside the hospital her grandmother has been taken to. And welcomes herself to the backseat, only to find Hartmut is not amused and thought he had rid of her. She feigns sleep to avoid leaving the taxi. Hayat is head strong and aware, but going through her own crisis as a child in a new place without family and confusions about her own identity. Hartmut and Hayat have more in common than first meets the eye.

Anti-social Hartmut has no use of a small child and certainly no use for a Turkish girl in his life, he searches through the phonebook of the grandmother hoping to find someone he can dump her off to. His efforts are rebuffed except for her father, whom Hartmut cajoles to take her in, at least to know her father. As the days go on, and the grandmother in a coma, Hayat asks questions about life and death, and in turn encourages a new found self-reflection in Hartmut. Hayat becomes more endearing with each scene. The fort she builds under the sink to sleep, her attempt to show Hartmut how to eat sunflower seeds the Turkish way, and the off-beat ways she views the world are refreshing in a world of canned responses and inauthentic debates about shallow matters.

DREIVIERTELMOND is many stories in one, sometimes competing for the audiences attention: Hartmut’s seperation from his wife, Hartmut’s daughter’s new café that serves coffee next to shoes, and then Hayat’s growing pains, her grandmother in a coma and the absence of her German father in her life.

DREIVIERTELMOND (Three Quarters Moon), is named so because of the place in the middle that Hayat inhabits. Like the moon, Hayat rose in the ‘east’ and set in the ‘west’.

Mercan Türkoğlu, the 6-year-old German Turkish girl who plays Hayat, (and “knows German better than Turkish”) , is a first time actress that was “the daughter of a friend of a friend,” says the films director and co-writer, Christoper Zübert.

Her naïveté to film is at times apparent but there is a simplistic and very real way Mercan connects to Hayat. Due to her newness to screen, Zübert kept it simple and often used hand held cameras to capture the growing bond between Hartmut and Hayat. Much of the film plays out in the taxi cab Hartmut drives. Despite the crisis they both are experiencing, there are comedic moments that lighten the load of the films premise.

It’s not certain if Zübert has ever seen the Czech film KOLYA but DREIVIERTELMOND is almost a copycat. And many critics have said and will say that the idea of a grumpy old man turned caretaker to a precocious and confused young child is not a new idea in cinema.

DREIVIERTELMOND (Three Quarters Moon) is director and writer Christian Zübert’s fifth feature film. The concept was a creation between him and his Turkish wife, Ipek. It speaks to the connections and similarities, beyond differences, that exist in friendship and love. The location is integral as Germany is home to more than 5 million citizens of Turkish descent, many who are the children and grandchildren of guest workers that were invited to the country in the 1960s. Berlin is often said to be the largest Turkish city behind Istanbul. But above all else the film is about old meeting new, and the roots of our humanity that we all share, regardless of our age — coming of age and revival.

The Manifest Crimson

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The Manifest Crimson  

pour les exilés d’Alger

The blurred year was the yellow spiced morning

A trance of cicadas singing in the trees

 Roman!

The milk stained the doorposts, and truth slit throats

In the night air the orange blossom water protected the

Swaddled infant, from the devil, turned upside down

The hennaed hands of Satan are fragrant of saffron

The grave of a shallow mind is too deep

The weakness of desire cannot speak

The possession, the scream, the cry, and I writhe

In the arms of wild exaltation

And the abandon, the sweat

Of the towered lands of Algiers

The rhythms of urgency of the escape

The release, the orgasm of obscurity, the mysterious

Dance of mortality

Dark brotherhoods and

Zechariah!

The mournful mouth met another glass of wine, and the spirits

Laughed like black pearls between her teeth

fotoğraf: Aslı Omur

In 2 Days In New York, Delpy is officially the European Female Woody Allen

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2 DAYS IN NEW YORK is a personable and realistic approach to the roller coaster that is modern city life. Marion, played by Julie Delpy, who wrote the screenplay and directed it, is a Parisian photographer on deadline with a crazy family dynamic.

Delpy, who is often pegged as a “European Woody Allen” or “French Woody Allen” by critics (almost in disdain), is in touch with the kooky, hilarious, bawdy nuances that explode when eccentric people get together and don’t speak your language. She can without fail straight face deliver pungently hysterical lines that you’ve never heard in another film. Her dialogue is inventive and reaches into society to pull out the bits worth satirizing, while skillfully dousing it in comedic genius.

