After watching five movies at the Berlinale this year, I already feel a bit jaded. This doesn't really help as I have eight more movies lined up to watch before Sunday, which will be quite the Herculean task for someone who has lost the habit of going to the kino. Having the luxury of curating my own viewing schedule, having this power outsourced to a festival is overwhelming.
The proposed magic of a film festival doesn't seem to happen at the screenings but at the film markets which need a lot more preparation to get into. In an ideal world, I imagine a film festival for what it is: A festival, where people come and talk about their experiences and there's more socializing. It is disappointing to note that most screenings are sterile with as little audience interaction as possible. It feels like a cash grab for inventory that might not be marketable else where (would I watch Manodrome if not for the festival?), A better bang for the buck could be obtained by having a yearly card at one of the movie chains in the city which give unlimited screenings for the subscription period, meaning I could watch Everything Everywhere All at Once seven times over if I wanted to. A part of going to the movies is the buzz of conversation with friends after the screening is over, which at a festival is impossible as not many people are open for the gamble of watching an obscure movie.
Sure, there's a greater exposure to world cinema at film festivals but if you're an ordinary film goer, the film festival can be a lonely endeavor. Though I wouldn't classify my movie watching as anything but ordinary, I think I am just tired of watching two unfulfilling movies in a row and here's to hoping the next days will be different.
The ticketing is broken, but the program is too huge to pick out any favorites. Given a chance I would just go to the retrospectives, considering a lot of classics there are films I've watched several times over (Ferris Bueller's Day Off) or films gestating on my watch list for too long (Aparajito). Considering that all the theaters are spread out in the city and the public transport can at times be whimsical, I figured the best strategy would be to pick times I'm comfortable watching a movie and then choose a theater that's easily accessible by public transport and then join this diagram with the tickets for shows that are available. Not being a picky watcher has its perks as I can watch anything thrown my way, which means my schedule for the Berlinale is unpredictable and the three movies I watched so far bear no relation with each other.
The Man who Envied Women by Yvonne Rainer
Laggiù qualcuno mi ama by Mario Martone
Past Lives by Celine Song
Though I tend not to watch animated movies, shorts or documentaries, everything else is on the cards. Having not been to a film festival in a while, I kind of forgot the commitment and stamina it takes to sit through movies at 10 in the morning or 10 in the night but as I get older, my movie going experiences have changed. I find it okay to now doze a bit in a movie if it allows for it (a pleasant movie will always makes space for a little nap, a great movie even aids in the dreaming process and a bad movie is a grating experience where no napping is possible) and also okay if a movie doesn't maximize my pleasure function. There is also the anxiety of the watching the movies itself, I didn't know that watching so many movies in such a short span is something I've done almost a decade ago, with streaming almost replacing my movie going habit. It's nice to rediscover the joy of being in a theater as it amplifies the out of body experiences movies induce me to. Center seats in the front third of the kino, here I come.
One aspect that differentiates Ali Abbasi's European produced, Iranian serial killer film Holy Spider and the current crop of American movies based on female violence post Harvey Weinstein (Kitty Green's The Assistant, Maria Schrader's She Said) is the gaze with which the perpetrator or the victims are tracked through the story. The current American style seems to be completely omitting the act or the perpetrator from the view, focusing on the victims and their trauma while the perpetrator is shown as a invisible yet menacing threat within the story line. It does make sense to remove the temptation of male titillation to make a story emotionally relevant but the villains in both the cases are power and chauvinism. In America this patriarchal force has a subdued presence while in Iran it has the backing of the regime.
Holy Spider's political messaging is in stride with the Mahisa Amini protests against the Iranian regime, where women have been targeted for not following the strict dress code imposed by the theocratic authorities. The movie shows how the theological society almost sided with a serial killer who murdered prostitutes, by regarding him as a hero from “purifying” the city of Mashhad's streets. the conflict arises when an investigative journalist (played by arresting Zar Amir Ebrahimi) tries to see through the hypocritical bullshit of the police and takes it upon herself to find the killer. The movie relies on a series of implausible coincidences to drive the story forward but the stylistic cinematic choices alleviate from the conveniences of the plot. It devolves into a standard serial killer orgy towards the end, where we as the audience get to ogle at the Iranian version of the American pop cultural creation of the “interesting” serial killer. The result is a phenomenal religious serial killer archetype that Mehdi Bajestani feasts upon for his portrayal of Saeed, who remains as a lingering characters long after the movie is finished.
“The cast and crew have to say goodbye for their desire to eat animal products during the course of the entire shoot until the day of release. All animals hurt and slaughtered in this film are 100% computer generated imagery. Slaughterhouse, in your favorite theaters soon”
A vegan film, an appropriate fight of our times. A film set powered by plant power, is this the birth of a new era?
