Guilty of Romance

2011 / Sion Sono > With Suicide Club and its mass schoolgirl suicides¹, Sono exploded onto the international scene. But the problem that plagued that film has continued to persist: A potentially grand concept that don’t translate into a satisfactory cinematic experience. It’s not surprising that Cold Fish, my favorite of Sono’s, is less conceptual and more focused while still taking advantage of his directorial prowess. In contrast, Guilty of Romance is a desert of mediocrity with some oases of wonders sprinkled about.

At its gut, the film is trying to tell us something about the private nature of sexuality, and it starts off spectacularly with detectives discovering a murder victim whose body parts have alternatively been replaced by those of a life-size doll. Setting into motion character studies of three women, Guilty shines the most when we follow the path of a quiet housewife of a respected poet as she begins her road to self-discovery. Played by the gorgeous Megumi Kagurazaka², her transformation is what will resonate the most with most viewers. The details of her everyday routine, its minor shifts followed by a scene of masterwork in front of a mirror sadly shows the film peaking in the first act. As often happens in Sono’s films, things derail in a manner that some would consider abstractly brilliant while others like myself just find frustrating to no end. Guilty of Romance’s triptych of female sexuality descends into a kind of madness that makes the analysis moot at the expense of a near-rudimentary thriller finale.

Watch the brilliant intro to Suicide Club. ↩
Kagurazaka is now married to Sono. ↩

The Place Beyond the Pines

2012 / Derek Cianfrance > A generational crime saga back-ended by a coming-of-age story of discovery and loss, The Place Beyond the Pines is a confluence of genres that don’t often see each other at the cinema. And if you take into effect its headliners—current A-listers Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper—you’re in for a bigger shock considering the pace at which the film plays out. Unlike Cianfrance’s last effort, the painful-to-watch but ultimately impressive Blue Valentine¹, Pines flows fairly smoothly, but it’s also not as snazzy as mainstream filmgoers would expect. It’s a slow burn (clocking in at almost 2.5 hours) that’s heavily dependent on meditating upon the past. The nature of forgiveness, a topic the Dardennes² have nearly perfected, is at the forefront as we see fathers and sons come to terms with who they are. In fact, the film sets forth a “manly” proposition in defining the roles of sons through their paternal spirit at the expense of loving but ignored mothers. Whether you buy that premise or not, one thing that’ll stay with you is the performance of Dane DeHaan³, whose turn as a fatherless teenager will pour sympathy out of your guts.

Our 6th favorite film of 2010. ↩
The Son is a particularly great example. ↩
Soon to be famous as Harry Osborne in The Amazing-Spider Man 2. ↩

Paan Singh Tomar

2012 / Tigmanshu Dhulia > Bollywood continues to baffle: How can such amateur filmmaking be a critical darling? The fundamental problems of Paan Singh Tomar, a loose biopic of an army-athlete-turned-bandit, exist regardless of nationality or historical context. The barrage of constant, heavy musical cues, awkward cuts with rough pacing and obsessive use of shots that have no relevance all take away from the central story. On top of these, a solid performance by a miscast Irffan Khan is negated by shoddy character development that lacks consistent direction. (Do we ever really care about him?) And all of this is made worse by downright terrible performances by minor actors. Neither budgetary constraints nor lack of technical expertise are excuses for such a subpar production.

India has done well not to select Paan Singh Tomar as their entry into the Oscars for 2013. (Barfi! deserves it considerably more, and the quality difference between the two films are day and night.) The problem, however, persists: Bollywood moviegoers are too easily amazed by “new” cinema their country produces, even if similar cinema has been done before better elsewhere. And while being derivative isn’t necessarily a negative as long as proper due is given and quality is controlled, praising mediocrity devalues the perception of the whole industry.

Prometheus

2012 / Ridley Scott > Michael Fassbender is the best android ever: This, sadly, is the one true takeaway from Ridley Scott’s return to the Alien universe. If forced to admit another, it would be that the elder Scott brother has now further cemented himself as arguably the single most overrated director working today. For him, style over substance has become par for course, and while that isn’t a bad thing, it’s consistently kept him from being great since 1982. His ability to generate such incredible hype based on the success of two films made 30 and 33 years ago is a testament to the power of the Hollywood hierarchy.

Much of this is incredibly frustrating because, while I prepared for Prometheus with lowered expectations, there were still enough moments of complete awe for me to start hoping that, by the end, there would be some kind of pathos that made the experience complete. But there wasn’t, not really. Not the kind of thing that you remember for years on end and harken back to as a point of continuous reference. Who could forget “tears in the rain?” Isn’t that scene what made Blade Runner click? I’d argue that scene alone is responsible for half of the film’s cult following. It perfectly encompassed everything, thematically and spiritually, and completed both the characters’ and the audiences’ emotional arc. In other words, it’s exactly what Prometheus was missing.

