Reviews

I will discuss how an unofficial court structure is built within the narration and how the trials are processed and reflected within the visual language in About Elly. About Elly tells the story of a group of friends in their 30s. There are three couples some of which have kids and their friend Ahmet, a recently divorced man coming from Germany for a holiday. The purpose of this trip is to arrange a marriage between him and Elly, the teacher of the kids who is a stranger to everybody except Sepideh, mother of Elly's student. The arrangement is planned by Sepideh, yet everybody follows the plan including Elly and Ahmet. On the first day, they have a pleasant evening playing some games and conversing nicely. On the following day, however, one of the kids gets lost in the sea while playing under the watch of Elly. While he is rescued eventually, Elly cannot be found, story unfolds and the judgmental process begins. In About Elly, establishment of the trial cannot be clearly understood until the mid of the film. The movie begins with the introduction of the characters through their decisions or the conversation that takes place between them. During this process, we are commonly induced to think how modern and democratic this group is. We see female characters in pants. Their hair is half covered as the modern Iranian women do. We immediately have a sense that this is a story about the modern part of Iran. The very initial scene where the democracy is established in "About Elly" is when the group votes for staying in the particular house that is assigned to them. This scene contradicts our conception of Iranian society because not only the decision is made by voting in a country known to lack certain human rights in the eyes of Europe, but also woman are involved in this voting with the same rights as man. The voting issue is a bit exaggerated in a following scene where we see an ironic reproach of Ahmet saying that he will marry Elly if the majority votes as yes at the end of this trip. Even a private matter that is out of public consideration is open to voting in a society that is governed by Shariat where the Islamic rules are the highest legal rules. This is also ironically mentioned in the scene where they play charades and the name of the one of the films is "Long Live Students at Law School". Here, we see how controversial concepts come together and exist harmoniously. After we have a sense of this democratic group where we are confident of their civilization level (!), the incident happens and Elly gets lost. The rescue squad cannot find her which I see as a sign of incapability of the governmental side in the establishment of an ending. Then, the police cannot solve the problem, either and moreover scold the group. It is clearly stated the government is above the individuals, yet how just is it? The conclusion of the governmental party is that the sea gives back what it took in the first place, so that the power is relayed to the nature from the governmental resources. Here, we see a black representation of governmental side. This representation is intensified in the eyes of the audience with lower light shots and use of colder blue colors. The coldness of death, the moment of ambiguity, fuss that the characters experience is visualized in this scene. The warm yellows in the first half of the movie disappear after this scene. Then, the establishment of the justice is laid on the individuals who may be black or white individually, but become grey when they are together. The very initial help comes from Ahmet who suggests looking into Elly's hand bag to find her ID. Not finding the bag gives them the hope that she might have returned to the city. However, Sepideh announces that she hidden the bag before the incident strengthening the possibility of Elly's death. Here, the eyes are turned to her. Now, they have a person who knows more than the rest hence a person to blame. Then, the trial of Sepideh begins in the eyes of the group. Now, the concern of the group is how to elude out of this mess. For that, an imitation court is established. Who is being judged is Sepideh. There is a public prosecutor of the case: Sepideh's husband, Amir. He immediately suspects that Sepideh is hiding something. There is a lawyer: Ahmet. We later on realize that there was a reason why Ahmet defended Sepideh. There is a jury that argues about the trial for the rest of the movie: the others in the group. Finally, the witnesses are the children. The prosecutor and the lawyer are black are white sides of the trial. However, the jury is much more greyish. Peyman and Shohreh is one couple and Naazi and Alireza is the other couple in the jury. In the former, we see Peyman as the whiter character in the sense that he is more constructive and a solution seeker, while in the latter, we see Naazi in this position. Alireza is not even very engaged in the matter. However, when they come together they make a complete jury that is composed of different colors and is eventually grey. They do not immediately pick a side, and instead they try to reveal the truth. They reconsider which events happened up to that point. They try to analyze the case and find out their role in this escape or death. They question the witnesses. The seriousness of this court is emphasized when Peyman asks witnesses to behave as if this was a real court. The tension in the trial increases so much, so that the prosecutor, Amir, even beats the accused, Sepideh. This scene is shot with a hand held camera that increases the tension of that moment even more. He tries to prevent the witnesses, the children, from witnessing this event saying that "Morvaid go inside honey". This increases the intensity of the dark representation of Amir. I think, until this scene, the prosecutor and the lawyer put forward their accusations or defenses, made their claims. But then, the story shifts a bit. Here in the middle of the movie, a new character is introduced to the movie: Elly's fiancé or so called brother. Now the real plaintiff joins the trial. His entrance put the trial in even a more critical position because now they have to make a decision in a shorter time. They even try to manipulate the witnesses, the children. They panic! Here we see how greyish the jury becomes. As a further proof of this, we see the false testimony of Naazi to Elly's fiancé in a following scene. As their time shortens, they cannot pass a judgment on the case and the pressure on them increases. Moreover, this results in the confession of Sepideh that she insisted Elly to join them even though Elly initially refused. During the whole judgment she was more passive than the prosecutor, the lawyer, or the jury in the manner of making a conclusion. I think until that point, she was trying to accept the burden of her conscience. Eventually, she resolves and reveals the truth. After a shot where we see her while she is looking out of the window, at that exact moment I think, she decides to tell the truth. Here, the background is a sea which may represent freedom that is apart from Sepideh with a fencing. I think Sepideh is looking for a way to the freedom out of her own conscience here and she is deciding to get there telling the truth. We see her desperate determinism here. Telling the truth in her understanding is accepting the crime. So, the accused turns out to be guilty. One interesting thing here is that the darkness of the prosecutor and the whiteness of lawyer blurs. Amir, the prosecutor becomes right at blaming Sepideh, while Ahmet turns out to be the accomplice of Sepideh. He was not innocent, either. This is not surprising, though because blurring the characters is a common feature in Farhadi movies. After the confession, they are relived, I think, because they can make a conclusion. They vote for telling the truth or not hence restoring the democracy. They decide to tell the truth, but what is the truth? The truth is that they did not know Elly was engaged, and only Sepideh and Ahmet knew that, yet they knew the trip was to arrange a marriage between Ahmet and Elly. One thing that is ironic here is that the witness now is the Quran. The testifier is divinized and governmentalized. The jury escaping from governmental justice is now basing its supporting structure to the governmental resources again. They are indeed controversial. The ending is very touching when the plaintiff and the accused meet. Sepideh cannot tell the truth even though voting demanded the truth. We see the collapse in both the plaintiff and the accused for one telling a lie, for the other learning a betrayal. Now, they have to carry on this way. We see a rainy background behind the fiancé. The window behind Sepideh is minimized now, and it is so small as if it is by force pushed there. And the rest of the group is trying to get the car out of the mud. This image is like the summary of the whole film.