Media consumption is a signifier of power, often the things we watch signal our intellectual refinement, political ideals, and our sophistication within the perceived status of the media being consumed. It's a subliminal caste system that separates the plebs from the connoisseur, the neckbeards from the aged oak barrel scotch sampling elites. Often these divisions have nothing to do with the actual economic status in itself, in essence, the media we watch and enjoy become vehicles for cultural consumerism and secondary tertiary social hierarchies aiding the ones entrenched by identity and monetary status. This cultural capital pays its dividends too, as it often helps in masking one's financial status and being a chameleon sailing in a sea of wealth. Cultural capital also acts as a signifier of privilege and pedigree, giving the possessor of the cultural capital greater access to the centers of power.
This differentiation can be seen in the classification of films into categories such as “low-brow” movies or “art-house” pictures, with each painting a stereotypical idea of the patron who consumes this media. Also, the conventional snobbishness over movies can be seen in how they are referenced: a movie is different from a film different from a picture is different from a flick, though the stickiness of the end product is almost always the same. We forget the movies we watched the moment we're out of the movie theatres, so any positive messaging in movies is lost after a day before our monkey minds latch onto the next piece of media to lose themselves into. This is of course factoring in the serious movie-goers who switch off their phones when in the theaters while discounting at home, doom scrolling while watching some faff, or watching a movie on the phone types. Though this kind of passive viewing is attached to the hypnotic states movies can offer us, a kind of meditation in-and-for capitalism, where burned-out workers soothe their ailing and lonely minds with familiar comforts of human presence.
What we consume also makes us who we are in subliminal ways, our associations and visions of ourselves are inspired by the dreams and visions we imbibe. Movies give us a way to imagine different power possibilities, after all the core tenet of dramatic writing is the hero's journey, oftentimes the hero's ascension to power. This channels our fluid perceptions of ourselves, giving us a worldview to filter and navigate. Each piece of media we consume becomes the foothold for the next, creating a cascade of interdependent interests which in turn become the narrowed field of vision through which we imagine the story of our lives. In a hypothetical space, all streams of consciousness have the same power but in a practical world with entrenched power structures where we know that certain consciousnesses are more powerful than the rest, this lends to media itself. What you see is who you are.
How to write a show where the main antagonists are Bashar al-Assad, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, ISIS, and the vestiges of the KGB without it coming off as a tacky American spy soup? Dripped in style, cogent writing, and a cast that is both suave and vulnerable aided by brilliant production design makes Le Bureau des Légendes a sophisticated espionage thriller that manages to keep you hooked throughout its 50-episode saga.
The initial episodes waste no time in setting up the story and are a bewildering ride but the lead character Guillaume Debailly played by a mesmerizing Mathieu Kassovitz brings together all the confusing story lines to a precipitating point by his screen presence, where he broods and ponders, a humane French 007.
Though in the latter seasons Le Bureau des Légendes falls into the familiar TV trope of the copious intermingling of characters, it does not come across as forced, the show borrows this leeway from the sharp writing and its intensive focus on the key material that moves the story forward. Guillaume Debailly's love for a Syrian dissident Nadia El Mansour forms the central conflict beneath the operations of the French Intelligence Service, the DGSE.
The cinematography and production design of the show are top-notch, almost making many of the settings seem impossible from a logistical viewpoint: The scenes set in Raqqa, Syria, and Tehran make one question how a TV crew pulled off these falsifications. Any espionage thriller should be inviting its audience to invest in its believability through kinetic action pieces and a story full of contradictions, an act Les Bureau des Légendes pulls off without relying on any overt action pieces.
At its core Le Burueau examines the question of a man having multiple identities and his yearning for a love long lost, one that is further befuddled by the intrigues of espionage and geopolitics. Le Bureau treats this as sacrosanct, making way for a pensive finale that spins the show on its head by asking about the legitimacy of victory in politics and extension, espionage. It's a perfect show to accompany grey days and internal turmoil, an accompaniment for contemplation in a media landscape that offers one a few avenues.
What does mean to be alive and what does it mean to be human? This is the focus of great art, as these are the questions that keep one awake at night. Living in “regular” human civilization means robbing oneself of the joy of living in an untamed universe. We live in our mole hills and rat caves distracted by the voice of other occupants of these hills and caves. Why do we humans have the necessity to control over inferior animals, what does it reveal about our nature? Werner Herzog's documentary Encounters at the End of the World asks a series of existential questions camouflaged within a nature documentary set in Antarctica, taking philosophical twists and turns in a breathtaking, alien landscape and bizarre characters. Werner Herzog himself is the main protagonist in the move, the camera follows his view and the people he selects for the film are the ones that are able to dance with his intellect. If Encounters.. was a fiction film, it would be a great adventure drama, the story of a Hero on a journey to seek answers to solve problems of his back home. Here home is the Planet Earth and the life it in encompasses, the vastness of the subject gives the canvas for Herzog's questions and the fact that such vastness can be imagined becomes microscope under which he questions intelligence itself. Here we are thinking about taxes and pay raises, figuring out work schedules and planning for retirements while juggling with news transmissions about war, strife, pandemics and poverty while on the edge of the world, a group of scientists ponder over the origins of the universe and life while making grim predictions about the long term viability of human civilization on the planet.