2 DAYS IN NEW YORK is an unofficial part deux of her 2 DAYS IN PARIS film, which featured Adam Goldberg as her neurotic and jealous American boyfriend, Jack, an interior designer with a hipster lean. He’s nowhere in this film.

The film introduces us to a new chapter in Marion’s life, without her mother (who died a year before), plus a new boyfriend, radio personality/journalist Mingus (Chris Rock), who has a daughter of his own from a previous relationship, serial-killer obsessed Willow (Talen Ruth Riley), and Marion’s son, Lulu (Owen Shipman), whom she concieved with Jack in Paris, and a host of other riotous characters and situations that only Delpy (or Woody Allen) could get themselves into.

The film enters and ends with Delpy’s signature narrative dialogue which neatly connects the dots. It’s shot fast-paced and feels like flipping through a family photo album. Sometimes the images flash by too fast — like city life, always racing a clock.

Marion’s family arrives unceremoniously in New York for a tourist taste of Marion’s new life in the “Big Apple”. Her sister, child psychologist and panty-less Rose, played by Alexia Landeau, (Delpy’s co-screenwriter) leads the pack from Paris along with her boyfriend, weed-smoking breakfast table toenail clipper Manu (Alexandre Nahon), and their French sausage smuggling papa, Jeannotte (Albert Delpy, Julie’s real life father, too). Their wild lifestyles clash and leave hipster Manhattanite Mingus with nightmares of piglets eating croissants. Rock, as the other half of Delpy’s Marion, is toned down to balance the insanity of the other side. He’s deadpan hipster —but with a private hobby of talking to a cardboard cutout of Obama.

2 DAYS IN NEW YORK like PARIS, is always about to give Marion a nervous breakdown. She hair pulls, fights with her sister, whom she is convinced was cherished more at birth, rushes to the pharmacy for a dosage of a potion to get her out of her funk, a Thai massage — all in between her photography exhibit preparations. She even sells her soul, in the name of art, to an anonymous buyer.

Delpy is both parts masculine and feminine with sharp, self-reflective observations and rhythmic timing. She brings kooky back in ways we’ve yet to see in a cast. The maniacal banter whilst swinging from French to English and back again coupled with whimsy and vulnerable intellect is captivating. It’s this sincere uncertainty in haphazard elegance that only the French can provide us.

Forgiving is never forgetting in The Mexican Suitcase

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THE MEXICAN SUITCASE film poster; Image courtesy of Magnum Photographs via Trisha Ziff / ZoneZero

There is a very big and beautiful difference between forgiving the past and forgetting it.

THE MEXICAN SUITCASE, by filmmaker Trisha Ziff, allows the descendents of the dead from the Spanish Civil War to make a sliver of peace with the fate of their grandparents and ancestors. The film unravels the thousands of film negatives taken by three war photographers and the stories of a Spain that has long been taboo.

The Spanish Civil War affected nearly every family within Spain, in some capacity. From 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939, 500,000 women, men and children were killed. When, on 10 May 1936, a new president was put in place for the Spanish Republic, various military fascists banded together in effort to bring down the Popular Front government with leftist leanings. This band of military officials included the infamous Francisco Franco, José Sanjurjo, Emilio Mola and Gonzalo Quiepo de Llano.

They were called “Nacionales” or “Fascists” among other titles. In response to the ruthlessness by which these men carried out their offensive, an opposition uprising of “Republicanos” also called “Loyales (Loyalists)” or “Los Rojos (The Reds)” by the Nacionales due to the political diversity among their memebers that ranged from centrists, moderate capitalists, liberal democratics to anarchists and Marxists.

Republicanos had strong ties to the working class, poor, landless peasants and the Basque and Catalan peoples. The Republicanos fought back with the assistance of the then Soviet Union and Mexico. Bullet casings found in the forests that were once battlegrounds were called “Mexicansky” by the locals because they knew it would be from the weapons provided them by the Russians or Mexicans.

But it is Mexico that proved the Spanish exiles most devoted safety. After a mass exodus from Spain into France, and the brutal conditions of living in sand and in tents without anything to eat and the sea as a bathroom, Mexico offered their villages, towns and cities to the people of Spain who wished to immigrate by way of the Atlantic on the S.S. Sinaia. And this is where THE MEXICAN SUITCASE comes to life.

