FILM REVIEW: ATLANTICS

Atlantics (2019) is a mysterious and beguiling film that completely draws the viewer into its hypnotic spell. Directed by the Senegalese/French filmmaker Mati Diop, the niece of the legendary Djibril Diop Mambéty, Atlantics begins as a love story that turns into something much more enigmatic and complex. Diop keeps revealing more layers of meaning and surprises as Atlantics progresses, culminating in a touching and powerful coda.

Set in the capital city of Dakar in Senegal, Atlantics is the story of Ada (Mame Bineta Sane), a young woman who is in love with Souleiman (Ibrahima Traoré), but is bethrothed to marry the wealthy Omar (Babacar Sylla). After Souleiman is unable to get paid for his work at a construction company, he resorts to the desperate measure of taking a boat with his coworkers to Spain to find employment. Without giving anything away, the risky boat trip sets into motion a series of mysterious and supernatural events for Ada and her seaside community.

By calling her protagonist Ada, Diop alludes to Jane Campion’s The Piano. Like Campion’s protagonist in The Piano, Ada in Atlantics is a strong-willed woman who engages in a forbidden love affair. Also like the protagonists in Campion’s Bright Star and Top of the Lake, Ada is forever seeking a way out of her restrictive, male-dominated society, and in the process define her own identity as a woman.

Another similarity to The Piano is the important role of the ocean and nature in Atlantics. Throughout the film, Diop focuses her camera on the vast and majestic Atlantic Ocean. For the characters in Atlantics, the ocean is both a symbol of escape, and also a harbinger of tragedy. Souleiman seeks a better future for himself by escaping across the ocean, while Ada views the ocean as something that traps her within her family and unwanted marriage. Throughout Atlantics, Diop reveals how confined Ada feels, by framing her through fences and other man-made barriers. Ada’s only form of solace is a night club where she regularly goes with her friends.

Diop’s use of color and sound creates both a comforting and at times threatening environment, mirroring Ada’s journey through the film. When Ada is at the club, she is bathed in an otherworldly green light, while we hear the powerful waves of the ocean in the background. Indeed, Diop regularly cuts to alternatingly calm and ominous shots of the ocean, depending on Ada’s situation. Diop is more interested in creating a certain mood and tone than telling a straightforward narrative, and she successfully envelopes the viewer in her visually poetic world. Cinema is a primarily visual medium, and Diop has a complete mastery over this aspect of film.

With Atlantics, Diop carefully weaves an enchanting and at times eerie tale of doomed love and female empowerment. Although Ada struggles against many outside forces which try to control her, the concluding shot of Atlantics shows Ada coming to a satisfying self-realization. Spirits and ghosts appear throughout Atlantics, doomed lovers reunite, family members and friends argue and reconcile with each other, and all this is masterfully crafted by Diop; she is truly an exciting and powerful talent to watch.

FILM REVIEW: PERSONAL SHOPPER

Most supernatural ghost films function to provide visceral scares and thrills to the audience. With Personal Shopper (2016), Olivier Assayas is attempting to create a more cerebral and introspective ghost story, whose function is more to shed light on the psychological aspects of the supernatural realm rather than simply frighten the audience with jump scares. Anchored by a subtly powerful performance from Kristen Stewart, Personal Shopper is an unsettling experience that wants to disturb us more with the human realm rather than spectral apparitions.

In the film, Kristen Stewart plays Kyra, an American personal shopper for a supermodel in Paris. After the recent death of her twin brother from a heart condition, Kyra visits her late brother’s mansion to try to arrange its sale. The buyers of the property are concerned that the mansion may be haunted, so Kyra, who has a lifelong interest in the supernatural realm, decides to investigate the house. After spending a night in the mansion, Kyra may or may not be haunted by a supernatural entity as she tries to go on with her regular life.

