LarryB-5's Reviews

The Fall (I) (2006)

10/10

An overwhelmingly beautiful tribute to the imagination

1 June 2008

Every once in a while, you see a good piece of art; and every few years or so, you see something that you know you will remember for the rest of your life. For me, this film was the latter.

The Fall incorporates phantasmagoric imagery, ridiculous plot points, and occasionally garbled dialog. Yet all these elements are brilliantly merged to convey a simple story about a suicidal man and an innocent little girl who meet in the hospital where they are patients and occupy their time by improvising a story together. As they tell this story, it transforms them. You might even say it heals them. The Fall is, in its essence, a tribute to the healing power of the imagination.

For me, this movie strikes truth as it conveys its thesis. It strikes beauty as it takes us inside two imaginations unbound by geography, time, or physics. That the film failed to strike gold at the box office is deeply saddening.

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Lost in Translation (2003)

Toward a culture of the heart

2 October 2003

What Bob Harris feels in in his heart cannot be translated. As a

middle-aged movie star visiting Japan, he goes through the

motions of smiling and saying nice things to his hosts and fans,

they all smile back, and the ache inside of him remains unknown.

He talks to his wife about the kids and remodelling the study, she

says she misses him, they hang up, and his ache grows. There is

a sorrow inside of him that he doesn't even attempt to

communicate.

What Charlotte, a recent graduate in philosophy, feels cannot be

translated either. She embraces her photographer husband in

their hotel room in Tokyo as he rushes off to a photo shoot, and

she cries as soon as the door shuts behind him. She wanders

through the foreign city and countryside, visiting shrines, game

rooms, clubs, etc. in search of things that might bring happiness.

She too has a sorrow that she doesn't even attempt to communicate.

The difference between Charlotte and Bob is that Charlotte still

seems to be searching for something more--buying self-help

CDs, examining different religions, etc.--whereas the older Bob

seems to have given up, preferring to hang out at the bar and

drown out his ache. But when the two of them discover each other

in the same hotel, they are drawn to each by the sheer suction

created by the vacuum in their hearts--helped along, perhaps, by

their shared status as foreigners.

This movie succeeds through a series of images, looks on the

actors' faces, gestures, and an eerily genuine chemistry. It as if the

movie itself is lost in translation as the scenery and acting

combine to convey powerful feelings of attraction, loss, loneliness,

wonder, and ultimately love. Yes, love. Since both characters are

married, perhaps the reason we never hear they same "I love you"

to each other is that cultural taboos hold them back. But they

whisper something to each other at the end--something that

means love whether the word is used or not--and we know that for

these Americans in Japan the culture of the heart has prevailed

and inexpressible sorrow has become inexpressible joy.

Lost in Translation was a beautiful, genuine, and finally very

honest and daring film.

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Irreversible (2002)

10/10

Haunting and beautiful as a memory

8 March 2003

Like a mind turning through the mists of its own memory, the camera in Irreversible turns through shadowy places that from time to time collect in the light. We see random details, we see nothing, we see ambiguous surfaces that sometimes clarify themselves and sometimes don't, we see moments of clear and unforgettable horror, and we see distant visions of serene happiness and youthful play set in no clear place or context because the place and context are irrelevant. And like so many of the images that haunt our memories, the images in Irreversible haunt us too. What exquisitely rendered imagery! And what an extraordinarily original and moving film! Shame on the thoughtless critics who think this film is nothing more than a graphic depiction of rape and murder shot by some good cameramen. Irreversible doesn't need a complex plot. It doesn't need to soften the brutality that many human beings do in fact suffer or the mistakes they do in fact make. The film only needs viewers who open their hearts to the tragedies of contemporary life; the good-bad power of time; and the beautiful, sad flights of the mind as it moves forward and looks back.

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The Ninth Gate (1999)

10/10

A tragically under-appreciated work of art

22 March 2000

Warning: Spoilers

CONTAINS SPOILERS

At first, I thought it would be best not to say too much about this movie. It is so good that I didn't want to give any of it away. However, now that I've read the overwhelmingly negative reviews, I'd like to say a few things in the movie's defense.

The Ninth Gate is not a horror movie, not a thriller, not a campy comedy, not a drama. If you force the movie in any of these categories and judge it by the category's standards, the movie will be doomed to fail. What is the Ninth Gate, then? I'd say it's a character-based exploration of good and evil that also entertains us by poking fun at the representation of good and evil in popular culture. At the same time that the film plays with and laughs at cinematic conventions related to Satanism, heros, and villains, it offers us a very serious view of the nature of evil in contemporary life. This view crystallises at the very end of the film, when the ninth gate explodes with light. Insane psychopaths who spend all their time and money trying to wake the devil are not what the devil wants, this film tells us. The devil wants those millions of lukewarm types--people who are centered around their own survival and comfort, without strong feelings of morality, love, or hatred. To win these people over to the side of hell by offering them knowledge, power, and pleasure would be to win a great battle against God.

The charge that the movie is ambiguous is preposterous. Some say that the unnamed girl could be an angel, a demon, or a good but flawed person. Which should we choose? Well, anyone who watches the movie closely and sees how she reacts to various murders should have no trouble choosing. Others say that the ending is either heavenly or hellish and that it's impossible to say which. Again, anyone who pays attention and notices that the castle is the ninth gate, that there is a shadowy figure standing in the window when it fills with light, and that Depp is the very man depicted in the book that he reads should easily realise that the ending is utterly hellish. The film does leave open the question of whether hell is actually a reprehensible place, I think, but this is not ambiguity; this is a disturbingly open question that the film raises with intellectual mastery. Evil does have its attractions; that's why it's so prevalent throughout the world.

There is so much more to say about this movie, so many little details that deserve praise. Take Depp's ride in a truck filled with sheep--this is the birth of an antichrist. This time the devil wins with his/her temptations. Take the resemblance of the figures in the film to the figures in the books--clear but not at first obvious. There's so much here, so much. This is an exceptional film.

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