Katalin Varga *

I once tried to write a sort of crime-tinted road movie drama with a tone similar to this (though a story that was drastically different), and at the time it seemed like such a simple structure, something I could just belt out quickly and easily. Of course writing is never that simple, and the project gathers dust on the proverbial shelf and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, but Katalin Varga makes writing a good dark-drama road-movie script look so effortless I almost feel ashamed that I couldn't complete my own. That's just an artifact of good, clean writing, however, because the truth is this is a very complicated story with some very complicated morals behind it. The characters are fairly one-track minded but never one-dimensional, and although the scenes are often efficient to the point of sparsity, the story doesn't lack for layers because of it.

There's a lot I could say for the moral world of the story here, but it really speaks for itself and anything I might say would really just be summarizing the drama for those who haven't seen it, and really they should see it. I'd say this falls in the Recommended If You Like category for fans of Kelly Reichert who crossover with fans of dark existentialism, but this film has also got a fair amount of Lynch's Inland Empire DNA just beneath the surface. The sound design is stellar throughout (turns out they won some awards for it, and rightly so), and the composition finds this great unexplored space between provincial realism and lucid-dream surrealism.

As to the story, the sequence of events is somewhat deceptively straightforward. In that, it reminded me of other Romanian films I've seen, like last year's Police, Adjective (though admittedly, this film is a Hungarian language film shot in Romanian Transylvania by a British filmmaker, and didn't quite feel like the "Romanian New Wave"), because both films seem more about the conversations that come after watching than the conversations or events that occur onscreen.

Anyway it's good. You should definitely check this out if you get a chance. It's dark and depressing, and yet kind of enervating all at the same time. But for a movie that I can call both realistic and surreal, that seems only appropriate.

Seen at the Broadway Metroplex as part of the Portland International Film Festival.

Κυνόδοντας (Kynodontas / Dogtooth)

Wow.

Ever since one of the A.V. Club writers (Mike D'Angelo, I think?) wrote about this film at last year's Cannes, I've been looking forward to seeing it. All I knew about it was it involved some sheltered sisters and was sufficiently "weird." Beyond that, I blocked it all out and waited until I could finally watch it for myself. It took a while, since it never played in theaters (that I was aware of) and only just came out on DVD, but it was worth it.

I don't even know what to say about it. Maybe one of my favorite things, because it relates to where I'm at with my own story is, no matter how unusual the premise, it manages to remain crystal clear without a single line of exposition or any scenes that merely "establish." The photography is similarly obtuse, often arbitrary feeling in an unsettling, oddly-framed way that harmonizes nicely with the tone of the story. The performances are great, just intimate enough that we squeamishly sympathize and just detached enough that we recognize the monstrousess of the children, regardless of their blamelessness. The movie never moralizes, in fact it never even offers counterpoint to its slanted philosophy. We just watch scenes unfold in a strange world. Some scenes have odd details that make sense later on. Other scenes take a little mental footwork and keep the audience figuring out the puzzle as they go. Right to the last frame we have to do the work ourselves to understand the story, but it's never unclear.

There is of course a couple of squirmy scenes in this. [SPOILERS] I don't mind the weird sexuality and incest in the story, or even the crazy brainwashing and mental, emotional, and physical abuse (although abuse through misinformation does touch a nerve with me, it's hardly something I have to turn away from) but I almost lost it when the older daughter decided to lose her dogtooth. The mirror, the mini-barbell, the look in the mirror... as soon as the scene began I muttered out loud, "Oh no," and then when she did it (repeatedly) I could barely keep watching or sit still. Maybe it's the dental thing (I've had a lot of dental work done and grew up with an average-or-higher fear of losing my teeth), or maybe it's the prolonged, deliberate, unflinching pace of it, but I found this harder even than The Scene in Caché.

This is Yorgos Lanthimos's second feature, supposedly, and I'm going to see now if I can't find a copy of Kinetta, his first. He's definitely someone to watch. And although tonight was supposed to be devoted to writing and that's exactly the one thing I failed to accomplish, this film feels like exactly the kind of thing I need to see, to give me a little kick-in-the-pants courage about how I approach some scenes and character beats.

This was an enervating and inspiring film to see, and it makes me hungry for more like it. The Portland International Film Festival begins in a little over a week. Hopefully this experience can be repeated with some of the films they're showing there.

影武者 (Kagemusha) *

I took Japanese in high school, because it was offered and Spanish, French and German all sounded boring by comparison. Within the first week, my freshman year, they made us choose Japanese names that we would keep for as long as stayed in that program (I and my friends did all four years). Off a list of names I chose Shingen before I could even read it, because it looked easy to write in hiragana. Later our Sensei explained to me that Shingen was the name of a famous Japanese general. When we had to pick fake last names and play-act various language lessons with full names, she practically insisted I choose Takeda, because that was Shingen's name. So for four years, I actually answered to "Shingen-kun" or "Takeda-kun." All I knew was, this was something like the equivalent of an ESL student deciding to call themselves George Washington.

Kagemusha is the story of the last days of the famous Japanese warlord Shingen of the Takeda Clan, and now it's 15 years later but I still think of "Shingen" in the back of my mind as some kind of name associated with me. This has no bearing on anything, other than novelty and coincidence, but I wanted to share anyway, since it was in the back of my mind as I watched Kurosawa's epic. (Also, she did a pretty terrible job explaining to me Furinkazan, but perhaps she should get props for even trying, considering she wasn't a history teacher and was barely a language teacher. I was surprised and excited by how clear Kagemusha makes the concept, and also how central it is to the philosophy of the story.)

