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Reviews
Drôles de petites bêtes (2017)
Terrible plot and clichés
The collection of books by Antoon Krings, on which this animation is based, relies on play on words and the idiosyncracies of all those insects and small animals who live together. The anime instead rehashes the century-old story of a jealous, war-mongering relative employing herself to dethrone the benevolent and competent queen. Don't we have other stories to tell our children about humankind than one of competition, reign and royalty? Why expose our youngest kids to so much violent scenes? To top it all, the message for girls is crystal clear: be a maternal, plump, starry-eyed bee, not the evil, power-hungry, conniving, vamping wasp. Is that all that women can be?
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
So much more than romance
Hollywood excels at representing romance, seduction and thrill. But Ang Lee sets himself a higher goal with this movie. Brokeback Mountain is a story of love, simple requited love, but one of the most inspiring and enduring kind. Although the obstacles the lovers meet are important, their love is not really put to the test. It is the ineffectual and fatal way they face these obstacles that the movie tells the story of. Although they love each other with the same irrepressible urge, Ennis and Jack have been affected very differently by the prejudices of their society. Whereas Ennis has an overwhelming sense of duty and makes a habit of keeping his desires under control, Jack cannot deny his impulses. Ennis's sense of responsibility to his community and Jack's way of dealing with grief and loss will work on separating them in a society that pits duty against desire. And Lee is a master at illustrating the manifold ways human beings give rein to their contradictory emotions. While Ennis at times gives way to violent outbursts, Jack quits the game early and surrenders his life to chance. The movie deals with the impossibility of resolving these differences in a society that opposes their love. With the logic simplicity of a tale and visual intelligence, Brokeback Mountain characterizes for example the wives according to their contrasted relationships with their spouses. But the incredible soberness of the ending leaves the viewer with an optimistic sense that love is all powerful despite the violence that so often surrounds it.
Grande école (2004)
Nostalgic look on sexual desire
There's a touch of Rohmer in "Grande Ecole". Characters, set in unglamorous, surburban spaces, are just a little too intent and penetrating to be real. Their emotions are simple, yet surprisingly delicate. They experience no jealousy or revenge, but desire, self-doubt and tenderness. Like Rohmer's, Salis' movies feel too nostalgic and sweet to be topical, and that aestheticism is put to the use of tolerance and humanism. Sex scenes for example are remarkable. Homo- and heterosexual love become comparable because Salis makes caressing and enticing the cornerstone of every sexual encounter. The movie however becomes overtly theatrical towards the end, and does not tune in with the closure that Rohmer would have gone for. Salis resolves conflicts, by now difficult to disentangle, only by confusing the viewer to a point of no return and settling for the beauty of seeing all characters reunited finally, if not in the movie, at least on the screen: him and her, and him and her, and him.
Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
Too many distortions!
The historical epic conjures up a past wrought by a man who must face his fate and the hard law of contingency. Intent on illuminating the age-old opposition between will and matter, the epic reconstructs, interprets and manipulates the scattered and incoherent clues of that past. In a time when religious fervor still serves as a ploy for political and economic ambitions, Kingdom of Heaven refreshingly attacks religious obscurantism on both sides of the enemy line. Its morality is simple: defend your own against the enemy and be merciful towards your enemy if possible, i.e. if that does not threaten the life interests of your own kin. And I will not complain about the movie's naive identification of who is kin and who is enemy because I was so pleased with the fact that it snubs the dirty theme of honor and pride.
My opinion changed when, after seeing the movie, I read about the historical Balian of Ibelin. I am not either surprised or irritated to realize that the movie transforms some facts, ignores others and invents others still. But to judge of the story reconstructed around historical evidence, one must account for the ideological choices that led to these transformations, deletions and inventions. And there, I cringe. No matter that Balian had two brothers. Ignoring the brief reign of Baldwin IV's infant heir makes perfect sense. Why not imagine that Balian had befriended a close associate of Saladin? If these changes were necessary to the artistic intention of the director, so be it. But on two questions, the director/scriptwriter betrays a bias that I cannot excuse.