Personal Shopper follows Kyra through her daily activities in a detached, observational manner. When Assayas reveals glimpses of what may be a ghostly presence, he does so in a purposefully ambiguous manner to question whether what we are seeing is real or just a figment of Kyra’s imagination. Indeed, as the film progresses, Assayas reveals how Kyra is gradually becoming more and more detached from the real world through the twin factors of her demanding boss and the recent death of her brother, whom she was close to.

Throughout the film, Assayas constantly subverts the viewers’ perception of reality. In one sequence, Kyra starts receiving unusual texts from an unknown person, which plays with her admiration for and jealousy for her boss. The texts are a sort of psychological game to get Kyra to defy the orders of her boss and potentially get her fired from her job. Are the texts from a real person, from the ghostly presence at her brother’s mansion, or just Kyra’s steadily fragmented grasp on her own sanity?

In a traditional supernatural film, we would see explicit manifestations of ghostly figures haunting their victims. But, with Personal Shopper Assayas is more interested in exploring the more mundane everyday life of someone who may or may not be haunted. There are long, quiet scenes of Kyra going about the daily duties of her job as a personal shopper, or getting dressed and undressed to go to sleep. By doing so, Assayas is planting his supernatural story in the most prosaic manner possible so that we are focusing as Kyra as a person rather than as some form of spiritual medium.

Indeed, the very banal nature of the film’s title itself suggests that Assayas wants to strip away all forms of sensationalism in his film. This has been something Assayas has been working towards his whole career— after more technically flashy films like Irma Vep, Demon Lover, and Boarding Gate, Assayas started to ground his films in a more naturalistic manner beginning with Summer Hours. Assayas isn’t interested in making a traditional genre picture. Instead, he wants to use the ghost story genre to tell a grounded story of a few days in the life of a young woman.

Hence, as the title suggests, Assayas is interested more in the personal realm than the supernatural realm. Kyra is not a person who has been haunted by and possibly possessed by a ghost. Rather, she is a traumatized person who is trying to regain hold of her life after the death of her beloved twin brother. Personal Shopper is less about thrilling us with loud scenes of screaming ghosts, and more about us seeing how a person can overcome grief and despair to find comfort and solace.

FILM REVIEW: NON-FICTION

The digital era has increasingly altered traditional ways of creating art, causing a schism between traditionalists and the newer generation of artists. This conflict between the old and the new is explored in Olivier Assayas’ film Non-Fiction (2018), a deft and clever relationship comedy-drama about a group of friends working in the publishing industry. As a filmmaker, Olivier Assayas has been very eclectic, making everything from French New Wave inspired art films like Irma Vep and Demon Lover to epic political thrillers like Carlos. Now, with Non-Fiction, Assayas is paying homage to Eric Rohmer’s comedy of manners, but updating it for the digital age.

Non-Fiction is the story of a struggling writer (Léonard Spiegel, played by Vincent Macaigne) and his strained relationship with his publisher and friend (Alain Danielson, played by Guillaume Canet).  Vincent and Alain are locked in a power struggle about the publication of his latest novel Full Stop, which is intensified by Vincent’s affair with Alain’s wife Selena (Juliette Binoche), who plays a fictional version of herself as a famous aging actress. In the meantime, Vincent is having relationship problems with his own wife Valérie (Nora Hamzawi), who suspects Vincent of having an affair, and Alain is also having an affair with Laure (Christa Théret), a young woman he hires to help bring his publishing company into the digital era.

This complicated series of extra-marital affairs never gets bogged down into soap operatic melodrama. Rather, like the films of Rohmer, Non-Fiction is a bitingly funny exploration of the intricate power dynamics between men and women in and out of love. On this level alone, Non-Fiction succeeds as a realistic portrayal of the complex emotions that accompany every marriage, and the bonds that both threaten to tear relationships apart and bind them together even stronger. 

Unlike an American film, Assayas doesn’t explore infidelity from a purely moral perspective. Instead, Assayas examines how emotions between men and women change over time, and how this can lead them to seek other partners to satisfy their needs. By the end of the film, there is no definitive resolution for the infidelities of the main characters; instead, just like in the real world, things are left unresolved and messy.