The very initial scene in Like Someone in Love begins with a voice off. We know that this is a way of expansion of the space. When it comes to Kiarostami, it also has a philosophical approach to the process of making a meaning out of something. In case of a voice off where we hear the speaker and see the listener, especially when two people are having a conversation, our attention is drawn to the listener. The listener, then, is the subject of the scene. S/he is the meaning maker. We read the scene through his/her reaction, a change on his/her face. The philosophical approach arises here. The director implies that the person who receives the information and processes it in the background of his/her own thoughts is the actual meaning maker. Not what is said is important but how it is perceived is what matters. At the end of the first scene, we see the images of Akiko and her boss juxtaposed to each other. At this moment, when the speaker and the listener come together, what is said is properly perceived and makes sense, so that Akiko decides to visit her customer, I think. This is that a-ha moment which is constructed by the contribution of both parties and intensified by such a juxtaposition.

On the other hand, the timing of the first scene is very linear. We realize that the timing of this scene is so-scaled to our daily life timing from the very initial. We literally wait for Akiko's return when she goes to the bathroom as if we are a guest in that bar waiting for her, which is not very conventional in mainstream movies, but frequent in Kiarostami's movies.

In the taxi while Akiko is going to the house of her customer, she listens to her voice messages from her grandmother. We never see the grandmother, yet we are aware of her presence from the conversation between Akiko and her boss even from very beginning. Here, she is being visible while invisible in a manner. Why do we have to hear her in the taxi, then? We know that she exists and the story that she wants to visit her granddaughter while she's in Tokyo, so why more of a proof? What I think is that the director is interfering here and now he is being visible while invisible. We know that this is the director's touch, so that here he is, as well. The space is expanded in two layers in the taxi scene. In one layer, Akiko is above the taxi driver with her being aware of the grandmother's complaints. In the other layer, we are above both of them. Linearity of the timing, however, is disrupted in the taxi through the voice messages that take us from the taxi to the earlier hours of the day.