There are two women visible in Kingdom of Heaven: Sibylla and Saladin's sister whose beautiful face invades the screen for five long seconds. Sibylla, of course, is made much of, but apart from recognizing the object of her desire and silently disapproving (on a humane level, of course) of her husband's politics, Sibylla is a powerless woman. To put it simply, the narrative does not need her: she is pure decoration. One does not have to read very far into Wikipedia to understand that the Kindgom of Jerusalem was heavily influenced by the presence of wives, sisters and daughtersmore precisely, of Baldwin IV's mother, of Sibylla's mother, Sybella's father's second wife (who later marries Balian!!) and Sibylla's sister. This erasure is all the more surprising since the movie suggests that the most cherished treasure of a dutiful king is the women and children, the people whom he is in charge of. That treasure is reduced to a few slobbering women, small children and old men sheltering during the siege and some shapes dressed in black seeking the refuge of the fortifications, "stuff" without face and without voice. Their only face is Sibylla, the luscious lover, the affectionate sister and helpless victim.
Plus, Kingdom of Heaven plays a deceitful trick by laying so much on emphasis on both the blacksmith become knight and noble blood runs from father to son. You can't have it both ways. Which one is it? History tells a much more constructive story. Balian is born and raised in his father's estate, Ibelin and is made familiar with the Court politics. His father, however, was a mere constable upon arriving in the Kingdom of Heaven, and it is only by supporting the right people that he is made Count. From then on, the Ibelin family's influence will grow steadily. Balian is thus not "noble", as his alleged lineage to the invented character of Godfrey of Ibelin (Godfrey, like Godfrey of Bouillon, right?), close friend of the King and of Tiberias would make us believe. But he did not elevate himself as the savior of Jerusalem without any antecedents either as his illegitimate birth suggests. Forget the American Dream: presidency does not lie within your own reach. That project will take generations.
Genesis (2004)
Best when viewed on a big screen!
This film boldly undertakes to tell the story of life from the Big Bang to the variety of species that we know today. And the history lesson becomes a fairy tale.
Genesis asks that you leave aside everything you know about yourself, and think of your body as the substance that makes up the universe, your life as the energy that sparkled up the Big Bang, your projects as a shape, a limited space of organized chaos, resisting the deterioration of time.
The film is breath-taking and captivating from the opening sequence to the last shot. Every image of the film is carefully selected and placed in a sequence: swirling dirt becomes a galaxy; rings of water float on the sound of the mating dance. The technological prowess of the filming is staggering, but does not surpass the ingenuity of the editing, and camera movements: shot in his apparent loneliness, the insect looks like a genius, solving obstacles one after the other. Human meaning is attached to all images shown, from the fish pretending to be daydreaming while baiting its prey, to the crawling crab signaling to a rival. The story of the earth is told by the reality of those jungles and tropical beaches, that we know so little about: swimming frogs start to hop; the giant tortoise becomes a dinosaur.
If you think this is going to be some kind of Discovery Channel show, think again and surprise yourself.
Le chagrin et la pitié (1969)
masterpiece
A masterpiece in the genre of the documentary. This is a long movie. You've got to have time on your hands, and a little bit of patience to allow Ophüls to unravel all the strands of the French attitude under German occupation. But the journey is worth every minute of your time.
Focusing on the town of Clermont-Ferrand, Ophüls tries to understand what it was to live with German soldiers in your town, an optimistic and collaborating government, an exiled general urging you to resist and underground organizations who used terrorism as their only weapon. Ophüls does not multiply the number of interviewees. He chooses about 15 of them and interviews them long enough that you understand their comments within the context of their personality and outlook. But the most surprising is the variety among the interviewees: a very courageous farmer, a reckless British spy, a British minister, a self-sufficient German general, a doubting German soldier, a chauvinistic bourgeois, a young nobleman attracted by the Nazi theories, a young disillusioned nobleman-philosopher ready to sacrifice his life, a clear-sighted Jewish government representative, a naïve woman, a Communist, a nationalist. You'll be surprised to find out who is the most perceptive of the bunch