Refugee, writing home, Montjuic, Barcelona, November 1936 © David “Chim Seymour. The Mexican Suitcase.
Courtesy Magnum Photos, International Center of Photography and the David Seymour Estate.

During the upheavels of 1930s Spain, journalists, writers, photographers and others found their way to Spain, journaling the war in ways never seen before. Ernest Hemingway, Dutch photographer Joris Ivens, Martha Gelhorn (Hemingway’s companion), George Orwell, Langston Hughes, Francis McCullagh, Centelles, Manuel Albero, Francisco Segovia, Alfonso, Escobar, the Mayo Brothers, Santos Yubero, Luis Torrens, Kati Horna among many others were reporting from the battlesites.

The main subjects of THE MEXICAN SUITCASE are photographers Robert Capa, Capa’s business partner and film developer, Cziki Weiss, (Capa never developed his own film), Gerda Taro and David Seymour a.k.a “Chim”. The most well-known and celebrated of the trio was the suave and boisterous Capa. Mischevious and vibrant Taro, like many others who wanderlusted their way to that old Spain, was young, impressionable and still new to her trade but always daring — so much in fact, they called her “crazy” — she is the first known woman to have gotten in foxholes and military battle lines to capture the shot she wanted. Some of Taro and Seymour’s work was incorrectly attributed to Capa — further silencing them, posthumously.

Portrait of Gerda Taro by Fred Stein© circa 1934-1935. The Mexican Suitcase.
Courtesy of Fred Stein Estate International Center of Photography.

THE MEXICAN SUITCASE introduces us to Taro, an infectious young woman with light and a sort of wild hearty demeanor, a difficult feat as there is not much information left in her absence nor any living relatives, only a distant cousin in Brazil. Some claim Taro and Capa were lovers but there’s no proof of this connection. They were certainly friends, and in a sense “war buddies” — challenging so much of what was considered appropriate at the time. Their communion with the Spanish people and their passion to tell the stories of those fighting for their existence are the essence of the film. Scenes, shots, historical taboos and aged voices untangle themselves like poetry in THE MEXICAN SUITCASE.

Outside a Morgue. Valencia © Gerda Taro May 1937 – The Mexican Suitcase.
Courtesy of Magnum Photos, International Center of Photography.

Organized and small cardboard boxes containing 126 perfectly wound rolls of film with corresponding notes on the inside top portion of the boxes were discovered from the closet of Mexican filmmaker, Ben Tarver, the nephew of the widow of the Mexican Ambassador to France in 1941, General Francisco Aguilar González. He was gifted the negatives, non-chalantly, and after learning of their historical worth connected with Professor Jerald A. Green of Queen’s College and then Cornell Capa, the brother, and next-of-kin of Robert Capa. The International Center of Photography in New York City had known of their location for over a decade but the precious images remained in Tarver’s closet and without much attention until filmmaker Trisha Ziff recovered them. She hand carried the negatives to New York City from Mexico City.

French Internment Camp, Le Barcarés, France, March 1939,  © Robert Capa. The Mexican Suitcase. Courtesy Magnum Photos and The International Center of Photography.

The powerful images of a woman breast-feeding her child in the middle of a rally and dead and wounded children, soldiers, mothers, grandfathers were brought back to life. Other images include the destroyed buildings in Madrid, the Battle of Tereul and Río Segre, the 1939 defensive in Barcelona, and the harsh exodus out of Tarragona to the beach in Vichy, France. All with the backdrop of a understated but chillingly deep piano score by Michael Nyman.

Land Reform Meeting, May 1936, Extremadura, Spain. ©David”Chim” Seymour. The Mexican Suitcase 1936. Courtesy Magnum Photos, International Center of Photography, David Seymour Estate.

The film follows the origins of the photographs and their exhibition at The International Center of Photography in New York City, where some grandchildren of the war dead could view the photographs of their own relatives. Of the negatives found The Fallen Soldier, a photograph that has become synonymous with Capa’s work and the Spanish Civil War, as a whole, is nowhere to be found.

