Before we leave September, here are a few more jottings on films.
The Cranes Are Flying (1957), directed by Mikhail Kalatozov, cinematography by Sergei Urusevsky. I add the cinematographer’s name here because the camera work in this Soviet film is nothing short of stunning. The mobile camera tracks, swirls, lifts, falls, angles and generally serves as another actor in this anti-war film that focuses on the home front, and especially the women/woman left behind. Veronika (Tatyana Samoylova) and Boris (Aleksey Batalov) are young lovers. As the film begins, we see these two skipping happily by the water and generally displaying the vigours and energy of youth. They stop and watch cranes flying above them, and then they are sprayed by a passing truck that is washing the streets. This dampening forewarns what is to come. War is declared. Boris leaves for a tour of duty and the two young lovers are separated. Scenes of departure are chaotic and distressing. Anyway, what follows lets us know that Boris dies in battle, while Veronika waits for his return. Meanwhile, young Mark (Aleksandr Shvorin) sets his sights on Veronika, pressing her into marriage. Mark turns out to be dishonourable and things fall apart. The story is conventional and perhaps even predictable. However, the actors are fine and the filming offers something special. What we see looks forward to a film like Tarkovsky’s Ivan’s Childhood (1962). The Cranes Are Flying stands with Kubrik’s Paths of Glory as two of the finest anti-war films; both come out in 1957. One focuses on the women at home, the other on the soldiers in battle.
Ahed’s Knee (2021), directed by Nadav Lapid. Here is a film seething with anger. Its protagonist is a movie director, Y, played by Avshalom Pollak, who is preparing to make a film concerning the young Palestinian activist, Ahed Tamimi, who was sent to prison for slapping an Israeli soldier, an event that was on TV. Apparently, a man who saw the news footage tweeted that Ahed ought to be shot in the knee. The film begins with a montage of knee shots and some actors reading for parts in the proposed film. Meanwhile, Y travels into the desert to a small town where he is to screen one of his films at the local library. He meets his host, a librarian who now works for the government as a Deputy Minister for Culture, Yahalom (Nur Fibak). The two of them form something of a bond, and Y confides in Yahalom, telling her of his unpleasant experiences while serving his military service. These two appear to share a dislike of the present government’s curtailing of free speech. Despite their seemingly similar views, Yahalom asks Y to sign a form that stipulates what topics he can and cannot address during the question period following the screening. Y is filled with anguish and even rage. His only other confidente appears to be his mother who collaborates with her son on the films he makes. She is ill with lung cancer. By the end, things have come unstrung. Anyway, the film has some wonky camera swirls and cuts, much desert dreariness, and lots of anger as Y monolgues his way to the end. (Can ‘monologue’ be a verb?) This is a film about the artist’s commitment to free speech.
Red Cliff (2008-9), directed by John Woo. This is a four hour and forty-eight-minute film about the battle of Red Cliffs that took place in 208 AD. It is lavish in the extreme, even breathtaking. It is also very much a film about male friendship and male enmity. A driving force of the plot is the nefarious Cao Cao (Zhang Fengyi), Prime Minister of the Han Empire. He desires Xiao Qiao (Chiling Lin), wife of Zhou Yu (Tony Leung) who is leader of rebel forces. Then we have master strategist Zhuge Liang (Takeshi Kaneshiro) who forms a bond with Zhou; they are brothers in arms, although Zhou does all the impressive fighting. Aside from Xiao, we also have Sun Shangxiang (Wei Zhao), a spunky young woman who infiltrates the Empire’s forces to gather useful information. Of course, there is an assortment of other characters, and a huge cast of extras. Woo was allowed to use 1,500 government soldiers to helps with sets and action, and to provide men for the battle sequences. The battle sequences are complex and spectacular. Woo also had two full-sized ships built for the action on water and the many other ships appear courtesy of CGI. It is quite amazing how Woo and his collaborators find multiple ways for soldiers to die. Mostly what the film offers is eye-popping action, although it does manage a bit of romance (and bromance too), a smidgen of political scrutiny, and a lesson on how to make tea. The actors are attractive, the action furious, and locations, sets, costumes, and camera work as good as it gets. The length of the film is kept in check by separation of the narrative into Parts 1 and 2, Part 2 beginning with a short visual summary of Part 1. In other words, you may watch the film in two sittings, if you prefer.
Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022), directed by George Miller. Miller is known for his Mad Max films, and so you can expect exuberance. What you may not expect is a fantasia of colour and weirdness in an Arabian Nights vein. The screenplay is an adaptation of a story by A. S. Byatt in which an academic, a professed narratologist, finds herself inside a story thousands of years in the making. She releases a Djinn who pleads with her to make three wishes so he may be released from long years inside a bottle. She knows about story and so she knows that stories of genies and wishes are cautionary tales. The academic is Alithea (Tilda Swinton) and the Djinn is, well the Djinn (Idris Elba). Seeing the Djinn traipse about in Alithea’s hotel room wearing a torn white bathrobe might make you think that the academic had made her wish and it has come true. Anyway, we have a lavish recounting of several stories. Costumes are colourful and voluminous. The whole thing is strange, but in an interesting way. Ultimately all the finery, all the time skipping, all the opulent sets, all the discussions of desire and fear and power and so on devolve into something like, ‘tis love, ‘tis love that makes the world go round.
I’m Not There (2007), directed by Todd Haynes. "Poet, prophet, outlaw, fake, star of electricity," so we are told as this film begins. We might add, vagabond, trickster, singer/songwriter, welder, painter, jerk, joker, actor, ragman, man in black, and probably any number of other labels. The film captures not only the person, Bob Dylan, but also the times that were changing. It captures the person by confessing that capturing the person is a futile, but joyful endeavour. It opens with a train and it ends with a train, a reminder of the ever-rolling thunder that is the subject of the film. Always on the move, never standing still, elusive, mysterious, mercurial, dodging, now here, now there – this is the singer and the song. Haynes’s film plays out like a Dylan song, skipping here and there and yet always with a clever coherence, and always with a cogent allusion. References abound to the life and the songs of Dylan, and to the movies of his most energetic times. We have visual nods to Fellini, Godard, Lester, Peckinpah, Nichols, Goulding, and others. We have songs from the early years to Time Out of Mind, most covered, but a few by the elusive tramp himself. We have children with guns and sharp swords, we have a child beside a dead pony, we have a geek, we have characters who tell tall tales, who womanize, who take seriously the call for everybody to get stoned. We have six characters pretending to be the same person, and doing a fine job of being different persons. Finally, no matter what the matter was, he simply will not talk. All the time, of course, he never ceases to say what is in his mind, one hand waving free. This is a film that aspires to the condition of music, and manages to achieve greatness.