Visually, it’s gorgeous, spellbinding. The vast landscapes are easy on the eyes but creeping on the nerves. There’s tension built into every shot, every angle. In fact, it’s so beautiful that I even excused the presence of a few obviously stock characters. Then again, the film is so concerned with looks that Noomi Rapace, giving her best performance since The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, has full make-up on while on exploration missions deep inside alien caves. Still, maybe she’s just that type, right?

There’s no nitpicking here: The film clearly lacks rationale for quite a few of its climactic sequences. This, of course, shouldn’t be surprising since it’s written by the mastermind behind the con that was Lost: Damon Lindelof. His outline is simple: Create mysteries, throw down an emotional smokescreen and walk away without answers. And I’m not even suggesting that we need anything concrete—the best films leave room for our imagination—we just need context. Context allows us to connect the dots and make films personal. This film, it’s not personal. It’s a hollow shell with beautiful, gorgeous explosions and even prettier eye candy. With more restraint, Prometheus could—and should—have been amazing, but instead we’ll just have to settle for a forgettably good time.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

1982 / Nicholas Meyer > A lot has been said about The Wrath of Khan, but mostly that it stands, on its own, as the best that Star Trek has to offer. So, do we view the film as a movie in its own right or contextually as a Star Trek, sci-fi genre piece? Ultimately, it depends on tone. When a film follows genre thematics, it should be blessed in a similar light. But when it jumps the rope into competition with anything and everything, a whole slew of additional criteria come into factor. The Wrath of Khan attempts the latter, but doesn’t do it particularly well.

There’s a certain level of Star Trek lore one needs to know to fully appreciate the context of Khan, a character who had previously appeared in an episode of the original series some time ago. Not knowing the backstory doesn’t exactly hurt, but it does mitigate his “wrath” factor. The film, though, is broader than its title. It’s really about the characters—How’s Captain Kirk? What’s Spock up to? Again, all this requires some elementary knowledge of the players. Most of us have grown up to some degree with these characters amongst our midst, but often a lot of our peripheral knowledge comes off of caricatures in mainstream media (think Saturday Night Live, et al). Thus, the gravity of the storyline doesn’t hit home, and viewers like myself are left wondering what the big deal is. Essentially, it fails to resonate because its seriousness isn’t backed up by greater context, and its finale tries to touch upon aspects that a fan familiar with the world would appreciate considerably more.

Punch

2011 / Lee Han > Punch is not a blockbuster. It’s about a poor high school kid growing up with a disabled father hellbent on dancing at a cabaret. It’s about mothers and being an outsider in a closed off world. It’s about fathers and sons and teachers and students. Most importantly, it’s about knowing that one cannot separate all these, that in the evermore complicated world we live in, everything converges at once, and we must learn to find solace in such traffic. And yet, maybe that’s why the film sold 5.3 million tickets in South Korea (or a tenth of the population). In every aspect of the film, there’s something to identify with. And while Punch isn’t glossy, Lee’s direction has shadows of Ozu’s Floating Weeds in its relatively gentle approach to otherwise serious matters.

Centered around a subdued effort by Yoo Ah-in, who himself was a drop out and rose through the ranks as an independent actor, Punch successfully converges the aforementioned topics into a calming, enjoyable piece of work that touches upon, most interestingly but within respectable context, the institution of international marriage. Wan-deuk, the film’s Korean namesake, discovers that his mother is Filipino. Combined with a hunchbacked father, the duo is a troubling mix for any teenager. Yet with the guidance of a teacher (who also happens to be his next door neighbour), he pushes through while learning some kickboxing along the way. At its weakest, it’s charming. At its strongest, Punch exposes a sizable majority of the Korean population to the optimistic end of broken homes. All this being said, it does one thing more…

Choi Min-sik (Oldboy), Song Kang-ho (Memories of Murder) and Sol Kyung-gu (Peppermint Candy): For the last decade plus, these three have been the male triumvirate of Korean cinema. Their range, skill and ability to carry films even with minimal screentime have been a gift to moviegoers, but now we must work on adding a fourth: Kim Yun-seok. Active throughout the 2000s, Kim truly broke out as the morally melted cop-slash-pimp in Na Hong-jin’s The Chaser in 2008. He followed that up with a grinding, fearless performance in Na’s follow-up, The Yellow Sea, where he’s a Korean gangster from across the waters. And now comes his turn as an enigmatic teacher whose moral compass seems a bit off. It’s a role that’s vastly different from the hard-edged nature of his previously noted efforts, but it’s one that he owns. Yoo and Kim’s back-and-forth rapport is a joy to watch and keeps the film from becoming an out-and-out melodrama.