The docu-film delivers us to the descendents who still search for their grandparents in the 2,000+ mass graves that dot the country. The excavation of the mass graves does not always prove fruitful, as some still forlornly look for the remnants of their grandparents and relatives so as to make some peace and reconciliation, although as of 5 May, 2011, 5,400 bodies have been identified, according to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

But it should be noted many in Spain, including the descendents of the Nacionales (or military coup leaders) call it an “abberration” and wish for history to be left where it is — in the past.

The documentary brings to the forefront the new generation of young people who have been nagged at not knowing their own grandparents fate and went searching for the truth, regardless of the negative reception by politicians or others in Spain today. This generation’s inquisitiveness and emotional connection to their past is what drives the film and connects the audience. Ziff, while never interjecting herself in the film, has a connection to this historical event as her husband is a Mexican descendent of the Spanish exiles from the Civil War. She said after her screening at the Seattle International Film Festival that this film was also for her son to know a part of his origins and how he ended up in Mexico, and became a Mexican.

Bombing of Teruel, January 1938. Robert Capa© The Mexican Suitcase
Courtesy of Magnum Photos and the International Center of Photography.

The interviews with living Republicanos and the descendents of the dead give a face to the searching. Despite the time that has passed and the lives lived and lost since the Spanish Civil War, the children of the Spanish exodus to Mexico keep their roots in view and their kindred companionship with the safe harbour of Mexico in perfect balance. Ziff ‘s inclusions of them is stunning and their words even more so. As one historian notes in the film, “People who leave the place they come from never stop thinking about it” or even more telling, as a living member of the Republicanos said, “If you forget your failures, you’ll likely fail again.”

THE MEXICAN SUITCASE is an example for all those lost, forgotten or erased through war, genocide or civil discord.

Cordoba Front. Gerda Taro May 1937 – The Mexican Suitcase.
Courtesy of Magnum Photos, International Center of Photography.

Director — Trisha Ziff
Producer — Eamon O’Farrill
Editor — Luis Lopez
Screenwriter — Trisha Ziff
Cinematographer — Claudio Rocha // Music: Michael Nyman
Awards — Gaudi Awards 2012 Nominee (Best Documentary)

Film website: http://www.themexicansuitcase.com/

ICP The Mexican Suitcase exhibition information: http://museum.icp.org/mexican_suitcase/

IMPORTANT *Please be aware these images, protected under international copyright law, were provided to author directly by the Director of the film and Magnum Photographs. They are not to be reused, downloaded, copied, saved or disseminated in any manner without the consent/permission of the Director and Magnum Photographs, and potentially other parties.

Madrid, 1987 es un yuxtapone extraño

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Una tensa, extrañamente erótico, concurso bíblico, y la película profunda, MADRID, 1987, es una historia de dos personas que son opuestos en todos los sentidos. Ella es joven, él es viejo. Ella es la hija de un líder militar fascista, que él es un comunista. Ella es tranquila, él habla corrientes de las oraciones. Ella es una estudiante, él un profesor. Está casado, ella es soltero. Son como dos trenes que pasan en la noche. Este tanto fascina y aterroriza a él. Es más miedo de su juventud, de lo que es de su edad.

Miguel y Ángela en el baño. Foto © ALFA PICTURES; con permiso de la productora de MADRID, 1987: Jessica Berman, Buenavida Producciones. Por favor ningún uso sin el permiso de la productora.

MADRID, 1987, dirigida por David Trueba (representa 1987 Madrid; bifocales grandes, pantalones vaqueros de talle alto y todo) es esencialmente un reparto de dos personajes: un sistema bien establecido de tendencia comunista, periodista y profesor, Miguel (José Sacristán) y aspirante a periodista y el estudiante, Ángela (María Valverde), con entradas laterales de la gente en la vida de Miguel, los camareros que le sirven el café en el café que utiliza en lugar de una oficina debido a que el “periódico no le permite beber nunca más”, un fan de su columna pidiendo un autógrafo del mismo modo que trata de poner los movimientos de Ángela, un autógrafo del que firma: “Tienes mala sincronización” y su amigo pintor que va de fin de semana a las montañas para respirar.