There is one thing that is interesting here, though. The first 3 voice messages are from the grandmother. We perceive them through the face of Akiko. We are expected to observe her while she receives these messages. However, the voice messages of the grandmother are interrupted by two other messages that were sent by some irrelevant people. While she is listening to those messages, the camera turns its attention to the street and we no longer perceive the messages through the face of Akiko. That is why I consider those interruptions to be irrelevant and I think this is the touch of the director again where he is being visible through an invisible interference. From the last message till the other day, the linearity of the time is restored. We see all those turns on the road, waits on the red light, the other cars in the traffic and we hear the turn signal, the radio, so that we're restored to the reality of that moment. From now on, we wait for that slow process of Akiko's putting on her make up. The necessity that the driver had to call the customer to ask the address could not be skipped, even though this was an attempt in vain. That phone call from the friend of the customer had to be received. These are all the supporters of the linearity of the time anymore. The phone call, in addition to its contribution to perception of the time, being originated from a different location, is another example that disrupts the perception of the space for the audience.

The juxtaposition that we saw in the first scene is also repeated in the meeting scene of Akiko and her customer. The scene begins with a conversation where the audience interprets the flow of the dialog through the face of the listener and it ends with juxtaposition of the speaker and the listener on a different texture this time, through the screen. Here acting as a mirror, the screen allows the audience to physically expand the space. This scene is followed by the car scene where we see the characters from out of the front window of the car. Now, the director is compressing the space with this shooting technique, trapping the characters inside the car. The compression of the inside of the car is even more exaggerated by the shadows of the clouds and the outside world. As the clouds are large and the shadow of everything out of that small car is imposed on them, the characters are even more trapped in the car. It could be a sunny day with no clouds or no reflection. But would we have the same feeling of being contained in a squeezed space, then? I believe Kiarostami has an intended touch here, too making himself visible again. Another example that gives the sense of real-time timing is when the boyfriend and the customer are having a conversation in the car. Initially, we wait for the boyfriend to finish smoking, and we experience the hesitation that he goes through during that time, not skipped, a good detail. Then, a long conversation begins. This scene is very typical of Kiarostami who is known for making sophisticated conversations taking place in a car. While reading Kiarostami, we should always consider the audience since he believes that the final decision about his films is made on the minds of the spectator. In this car scene, the spectator is taken into the car being included to that trapped space. S/he is not a spectator anymore, but is a moderator of an argument. S/he is forced to perceive the argument, digest it, and not allowed to remain distant. This inevitable attraction towards the conversation is achieved through the shooting preferences of the director who placed the camera hence the spectator into the car. When Akiko returns after her exam is finished, the argument ends hence the moderator is kicked out of the car, also the camera, and becomes the spectator again. Until the end of that scene, whose remaining is not that philosophically sophisticated anymore, the spectator stays on the out of the car. Eventually, when they reach to the car service, the argument begins again, so that we are taken back into the car. In the following scene when the customer arrives home, there is a voice off which is not only used as a means of expansion of the space, but also used as a way of incorporating the audience. We do not see the owner of the voice in this scene, yet the customer answers her directly looking at the camera. Therefore, in a way, the spectator becomes the owner of the voice as if the customer was answering our questions. We are the owner of the voice with a cost of being put in a disturbing position since the neighbor's questions annoy the customer. Eventually, we feel distant from the neighbor even though we are her. In the consecutive scene, however, the audience is alienated from the scene, though having more empathy for the neighbor. Now, we see the actual owner of the voice, who is allowed to be seen from the behind a small window telling the story of her handicapping life. How she has to be attached to her brother is intensified by how she is attached to that window, how she is an object with which the main story has barrier in between. Now, she is trapped in that house, in her life which we perceive as a spectator observing her out of the window. We are now alienated from her, yet we feel more empathy towards her. Such spatial arrangement through a shooting technique allows the audience to have more intuition about even a random character and his/her own position as an audience. In Like Someone in Love, the space is expanded or compressed as the scene demands using different shooting techniques. The time is constructed in a linear manner in general. However, this linearity is sometimes disrupted by phone calls or voice messages. The spatial and temporal structure of Like Someone in Love is a complex one with layers and layers most of which might not be even covered in this analysis.

