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Reviews
Hotaru no haka (1988)
Oh the horror...
This film scarred me for life. I can't tolerate Japan WWII movies after watching this one. The reality of it all. What a slap of a movie.
If you wanna know what war is really like, watch this one. What it really means to be plain people, plain children in lost times, holding on to survival, and the amount of loss it takes to make you let go of that survival, to give up on life. A film about pride, childhood, war, reality (the real).
We watched this movie with my 4 year old and my husband. We felt like we were beaten up when it finished. We didn't know what we were getting into when we started. I am still glad we watched it.
The Color Wheel (2011)
Funny and sad story of two wanderers
I watched this movie yesterday night and I have been thinking about it since then. It is unconventional and difficult to describe without giving spoilers.
It is an indie black and white movie, taking place over a period of two- three days. The characters are on the road, changing places and meeting new people. Everyone they meet is ordinary but they come out as weird and crazy in their own ways.
There is a lot of dialogue which is absurd, funny, in a clerks kind of way, but still realistic. Unlike some reviews here stated, it is scripted and not improvised.
The characters are going back and forth between cynical nihilism and idealistic romanticism. It is a requem for the end of youth, they have to settle down to petty adulthood which they despise. Yet the movie is life-affirming, like a tragedy, which makes it good.
There are many themes in the movie: love, heartbreak, sexual attraction, transition from youth to settled adult life, family, self-image, ideals and realities. The success of the movie is in the way it shows how these themes effect each other in each individual in a very realistic way. There are many connections weaved in a very economical way.
At the end everything, all the dialogue comes together, and the way they acted is justified and accounted for. It is tragic: kind of a sad story but it doesn't give up on life. No loose threads. It is incredible the way they were able to convey so much about these characters in such an efficient way, I felt like I watched all and everything relavant to their story.
Der siebente Kontinent (1989)
Haneke destroying the sacred temple of the atomistic family
Haneke destroying the sacred temple of the atomistic family. The values we associate with the family, love, security, trust, it being a shelter against the world, turn in on themselves to destroy it. For the love within family already involves violence, the security already involves egoism and selfishness, its seclusion involves alienation. What happens before (the slap, the carwash, their shopping routines) are not much different than the ending in this respect. The aquarium was a metaphor of the ideal of a happy, secure home, amidst the horrors and chaos of the external world. Its destruction is painful because it is the destruction of the dream, the acknowledgment of reality. The hardcore reality is that, family is no refuge from the horrors and terrors of life (and death), it is an extension of it. In death we are alone.