To fully capture the impact of Punch in the Korean mindset, it should been noted that Filipino immigrant Jasmine Lee, who plays Wan-deuk’s mother, has been shortlisted by the majority-controlling Saenuri Party as a potential candidate. Whether this is smoke and fog doesn’t matter. The fact that this is even a possibility is significant in Korean culture and politics and speaks to the impact of the film.

Norwegian Wood

2010 / Anh Hung Tran > In Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami crafted the college years of Holden Caulfield—a spirit of universal self-identification that made the novel a cult favorite for those who felt something was missing in their lives. It broke through traditional boundaries and expectations of love and set many of us upon a quest to find our own Midori. But I’ve not found her in Tran’s adaptation. In her portrayal, Kiko Mizuhara is too sweet. The bite that gave Midori her allure just isn’t here. And that, in itself, is a failure that I cannot look past.

Those who haven’t read the novel may like—and even love—Norwegian Wood. With elegant, graceful panning shots, the cinematography is exquisitely done by In the Mood for Love’s Mark Li. The score, by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, is haunting but lovely and works in-step with Li’s cameras. And Anh Hung Tran is still, by consensus, considered the best director to ever come out of Vietnam. The attention to detail Tran brought to the project is evident in nearly all aspects of the film, but ultimately, the issue is one of (mis)interpretation.

This is where it falls apart for those who cherish the book. The film simply fails to capture the wonder of Toru Watanabe, the way he’s an everyman. There’s simply too much focus on his relationship with Naoko wherein I’ve always considered his relationships with Midori as well as Nagasawa—who effectively works as a foil—to be more important. Lost amidst this is the most beautiful and tragic character of all: Hatsumi. What I’ve always considered my favorite passage (includes minor spoilers) is a passing narration. For some, this won’t matter, but for me, this was the ultimate dealbreaker. As far as I’m concerned, no adaptation of Norwegian Wood can succeed without Hatsumi’s poignance.

All in all, Norwegian Wood can be affecting, but it’s more of a rumination upon the book: A lot of set pieces and lingering looks while lacking the work’s full, transformative power. But for obsessive Murakami fans, it’s also possible that this is the best adaptation we’ll ever get.

Dragon

2011 / Peter Chan > Finally, something with flavor: After a series of bland, bloated martial arts/war epics from mainland China, Dragon (or Swordsmen, as it was called previously, or Wu Xia, as it was called at its Cannes premiere) arrives with just enough salt to tend the wound. Half-police procedural and half-actioner, Chan makes good in building depth so that we care about what’s behind the fighting. As Takeshi Kaneshiro’s detective unveils the mystery of Donnie Yen, a common villager with a dubious past, it’s hard not to think of this as a Chinese take on Out of the Past and A History of Violence. Then again, it’s not so much that the film does anything new, but rather that it succeeds in being poignant, focused and rarely tries to hide behind the melodrama that has plagued its peers. Brooding and often brutal, it’s a much-needed kick into an otherwise stagnating genre.

Fury

1936 / Fritz Lang > In cinema, lynch mobs are so often associated with the treatment of blacks in the South that we forget how such mentality exists across all of society. From To Kill a Mockingbird to The Ox-Bow Incident, we can note that it’s just human nature to let our personal beliefs slide when coerced into a majority. Whether it’s right or not, that’s what ends up being for debate. Should one persecute only the leaders of a mob or everyone involved, no matter how little their contribution? In Lang’s first film in the United States after fleeing Nazi Germany, he embodies this metaphor for his homeland with Spencer Tracy at the forefront. Fury is straight-forward, book-ended by just enough sentimentality to give context to the proceedings. The moral preaching is kept to a minimum, which allows the film to breathe in the minds of viewers after it concludes. Ultimately, when held up against the backdrop of what happened during the Third Reich, the film goes beyond entertainment and caps a perfect beginning to Lang’s Hollywood career.

Countdown

2011 / Huh Jong-ho > A family melodrama wrapped inside another melodrama about society’s inability to cope with mental disabilities sprinkled with some bloated action and uninteresting, stereotypical characters who are part-time criminals but generally okay-to-good people. Actually, one of them is a “bad” guy, though he’s kind enough to numb your legs before he breaks them. Novel, right? But let’s not kid ourselves: Countdown has basically no rhyme or reason to exist, and in the process, wastes a performance by the great Jeon Do-yeon (winner of Best Actress at Cannes in 2007 for Lee Chang-dong’s Secret Sunshine) and a stoic but relatively enjoyable Jeong Jae-yeong. This is, in many ways, the worst of Korean cinema: Mediocre, repetitive, unimaginative—the counterpart to Hollywood’s run-of-the-mill blockbusters.

Life as Fiction

Commentaries on Film by Rahat Ahmed