One thing that caught my attention in Chungking Express was the use of colors. A scene in deflated colors was followed by a scene in bright colors. I felt like main characters were represented with certain colors: the cop in bluish tones and the woman with the wig in reddish tones. The tones changed depending on the changing moods, as well. Bluish cop became yellowish when he was slipped by two Mays, and yellowish woman became bluish while being chased by the Indians. How the chasing scenes were shot was not usual. It was not like a flowing, continuous images coming together, but more like a one still image after another. Such an editing gave me the feeling of excitement that a character would have in a chasing scene and made me feel capture the moment. I felt so blurry, fussy, and exhausted during those scenes as if I was the character being chased. Hand-held camera increased this feeling. I realized that there were lots of American products displacements or Hollywood kind of events happening in the film. Having meals in Mcdonald's, common use of English, French-fried potatoes, drug smuggling, consumption of canned food, use of fork while eating, use of songs in English were some of them. Was this a way of showing gratitude towards Hollywood or a way of criticism? I could not see a critical approach, rather it was more like showing how such products or behavior is integrated to their way of living.

In Rashomon, we encounter four different narrators as well as four different stories. There is not chronological order, instead the story is told in a reversed manner. After having learnt a character's version of the story, we come back to the opening scene (C), the latest time in the chronology of the film, and then go back to the court scene (B), and immediately to the even-before-crime-scene (A). Therefore, what we saw was C,B,A,C,B,A...C in the plot where the chronological order would be A,B,C. This flashback within a flashback and the sophisticated plot was amazing to see on the screen. That the story changed in each version was brilliant because even after hearing all versions we were left with full of question and not sure which version was exactly accurate. Each character might have told the story as they perceived it which is unlikely since the murderer changed in each story. What is more likely was that each told the story in a way that they wished to have happened. However, we still do not know which elements in each story was a part of the truth or if there was any piece of truth in any version. Such being left with full of questions after seeing a movie is what I thinks makes a movie a good one.

What I found interesting in Vecide was how woman representation changed dramatically from the inside to the outside. Let's think of the mother. At home, she exists as a person: She has emotions, she gets jealous of her husband. She is an active participant and reacts her surrounding somehow. Out of the home or when the house is violated by some strangers, she is just one of the other anonymous women. She can no longer get angry with the driver or can have a limited participation in the economic life. Only at the very end when Vecide drives the bike, we see her voice out of the home through her present to her daughter . The other thing was that this movie lacks male characters and it is all about woman. It reminded me Almodovar's films in that sense. The only two male characters that we really see are the father and the boy. Father is represented in a repulsive way. The audience cannot really have an attachment with him. He is just a side character that helps us better understand Vecide and her mother. I think he intentionally is a passive character in this film as the women are passivated in real life. The other male character is the child. The audience has sympathy towards him. He is just a kid, anyway. Not a part of the dominant male society, yet. With all the good intentions, he is in the transitory state knowing that he is a child, but he will grow up and marry Vecide one day. Yet the only sympathetic male character is this child who is not actually a man. Other than that, we see a movie all about woman.

What I realized in Cairo Station was the extreme agitation that each character possesses. Qinawi is not only homeless and very poor, but also lame and naive. He is so lonely in terms that he is almost obsessed with certain parts of woman such as their feed or legs. He is so passive and ineffective in his life as if he is streaming in someone else's life. Madbouli is extremely religious that he thinks Qinawi must have been mad when he attempts to murder the other girls supposing she was Hanuma. He always speaks with the name of God and he may be the only one who actually loves Qinawi beyond having a pity towards him. Hanuma is extremely unfortunate, though beautiful, reminding me Turkan Soray, and honorable in a way that she struggles with Qinawi in their first encountering to protect her rectitude. To me, everything was in excess in this film and characters were exaggerated in a way that I even questioned the realism of this film at certain points. Such extremes reminded me Turkish melodramas full of disabled characters.