The movie, conceptualized on the spot follows the script of Slacker and Waking Life in terms of inquiry, while the setting of Antarctica lends itself a special character of its own. The main hero beyond what we see however, is the landscape itself, a part of this planet that we now commandeer, it's the last frontier of that's spared from the human rituals of occupations and settlement (though in retrospect, the scientific community might be the first settlers of the Antarctica, climate change might make the continent our future destination of cozy beach holidays). A day after watching the movie I had a mini-breakdown, with its content stimulating an aching existential crisis, the result of which I paraphrased here.
Rather be a mute, inanimate spectator to the universe than being born in this world, there is nothing wonderful about being human – there's the aspect of being dazzled by the dizzying beauty of the universe and the world we live in but the human constructs like all animal constructs are boring. They have the same structures of pleasure and power, this constant battle for survival in forms both physical and mental. Better being a miscarriage than being misguided by the brief moment of consciousness that robs all the wonder of living. There's no difference between me living and a bacterial predator hanging in the deep seas, in the soup of evolution the mind has peaked and someday this will perish too.. me along with the whole of humanity. Existence as defined by the possessions one owns, born deep into a system one cannot escape, one that promotes misery and loneliness.. there's no love, I have transcended these feelings of being and belonging.. intelligence has taken me and others to the depths of self pleasure and validation that fazes all wonderment. Better be a stone in the sun, reconverted into primary elements than be subjected to the horrors of consciousness, it is no pleasure to be alive, being full of life is escapism from what we are. Intelligence is about discovery, of understanding what is and defining it in depth, narrow foci of science and mathematics, between flashes of eating and living. Possessions are a way of establishing one's presence in life, in reality we have no home, only theories of make-believe.
Encounters.. should come with a warning of having the ability to stir a great deal of existential angst, whether it be from the sounds of the seals under the Antarctic ice shelf or through the penguins wandering from their colony into the icy nothings in the interiors of the desert or the scientist who has studied the penguins for so long that he no longer prefers having conversations with people. Filled to the brim with interesting facets of science of the Antarctic life, the movie serves as a time machine to imagine a world without people and the primordial origins of life on Earth. It's an experience that will leave one speechless for a long time and be the potential fodder for innumerable debates.
The sounds of the seals and the gaze of the suicidal penguins will haunt your dreams, don't tell me that I didn't warn you.
I don't think you go to a play to forget, or to a movie to be distracted. I think life generally is a distraction and that going to a movie is a way to get back, not go away. – Tom Noonan
What happened was.. was playwright, actor Tom Noonan's directorial debut about two co-workers in a law firm in New York having a dinner date together. Tom Noonan, in his directorial debut, plays Michael, a Kaufmanesque bald paralegal (this film also happens to be one of Charlie Kaufman's favorites) who hides beneath a stoic veneer of learnedness hides the bitter insecurity of not having accomplished much in life. His play-act however has an effect on Jackie (Karen Sillas) who is impressed by the artist's aura Michael wears, hiding her insecurities about being a writer and a woman committed to action. The date doesn't go as planned, with the first date's oddity of mismatched communication becoming the dramatic device to introduce the darker folds of the characters. Michael holds sway over Jackie for the first 2/3rds of the movie, building a legend for himself as a Harvard dropout and a novelist 15 years in the making.
Things take a creepier turn when Jackie reads Michael the first chapter of a children's story she has written and offers to read it to him. Michael being the snob he is asks to listen to it, perhaps to brush off Jackie's simple thoughts. Jackie's story, What happened was.. turns phantasmagorical, going beyond the conventions of a regular children's story. Michael, and us as the audience, are then treated to a ten-minute out-of-body experience as Jackie reads her macabre first chapter from the movie, with the lives of people filtering in from the other apartments and the city lights creating an eerie atmosphere. Michael, who has visions throughout the reading offers Jackie a connection with his publisher, only to be rebuffed by Jackie that she already has one and that the book went to print, which takes him aback.