As the title itself suggests, Non-Fiction is also about the tenuous nature of truth in the publishing industry. Vincent writes novels that he categorizes as fiction, but at the same time they are clearly autobiographical in nature, as he writes characters and situations that are based of his own convoluted personal life. Also, the relevance of the novel as a written form in the modern era is challenged throughout the film by Laure. She continuously encourages Alain to steer away from publishing novels like the ones which Vincent writes, and focus more on monetizing online forms of writing, such as blogs and content for E-books.

With Non-Fiction, Assayas is asking us to re-evaluate monetary success as an end-all. Should Alain sell out his publishing company to an E-commerce company which will transform it into the digital future which Laure revealed to him, or keep publishing his friend Vincent’s novels? In an era in which the definition of what constitutes literature is constantly changing as a result of digitization and the new demands of E-commerce, how can we as a society preserve traditional novels as an art form?

Alain must choose between cashing in his company’s work to the unnamed tech giant (as symbolized by his extra-marital affair with the digital guru Laure), or preserving his personal relationships with his wife Selena and his friend Vincent. Assayas doesn’t offer an absolute resolution to this dilemma, or any neatly tied up conclusions to Non-Fiction’s various plot strands. Instead, through the story of his characters and their complicated love lives, Assayas suggests that the only thing that does remain constant in the rapidly changing digital era is the genuine love between couples and friends.

FILM REVIEW: A HIDDEN LIFE

Most war films celebrate the heroism of soldiers who fought for their nations, but Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life (2019) is about a soldier who does the exact opposite. A Hidden Life is about a German soldier during World War II who refuses to join in the war efforts of the Nazi party. Like Malick’s previous films, A Hidden Life is ultimately an exploration of a man’s search for a deeper spiritual meaning in his life. The soldier in Malick’s film sees the darkness and brutality of Germany’s slide into Nazism, and tries to make sense of it through a deeper connection with God.

A Hidden Life is set in 1940s Germany and based on the true story of the conscientious objector Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl) and his wife Fani (Valerie Pachner). As the film begins, Franz, Fani and their daughters live an idyllic and peaceful existence on their farm in the village of Radegund. However, the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party is still felt in the village, as evidenced by the patriotic Mayor (Karl Markovics) who constantly badgers Franz to join the war effort. Although Franz at first refuses to join the army, he eventually is drafted into the war effort. Franz leaves Radegund to prepare for battle, but he refuses to fight, leading to his imprisonment and torture.

A Hidden Life feels very much like the film that Malick has been working towards his whole career. Malick’s legendary status began in the 1970s when he burst into the cinematic landscape with two astonishingly accomplished films that heralded the arrival of a major talent. Malick then disappeared for almost two decades, and didn’t make another film again until 1999 with his World War II set epic The Thin Red Line. Malick then returned in 2005 with another historical period piece with The New World, followed up by The Tree of Life a few years later.

After The Tree of Life, Malick went on a filmmaking binge, with four films almost back to back from the years 2012 to 2017. Malick’s two previous historical epics The Thin Red Line and The New World were ambitious but flawed films that felt like a director who was re-learning the art of filmmaking after a long absence (indeed, as mentioned before, Malick hadn’t made a film for almost two decades before that point). While there were incredibly crafted scenes of spiritual and visceral beauty in these two films, they also felt meandering and muddled at points. The Tree of Life was a more structured and accomplished work than The Thin Red Line and The New World, but it also contained some jarring thematic detours that didn’t quite gel into an aesthetically coherent whole.

Then, Malick seemingly went off the deep end with his next three films To The Wonder, Knight of Cups, and Song To Song. Malick shot these three films without a script, and by all accounts the productions of the films were scatter shot and without focus. The films themselves were seemingly randomly improvised scenes strung together in post-production by druggy, sleepy voice-overs that sounded like hippies trapped in an endless time warp of the 1960s. While Malick’s usual thematic concerns about the search for God and meaning in a spirituality impoverished world were inherent within these films, they ultimately were too meandering and incoherent to function as satisfying works of art.