There is one thing that bothered me a lot throughout the film "Avare": objects or figures that did not fit in to the screen. I observed such images that were cut on the edges in extreme close up to the faces where either the forehead or the chin or both could not be seen, or in scenes that were seen behind a door or a window where the facade of the door was cut. In the dream scene, for instance, a very tiny piece of the moon could be seen as if it was forgotten there. The tip of the tower in the scene right after Raj decided to be a good man is cut, as well. But, why? I could not make a meaning out of it since such so called mistakes could be fixed by simply adjusting the camera with a different angle or distance if not done intentionally. If done intentionally, the director has a different understanding of esthetics than mine or he is not a perfectionist that is obsessed with the position of each element in the camera screen. Or maybe the technology or let's say the budget of the film was not that large to correct each and every mistake. Whatever the reason was I, as an audience, found it very disturbing while watching the film.

This review is not really about the plot but about the style of this movie based on certain scenes. The very initial thing that captured my attention was the gazing camera movement which reminded me Kurasowa's style of camera movement chasing the protagonist. I think it was shot with a similar technique while Ahmet was running in the forest. One thing that annoyed me and made me full of anger was the ignorance of the adults followed by their fake attention that eventually results in the oppression of the children exemplified by teacher and the mother. Teacher constantly refused to listen to the excuses that Mohammed Reda came up with, and only paid attention after his crying and scolded him in return. The mother, while washing the clothes, just ignored Ahmet. When eventually she decided to listen to him and he tried to tell why he had wanted to go out, she started yelling and stopped paying attention. That attitude made me so angry and frustrated that I wanted to scream saying that that's a child with all the good intention and this is a cruel story of how he is oppressed. Another thing was that in the middle of the story, a new topic began in 2 scenes: the talk between the grandpa, his friend and the deal with the seller, and the talk between the old man and the apple seller. Are these the moments where our frustration was supposed to vanish? Because until the final scene, we were poked to remain angry, experience the devastation that the little child went through, so I found those two scenes to be pauses where we had breaks from that increased tension.

I found the language of Xala to be very ironic. What I mean by the language is the way certain events are mounted. Those who save the country and gain the power with the approval of the father of the nation serve just as the previous governors calling this system African Socialism. They replace the sculptures with the photograph of the father of the nation, but how is it different? Later on we see the first wife. She is a weird character in that she is okay with El Hadji's marriage giving the sense that she is a traditional woman, but she is not all powerless, though, and has certain sanction power over El Hadji. The second wife somehow resists the marriage, yet she accepts it, yet she can ask El Hadji to find a cure for his Xala since she desires him pointing her finger on him with an angry voice. Their situation is also ironic, I think. El Hadji is bound to African traditions as well, but when it comes to the certain tradition that a groom should apply before entering the bride's room, he refuses to do that. He marries the third time as a duty, as his Africanism requires, yet he cannot even get erected. I could not decide what kind of a character El Hadji is: is he a victim of the scolding and not-ending-wishes of his wives, or is he a villain who dominates over his wives. The patrol car that the president requests comes, yet arrests two innocent men instead of the beggars who were supposed to be removed from there. I liked this ironic way of criticism especially compared to direct language that was sticking out in Latin American cinema.

Spoiler alert--

I found "White God Black Devil" to be very chaotic with all those immediate transitions between hand-held camera shots and long shots such that vivacity and peace was following one another after each scene. The camera was very dynamic. The dynamism was achieved through shadows falling on the characters, if not through the camera movement, in the scene where the male character was having meal. Then the chaos continued with the noises of people and the wind after the pilgrimage and cut in the middle, though, with a silent and long shot scene coming afterwards. One disturbing thing was the continuous attribution to religion starting from the sculpture of Christ and the first scenes with all those celestial optimistic sayings and crosses everywhere. I was very annoyed from Sebastian's such didactical speeches. What was the point, anyway? The male character was dragged from one kind of slavery to another kind. One thing that I found interesting was that those who had power at certain scenes were shown with their shadows: Priest in the scene where he told the hit man to kill Sebastian, in the scene where Sebastian killed the baby, and in the scene where the killer came to the temple. Was it to emphasize a certain thing about their characters, or maybe that was a coincidence which I exaggerated.