La película está rodada casi en su totalidad en el apartamento real de la artista española, Joaquín Risueño – y en el espacio diminuto cuarto de baño, exhibiendo el trabajo de cámara impresionante. La parte más bonita de Madrid, de 1987, es el uso de terceras partes (como una fotografía). Resumen instantáneas de sus cuerpos, las cicatrices, y de la humanidad, y los avíos pequeños que mantenemos en nuestro intento de atrincherarnos dentro de una identidad, un género, un cuerpo, actúan como intermedios: un álbum de Van Morrison, un tubo, pinceles, colonia lavanda desde Inglaterra, su cara, su cuerpo, gafas de lectura. La banda sonora está desnudo, Miguel le dice a Ángela curiosamente, en una de sus diatribas contra la inserción de la música en el cine, “La música es como una señal de tráfico diciendo a la audiencia cuando se sienta y lo que siente.”

Miguel y Ángela en el baño. Foto © ALFA PICTURES; con permiso de la productora de MADRID, 1987: Jessica Berman, Buenavida Producciones. Por favor ningún uso sin el permiso de la productora.

Ángela ha solicitado entrevistar a Miguel por un artículo, sino que encuentra a sí misma ser entrevistados y deconstruyendo el cínico de mordida de un maestro. Él dice que, después de leer algunos de sus trabajos en la cafetería, “Usted asume la voz de los sujetos”, añade, en la forma aliento hace un cínico, “Un escritor no es un camaleón,” … y luego “Escritura debe apuñalar a , no apriete. “Sus críticas se acumulan sobre sí mismos y su aparente ingenuidad mira a través de sus miradas inquietas a él. Ella es silenciosa, en un puchero, como un niño así. Ella brilla, y como señala Miguel “, desliza a través de la habitación como una gacela”.

Él convence a finales de los 20-algo Ángela a unirse a él en el apartamento de su amigo pintor para la entrevista y el whisky un poco. Ella obliga vacilante. Ella fisgonea las habitaciones salpicadas de pintura y pinceles manchados de tinta, ya que Miguel piensa en la manera de seducirla. Después de pintar ella en franjas de color azul y la besaba y acariciaba sus viejas manos a lo largo de su cuerpo, ella decide regar el color apagado. Él es persistente en su conquista, con el fin de “volar en las alas” para el gusto “de la juventud.”

CARTEL OFÍCÍAL POR LA PELÍCULA MADRID 1987 // Foto © ALFA PICTURES via Jessica Berman por Buenavida Producciones // Por favor ningún uso sin el permiso de la productora.

Se vislumbra de su ducha y decide unirse a ella en su pensamiento arrogante que la seducción podría funcionar esta vez. Pero ella ya está saliendo, y se prepara para salir, sólo para descubrir, que han estado encerrados y la puerta se hinchó cerrada. Amigo de Miguel, el pintor, no volverá hasta el lunes. En medio de gritos al azar en busca de ayuda a través de la ventana del cuarto de baño pequeño, habla de Miguel de la Epoca, profundidades de edad, los temas amargos y banal: a partir de la paranoia en los años 70 después de la muerte de General Francisco Franco, a la guerra sucia, la Marcha Verde, más Ángela, la hermana de Isabel sexual tendencias como un estudiante de teatro comunista en los años 60, Proust, Faulkner, Hemingway, a su “sabiduría” de la “bebida de los británicos que se suicidan. La bebida española a aflojar “,” El beso es como una formalidad, ya que con la edad ” y en respuesta a la frustración de su lugar sobrevalorado en la literatura, dice:” Sólo un escritor sobrevalorado puede ganarse en este “y decirle a la mayoría de la sobre todo, “Conocer a alguien que admiro es el primer paso para que no les admira en lo absoluto” … “Debido a que por dentro están sucios, podridos, desordenado.” Al igual que Ángela había admirado el trabajo de Miguel, que ahora lo vi por todo lo que era y es.

Miguel y Ángela son desnudos, vulnerables, ocasionalmente tomando turnos para usar el uno, pequeño manchado de tinta toalla de baño para encubrir. Continúa desvaríos poéticos, se detiene y le pide silencio Ángela, “¿Por qué me haces sentir tan sola?” Ella es derrotado por sus sospechas de la vida y la juventud. Ella es como un espejo para él. De repente, puede verse a sí mismo como ella lo ve. Se compadece de sí mismo y de su edad, diciéndole, “Tú me olvide de todos los cuerpos que les espera.” Miguel es a veces extrañamente perversa, que siente que no puede confiar en él, pero sus palabras redimirse a veces. Aunque pronto Ángela vuelve a la vida en las escenas finales – que es mucho más independiente, que perdona y sabio de lo que inicialmente deja ver. Por fin puede liberarse de el cuarto de baño cuando se restablezca el pintor. Ella se va con tanta prisa que no toma sus libros y vasos. Mientras camina por las calles de la ciudad, corriendo a casa, su silueta se yuxtapone a los edificios arenosos y adornado. Ángela es casi angelical. Es Ángela real?