With A Hidden Life, Malick finally settled down and created a film with a tightly structured script and shooting schedule, and the result is Malick’s best film in years. In fact, A Hidden Life is as powerful as Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light and Martin Scorsese’s Silence in its portrayal of spiritual struggle. Like these films, A Hidden Life is an emotionally devastating examination of the search for meaning in a cruel and indifferent world. As Franz wrestles with his belief in a higher power while his Nazi captors endlessly torture him, Malick’s film reminds one of St. John of the Cross’ 16th century poem The Dark Night of the Soul.

By basing A Hidden Life on a true story, and setting it in confined locations, Malick is able to focus his skills in a more effective manner than his previously unstructured films. The scenes of religious and spiritual torment no longer feel out of place as they did in To The Wonder, which awkwardly cut back and forth between Javier Bardem’s tormented priest and Ben Affleck’s search to constantly get laid. Indeed, the cumulative impact of Franz’s journey to find God culminates in an emotionally devastating last act.

Malick poetically contrasts the bucolic and pastoral natural beauty of Franz’s village of Radegund with the dark and grimy Nazi prisons where Franz is imprisoned. In this sense, Malick is pointing us forward as a species towards the almost Eden-like existence of Franz and Fran and their peaceful connection with nature (much like how Malick portrayed indigenous tribes in The Thin Red Line and Native Americans in The New World). In a way, Malick’s films function as a time capsule for how we can co-exist peacefully, and A Hidden Life is his purest expression of this. A Hidden Life is not only a portrait of the horrors of Nazi Germany, but also a stirring and powerful reminder of the goodness of the human spirit amidst unspeakable cruelty.

FILM REVIEW: DOMAINS

Domains (2019), directed by Natsuka Kusano, is an innovative and startling examination of the nature of performance in cinema. A single plot summary would not encompass the many ways in which Kusano dissects the multiple layers of the cinematic medium in her groundbreaking film. Domains is about the various degrees of truth and perception which film can explore. Do we see a film to uncover simply plot details, or should we explore deeper by seeing how cinema can change our perspectives as viewers? Kusano examines questions like these, and many more, in Domains.

As the film opens, the lead character Aki (Shibuya Asami) is confessing her part in the murder of the daughter of her close friend to a police investigator. At first, we think Domains is going to be a police procedural about what led Aki to commit this shocking crime. In a way, Domains is an investigation into what would drive someone to commit murder, but it does so in a completely unexpected manner. After the opening interrogation scene, the rest of Domains consists of rehearsal scenes for a separate film about the events leading up to the murder. The three main characters in these rehearsals are Aki, her close friend Nodoka (Kasajima Tomo), and her friend’s unnamed husband (Tomo Kasajima).

The rehearsals play out for the most part in real time, and it’s interesting to see how Kusano films the same scenes multiple times in varying perspectives to reveal how a simple change of tone or rephrasing of a line of dialogue can alter the whole meaning of each scene. In this way, Kusano is exploring the elasticity of cinema, and how it can be used to distort viewers’ perspectives of cinematic truth. Jacques Rivette also explored this same free flowing nature of film in his magnum opus Out 1, which similarly consisted of many scenes of actors rehearsing.

Both Kusano and Rivette are showing how cinema by its very nature is something that is being manipulated not only by the director, but also by the actors who bring their own truths to cinema. Aki tries to make sense of her motivations for murder by turning her actions into a filmic performance piece for an audience. By doing so, the actress playing Aki, along with her two acting collaborators, have just as much power over the construction of Domains as the director Kusano does.

However, this power is not simply one of actors using their skills to elicit emotion from the viewer as in a traditional film. Instead, by revealing how all of Domains is essentially a transparently theatrical experience, Kusano and her actors are giving power back to the viewer to create their own interpretations of what they are seeing on screen. It is never made clear if Aki actually committed the murder she confesses to at the opening of the film, or if the murder is just a fictional aspect of the film Aki is rehearsing for.