Through the course of the awkward night, Jackie throws several cues at Michael showing her physical interest in him, which he brushes away. This builds a frustration within Jackie who sees her feelings are unrequited which reaches a crescendo when Michael decides to leave the house without a warning setting stage for his final revelation as a broken couch potato who amasses his knowledge from TV programs and passes it on with his bookish demeanor. It's a harrowing portrait of a man who has to accept the defeat of his intellectual sham: He has no publisher and the book he's working on at the law firm is nothing but make-believe, adding to his persona as a Harvard dropout and perpetual paralegal at a law firm where he could've been doing much better. Jackie listens to Michael and delivers her finest line in the movie, ” we are all where we want to be Michael”.
What happened was.. is a horror movie disguised as a drama, where the horrors reflected are the inner workings of the performative act we put up as humans. This is a forgotten movie washed out by the hype of Pulp Fiction released that year. It deserves a revisit and is a film experience that will stay in the mind for a long, for the questions it asks are the ones we never want to confront.
The breakup of Yugoslavia and the resulting civil wars and resulting ethnic cleansing left thousands of families in the Balkans without closure. Blerta Basholli's film documents the tragedy of the Kosovan village Krushë e Madhe, where a hundred civilians were separated from the village and are presumed to be shot. The film follows the story of Fahrije, whose husband disappeared during the war and whose remains do not turn up in any of the mass graves excavated around the village. It leaves a lot of questions for her and her two children while facing a simultaneous battle of being a “dishonorable” woman for driving a car and having ideas for sustaining herself. Fahrije understands that she has to move on and that accepting meager handouts from the local women's community will not help her much in the future. She has to fight against the strict conservative norms applied to the women in Kosovan society to work and build a business of her own, a transformation that not only will uplift her but her friends and neighbors who are in the same tragedy together.
An intense character study, Zgjoi paints a picture of a woman finding her place in the backyard of continental Europe. It's a film with deep lows and gentle highs, though the village accuses Fahrije to be a whore for driving to the city and owning a car, the pain for her missing husband is hidden from everyone. This differential wrings hearts whenever she has to visit the mortuary to find out about the remains of her husband, oftentimes all that is left is a pile of bones or some clothes. This in turn becomes the companion piece for last year's haunting Quo Vadis, Aida? which depicts the genocides of Srebrenica, showing the faces of the men whose bodies will be discovered same way as they do around in Krushë e Madhe. _Zgjoi _ is a far more delicate film documenting the tragedy as it focuses on the aftermath for the grieving families and their struggle to find reconciliation in a patriarchal society that stacks all odds against them.
Fahrije is no ordinary hustler, labelled for being deviant she has to find ways to move on and focus on what is still left, her family. A scene that establishes her plight is a women's meeting where Fahrije protests, “we are not looking for donations, we are looking for work”. Though the women around her are slow to change fearing society, Fahrije takes an enterprising step forward making plans to set up an ajvar-making cooperative. The cooperative then becomes a safe space for the women to find collective healing and a path to redeem their past. There are moments in the film where one cannot but cry, but we cry with Fahrije, we cry for her tragedy and wish for her success. That is a win for Blerta Basholli's wonderful film.
Or how to use a camera as a medium of consciousness
A camera is a tool that functions as a buffer between the one who's seeing and the person who sees, making film one of the exacting mediums to record reality with. The camera assumes the personality of the person behind it which is often diluted because of the dramatized domains the art form occupies. Rare exceptions are found when the camera becomes a tool of localizing and meditation, giving the viewer depth and context to the nature of things around them.
The HBO show “How to with John Wilson” tackles this meditative approach to film, setting it the bizarre confined of New York City where the director John Wilson introduces specific thematic elements juxtaposed to the everyday goings in New York. It's a show that eludes a genre-specific identity, it is part comedy, part cringe, part poetry, and documentary. Set to the childlike voice-over of the director, each short episode focuses on the issues that irk us as adults but for which no one has a specific answer. John Wilson brings curiosity to find answers to problems like how to split one's check or how to be spontaneous, juxtaposing B-roll footage to great comic effect. It explores parts of the human psyche that are assumed to be functioning properly but in reality, it puts most of us in a state of anxiety. Splitting a check or choosing a bottle of wine seems like the biggest mystery of modern life, what is appropriate behavior in these circumstances? Does one go for the second cheapest bottle of wine or risk a more expensive to a Portuguese wine shop at the end of the street? Though homo economicus might be a good thought temperament to imbibe, mental accounting hasn't yet reached the inner sanctum of our behavior. John Wilson helps us understand this division through his anxiety-prone view of life, making things awkward by overthinking and exhibiting this overthinking through the multitudes of human life in and around New York, with a couple of episodes exploring the same questions in Las Vegas and New Orleans.
How to with John Wilson is at its heart a passion project funded by HBO, giving wings to ideas that otherwise would remain as thoughts. The show exposes the conundrums between the reality of our experience vs. the reality of our thoughts, not a small feat for a 30 minute TV show.