Madrid, 1987 is a strange juxtaposition of idealistic youth and the grumpy grandfather

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OFFICIAL POSTER FOR THE FILM, MADRID 1987 // Image © ALFA PICTURES & Jessica Berman, producer. No usage without consent of author.

A tense, oddly erotic, biblical, tender and profound film, MADRID, 1987, is a tale of two people who are opposites in every way. She is young, he is old. She is the daughter of a fascist military leader, he is a communist. She is quiet, he speaks streams of sentences. She is a student, he a professor. He is married, she is single. They are like two passing trains. This both mesmerizes and terrifies him. He’s more afraid of her youth, than she is of his age.

MADRID, 1987 directed by David Trueba (set in 1987 Madrid; big bifocals, high-waisted jeans and all) is essentially a cast of two characters: a well-established communist-leaning journalist and professor, Miguel (José Sacristán) and aspiring journalist and student, Ángela (María Valverde), with side entrances of people in the life of Miguel, the waiters who serve him coffee at the café he uses in place of an office because the “newspaper doesn’t let you drink there anymore”, a fan of his column asking for an autograph just as he tries to put the moves on Ángela, an autograph of which he signs, “You have poor timing” and his painter friend who goes away for the weekend to the mountains to breathe.

The film is shot almost entirely in the actual apartment of Spanish artist, Joaquín Risueño — and tiny bathroom space, exhibiting awesome camera work. The most beautiful part of MADRID, 1987, is the usage of thirds. Abstract snapshots of their bodies, scars, and humanity, and the little accoutrements we keep in our attempt to barricade ourselves within an identity, a gender, a body, act as interludes: a Van Morrison album, a pipe, paintbrushes, English lavender cologne, her face, his body, reading glasses. The soundtrack is bare, Miguel interestingly tells Ángela, in one of his rants against inserting music in film,”Music is like a traffic signal telling the audience what to feel and when to feel it.”

Ángela has requested to interview Miguel for an article but instead finds herself being interviewed and deconstructed by the biting cynic of a teacher. He says, after reading some of her work in the café, “You assume the voice of your subjects,” he adds, in the breathless way a cynic does, “A writer is not a chameleon,” … and then “Writing should stab, not pinch.” His critiques pile upon themselves and her seeming naïveté glares through in her uneasy glances at him. She’s silent, in a pouty, child-like way. She glows and as Miguel notes, “Glides across the room like a gazelle.”

BEHIND THE SCENES Café Comercial Bilbão. L to R: María Valverde, director & writer David Trueba, José Sacristán. Image © ALFA PICTURES, producer Jessica Berman, Buenavida Producciones. No usage without consent of author.

He convinces the late 20-something Ángela to join him in the apartment of his painter friend for the interview and some whisky. She hesitantly obliges. She snoops around the paint-spattered rooms and ink-stained brushes, as Miguel thinks of ways to seduce her. After painting her in streaks of blue and kissing her and stroking his old hands along her body, she decides to shower the colour off. He is persistent in conquering her, in order to “fly on her wings” for a taste “of youth.”

He catches a glimpse of her showering and decides to join her in his arrogant thinking that the seduction just might work this time. But she’s already getting out, and preparing to leave, only to find out, they’ve been locked in and the door is swelled shut. Miguel’s painter friend won’t return until Monday. In between random shouts for help through the small bathroom window, Miguel talks of época, profundities of age, bitter and banal topics: from the paranoia in the 70s after Franco’s death, to the Dirty War, the Green March, Ángela’s older sister Isabel’s sexual proclivities as a communist theater student in the 60s, Proust, Faulkner, Hemingway, to his “wisdoms” of “Brits drink to kill themselves. The Spanish drink to loosen up,” “Kissing is like a formality as you age,” and in response to her frustration of his overrated place in literature, he says “Only an overrated writer can making a living at this” and the most telling of all, “Meeting someone you admire is the first step to not admiring them at all,” … “Because inside they are dirty, rotten, untidy.” Just as Ángela had admired Miguel’s work, she now saw him for all he was and is.