Kusano wants to reveal those elements of cinema which are traditionally hidden from viewers. Not only does she show us rehearsals of scenes, but Kusano also draws attention to the camera itself, as in one scene where the camera purposefully pulls back from the actors in a disruptive and obvious manner. In another scene, we clearly see the reflection of the camera in a mirror, and several times throughout the film we hear someone yelling “cut,” or we see the slate being used. Alejandro Jodorowsky similarly ended Holy Mountain by panning out to reveal a film set, but Kusano takes this further by hiding almost nothing from the viewer.

Ultimately, Kusano is trying to make a more active form of cinema where the audience has to fully engage with what they are seeing on screen. Kusano is breaking apart the artificially of film, and forcing viewers to come to their own interpretations. Like the character of Aki, one views Domains as a form of constant rehearsal to re-wire how we view cinema. There is no longer one form of cinematic truth dominated by Hollywood films whose sole function is to manipulate viewers into feeling pre-determined emotions and perspectives. Instead, Kusano and other filmmakers like her are pointing us towards a more empowering and liberating form of cinematic engagement.

FILM REVIEW: THE CHRYSANTHEMUM AND THE GUILLOTINE

The Chrysanthemum and the Guillotine (2018) is an eccentric and moving epic film about Japanese women sumo wrestlers and socialist anarchists. Directed by the prolific Takahisa Zeze, who started out making soft core pink films, The Chrysanthemum and the Guillotine is unlike any historical epic you have ever seen. Although it is based on real historical events, Zeze infuses the film with surrealistic touches and characters that seem to exist in a parallel universe.

Set shortly after the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923, The Chrysanthemum and the Guillotine tells the dual stories of a female sumo wrestling troupe and a group of socialist anarchists. The anarchists regularly plot assassination attempts and other violent acts to get their revolutionary messages out. Two members of the anarchist group, Tetsu (Masahiro Higashide) and Daijiro (Kanichiro), befriend two members of the wrestling troupe, Tomoyo (Mai Kiryu) and Tamae (Hanae Kan).  Their lives become disrupted by a group of former World War One veterans led by Daigoro (Shima Ohnishi), who continuously try to shut down the troupe’s performances because they view them as subversive.

This plot summary only hints at the unique vision and structure of Zeze’s film. From the beginning to the end of the film, Zeze has his actors perform at an heightened emotional state; this is clearly not a Yasujiro Ozu film. In this way, Zeze’s performances resemble the almost trance-like hysteria of the actors in the films of Andrzej Zulawski and Sion Sono. There are also many quiet and more subdued moments in the film, but they serve only as momentary breaks before the next wave of grand emotion hits. 

Although at times this tone can be exhausting, especially at the film’s epic length of 189 minutes, it all leads to a climactic showdown between the sumo wrestlers and the military that is unlike anything you have ever seen. This frantic tone of the film is very much a reflection of the youthful exuberance and energy of Zeze’s characters. Revolutionary activity is the province of the idealism of youth, a concept which Zeze explores in his film.

Thematically, The Chrysanthemum and the Guillotine is a neo-feminist defense of female empowerment, although not in an overly obvious Hollywood manner. Many of the members of the women sumo wrestling troupe have escaped from oppressive marriages, and find solace in a sisterhood of strong women whose very existence is a statement against the traditionally male world of sumo wrestling. 

When the troupe gives their first performance, the male members of the audience mock them and hope to see them wrestle nude. However, the troupe is able to win over the male spectators with their skill as professional sumo wrestlers. Soon, the troupe becomes a mini-sensation in the many villages they visit, which draws the ire of the group of war veterans, who find any opportunity they can to harass the troupe.