The story is an epic war movie, with larger-than-life characters and events, massive battles and hundreds of armor-toting, horse-riding extras, but it's surprisingly philosophical (surprising for a war epic; not surprising for a Kurosawa film). It's also, appropriately, the dramatic story of tragic characters in tragic times -- including Takeda himself, his brother/double, the rescued thief who becomes his Kagemusha ("Shadow Warrior," or professional impersonator), many of his generals, and even his young grandson. Each of them suffers in one form or another for the "greater good" of maintaining the Takedas' strategic foothold in an unending three-way war.

I'm pretty sure you can chalk this up to the drastically alien time and place, but it was interesting to watch a film literally about war and not feel turned off by the war-porn nature of it. In fact, I found the notions of honor as depicted in the film to be attractive, and admired the men in many cases. Takeda's enemies, for one, refused to feel joy at the loss of their most dangerous adversary out of respect for the man, and the loyalty felt by Takeda's generals led them to kowtow to an impersonator for three full years after his death. Then again, even the Kagemusha himself was so moved by the power of the man's shadow that he found himself willingly playing the role and continuing the legacy.

That's, I think, what Kagemusha is really all about: the "shadow of the king," the way a great man's reputation can outlive him and as if by sheer inertia continue propelling people down paths he's willed for them. Their enemy's "bravest general" turned back willingly and unhesitatingly at the very sight of "Takeda" sitting atop the hill, as immovable as a mountain, and his personal guard gave their lives just as willingly and unhesitatingly to the very idea of the man, standing in the way of incoming arrows to protect a common thief who stood only as symbol of the once-great, beloved and feared Lord Shingen.

But on the other hand, we see all too clearly (and anticipate for over half the film, which adds some great tension) how easily that same legacy can crumble the moment your followers lose their faith in your legacy, as in the end (the ruse is exposed by such a fleeting accident, when the lord's horse bucks the well-meaning impostor) Takeda's son Katsuyori seals the fate of the entire clan simply by "moving the mountain." His impetuous need to prove himself more than just an unloved son standing in the shadow of a great man unraveled the quaking fear and grudging respect their enemies had for them, after which each aspect of Furinkazan fell one by one, systematically: the speed of the wind wasn't enough, nor the silence of the forest, nor the ferocity of the fire -- not without the undefeatable mountain behind them. The moment Katsuyori moved the mountain, everyone knew, the magic was gone. There was no shadow to stand within, and that was all that held the Takeda Clan together.

An interesting and somewhat conservative message which I can accept as beautiful and noble within the confines of the story, even without knowing if there was anything the warlords fought for beyond power and borders (that is, ideology doesn't matter here; war is simply the thing you do if you're a warrior). But if you transport this message into twenty-first century terms, it's actually kind of appalling. Honor and pride and military might are things that can be moving when the world feels like a fantasy -- knights and dragons, samurai and musketmen, even the Klingon warriors from Star Trek (who to be honest I found myself reminded of more than once, since I've been watching a lot of Star Trek lately). So really, I'm glad for stories like this, because honor and nobility are such daring and bold subjects, and you would never be able to get me to sympathize with a modern-day story of war and great generals -- at least not in the same way.

This is a great film that runs three hours long and splits its time between massive battle sequences and conferring generals and warlords (real and faux) gnashing their teeth, but it's never boring for a second. Plus it's beautiful, both in its photography and its characterizations. It makes me eager to seek out Ran and Throne of Blood, two Kurosawa samurai "classics" I've yet to see.

Soon, maybe.

Seen at Cinema 21.

Koruto wa ore no pasupoto (A Colt is My Passport)

Picked at random as I think about a script involving gangsters, I knew little about this except it starred the hard-ass baby-faced Joe Shishido and it was part of Eclipse's "Nikkatsu Noir" series, but with a title like A Colt is My Passport how wrong could I go?

In fact, it's the perfect title, because this is 100% pure pulp. The score sounds like a spaghetti western, and though this isn't that it sets the right tone: this isn't here to make you think. It's here to keep the bullets flying. The story actually has some sneaky things going on -- hired by one crime lord to assassinate another, the first crime lord then sells him out to the dead boss's successor (his son) in order to seal a pact and merge the gangs into one, so from the very beginning Shisido's character is a pawn in a savvy and savage power-play -- but it breezes right over it without getting bogged down in any kind of machinations or remunerations (though [spoiler] Shishido does kill pretty much everybody). The story isn't so much the point, and the characters in it all have fairly stock motivations. This is any pulp noir story from any country who was putting out pulp noir stories. However, it's pretty good for just pulp, and snazzily shot too.

I don't have much else to say. What can I say? Joe Shishido is cool, a favorite actor from 60s Japanese cinema. It looks pretty. It moves along with a series of obstacles and resolutions. Most of the obstacles are men with guns. Half of them are resolved through hiding or fleeing; the other half are resolved through showdowns. In the end our hero proves himself absurdly noble as well as ingenious and obstinate -- and unkillable. It's good-ish drama, but it's light. I imagine looking deeper may be rewarding, but on first viewing you just let the action all happen. It's pulp. It works. Good job, guys.