Looking for help. MADRID 1987. // Image © ALFA PICTURES, Jessica Berman at Buenavida Producciones. No usage without consent of author.

Miguel and Ángela are both nude, vulnerable, occasionaly taking turns using the one, small ink-stained bath towel to cover up. He continues poetical rantings, he stops and asks silent Ángela, “Why do you make me feel so alone?” She is defeated by his suspicions of life and youth. She is like a mirror to him. He can suddenly see himself as she sees him. He pities himself and his age, telling her, “You’ll forget me in every body that awaits you.” Miguel is at times eerily perverted, you feel you can’t trust him but his words redeem himself sometimes. Though suddenly Ángela comes to life in the final scenes — she’s far more independent, forgiving and wise than she initially lets on. She finally can break free from the bathroom when the painter returns. She leaves so hastily that she does not take her books and glasses. As she is walking along the city streets, rushing home, her outline is juxtaposed against the gritty and ornate buildings. She is nearly angelic. Is Ángela real?

Beyond ailements, a joyous dance awaits in The Intouchables

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LES INTOUCHABLES, the second most profitable (Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis is first) and widely watched French films to date, directed and written by Éric Toledano and Olivier Nakache, is a circular, telling film of life, with an understated punch and all the detours one encounters along the way.

François Cluzet plays Philippe, a Parisian millionaire surivivor of an accident that left him tetrapalegic — a plot based on a true story. Cluzet is best known from L’Enfer (’94) alongside Emmanuelle Béart and Ne le dis à personne (’08) with Marie-Josée Croze.

Philippe’s put out an ad for a live-in personal care worker, leading all types to his palatial pad, where they are interviewed and instructed of Philippe’s needs by his assistants, Magalie (Audrey Fleurot), Yvonne (Anne Le Ny) and Marcelle (Clotilde Mollet). Among the applicants is the restless but vibrant Driss played by Omar Sy. Driss is a Senegalese immigrant from the “ghetto” with an honest view of life that Philippe is taken with. In response to an acquaintance that Driss has a “record” and did time in jail for theft, and has “no pity” being from the “ghetto”, therefore making him a poor candidate for the position, Philippe says, “That’s exactly it. He doesn’t pity me…” …”Sometimes he forgets (that I am paralyzed) and hands me the phone.” Driss sees Philippe as a man beyond his ailements.

From Philippe’s “epistolary” relationships with women he dictates letters for, his only method of physical pleasure to abstract art concoctions and “high brow culture”, the two clash, laugh in hysterics and find in each other a comraderie that acts as a fresh breeze in their mysterious lives dotted with secrets and failures they may not be entirely ready to face. Windows reappear and disappear throughout the film — acting as a gateway of escape, a way to get some air, a way to safely view the different worlds they inhabit. Tortured and powerful, but youthful, Driss looks out of windows while riding city transportation, driving Philippe’s Maserati Quattroporte or while at home in the low-income housing flat with one bathroom he shares with an extended family, sneaking a smoke. Philippe longingly stares at a world he is no longer apart of, and the air he longs to breathe. Now, he has to ask for help to take a stroll in his own garden or the city. They are both inside glass houses. They are both stuck until the daring adventure they take when Philippe begs to “split.”

Driss’ place in the film while stunning, can be construed as stereotyped. He dances, sings, demands his government benefit checks, lives in the ghetto, hangs out on the streets, doesn’t “get” high-brow art, smokes pot, speaks cité Créole and comes from a Black African family with many children. His joyous displays are reminiscent of films with an Uncle Tom character, seemingly happy whilst serving a rich, “white” man. Some have labeled his character and the set-up of the film as “offensive.” The stereotyped nuances seem to dissepate as the story progresses, turning Driss into a person far more honourable and kind-hearted than a stereotype would allow.

The ending is questionable yet just for Philippe and forever binds him to Driss. The film and its characters reminds me of something Rumi once wrote, “Once you have met a true human being, let him not disappear from the horizon of your heart.”

LES INTOUCHABLES is a true story based on the life of Philippe Pozzo di Borgo and a young North African helper-come-confidante, Abdel Yasmin. Di Borgo wrote his mémoir entitled Le Deuxième Souffle (The Second Wind).