Zeze contrasts the discipline and skill of the female wrestling troupe with the dysfunctional all male socialist anarchist group. Unlike the sumo troupe, the anarchist group is in a constant state of disarray. They carry out bungled assassination attempts, and are never able to draw the wider public to their socialist utopian ideals. Instead, Zeze reveals that many members of the male anarchists group are more interested in sleeping with prostitutes then actually carrying out revolutionary acts. This is a direct foil to the success and determination of the female wrestling troupe.

Ultimately, The Chrysanthemum and the Guillotine is about outcasts from society who are able to successfully form their own unique society of sorts. The female wrestling troupe becomes a respite for their members from the overly oppressive and controlling nature of the wider society. The film’s exploration of the battle between the wrestling troupe and the outside forces that threaten to break it apart is cinematically liberating and exhilarating.

FILM REVIEW: A TIGER IN WINTER

A Tiger in Winter (2017) is a beguiling and incisive portrait of the artistic process of writing. The practice of writing is a solitary and not exactly cinematically dynamic process, but with A Tiger in Winter, Lee Kwang-kuk is able to really get at the essence of the struggling artist. Lee is not necessarily concerned with the actual ritual of writing, but with the writer’s inability to fit into society and function as others do. By focusing on the dysfunctional life of an artist, A Tiger in Winter offers an often bitterly funny view of the creative life.

Lee Kwang-kuk was formerly an assistant director for the celebrated Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo. Indeed, Hong Sang-soo’s influence is strongly felt in A Tiger in Winter, with its long, seemingly improvised scenes of uninterrupted dialogue, and its focus on male/female relationships. Like the films of Hong Sang-soo, A Tiger in Winter is about a man who is unable to commit to the women in his life.

The protagonist of A Tiger in Winter is Gyeong-yu (Lee Jin-wook), a struggling writer who leaves his girlfriend and proceeds to wander around aimlessly until he meets his ex-girlfriend Yoo-jung (Go Hyun-jung). Unlike Gyeong-yu, Yoo-jung is a celebrated writer, but her chronic alcoholism prevents her from meeting her publisher’s deadline to complete her next collection of short stories. A Tiger in Winter is about Gyeong-yu and Yoo-jung’s attempts to reconcile their former relationship, while both of them struggle to fulfill their personal and artistic needs.

While the influence of Hong Sang-soo is felt throughout A Tiger in Winter, Lee Kwang-kuk is also a much more visually poetic director than Hong. While Hong is primarily interested in using cinema to explore the relationships dynamics between women and men, Lee’s aesthetic concerns are more oriented towards the visual palette and symbolism. The title of the film itself refers to an actual tiger that has escaped from the zoo, and this tiger is symbolically portrayed by the two main protagonists. Like tigers who are away from captivity, both Yoo-jung and Gyeong-yu are self-destructive forces of nature that devour all those around them.

Yoo-jung is constantly taking advantage of those closest to her, including Gyeong-yu, to fulfill her needs, whether they be her physical needs (through her addiction to sex and alcohol), as well as her needs to be recognized as a celebrated author. Gyeong-yu also manipulates his friends and loved ones to fulfill his selfish desires to remain constantly aloof from commitment; he does so because he believes it will benefit his artistic process as a writer. Throughout the film, Lee explores how his two protagonists destroy those closest to them, like wild tigers escaped from captivity. Near the end of the film, Lee also reveals what appears to be imaginary glimpses of the actual escaped tiger, adding an element of visual surrealism to his mise-en-scene.

There are many delightfully odd moments in A Tiger in Winter, such as when Yoo-jung drunkenly peels some tangerines and places them in a haphazard pile on a table, without eating them, or when Gyeong-yu keeps meeting passengers on his driving route who refuse to pay him. These little moments reveal the eccentric nature of artists, which is what A Tiger in Winter is ultimately about. Lee wants to show us the private, interior lives of real artists, both those who struggle to be discovered, and those whose fame and career may be built upon dubious means.  It will be interesting to see how Lee further develops his talents as an artist himself, and we are all captive spectators to his intriguing work.