FILM REVIEW: CASINO

While Goodfellas portrayed the gangster lifestyle as an almost non-stop 24 hour party, Scorsese took a completely different route with Casino (1995), a much darker and more nihilistic film. During its initial release, although it had some effusive praise, Casino was met with a much more lukewarm reception from critics. Many compared it to the highly acclaimed Goodfellas, citing that it lacked the warmth and vibrancy of the former film. However, while it indeed is a colder and more brutal film, Casino is a masterpiece in its own right, as it expands upon Goodfellas' documentary-like approach to the gangster genre in a more epic and operatic manner.

Based on Nicholas Pileggi's nonfiction book Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas, Casino recounts the life of Sam "Ace" Rothstein (Robert De Niro). Set during the 1970s, Casino depicts how Ace, with the help of the mafia and his mob associate Nicholas "Nicky" Santoro (Joe Pesci), oversaw a lucrative gambling empire in Las Vegas. It also recounts his tumultous marriage to former prostitute Ginger (Sharon Stone), a relationship which gets further complicated once she starts having an affair with Nicky, as well as her former pimp Lester (James Woods). This starts a dominoe effect of compications that eventually leads to the end of Ace's gambling empire after the FBI catches up to him.

Casino uses the same cinematic techniques as Goodfellas to tell its story, with an almost constant voice-over narration from the main protagonist, rapid camera movements and edits to emphasize the sometimes frenzied criminal operations of the gangster lifestyle, as well as a soundtrack of popular, retro rock songs, along with an effective, recurrent use of J.S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion in the opening and closing credits, as well as throughout the film. However, where Casino diverges from Goodfellals is its much less sympathetic protagonist Ace, who is a stone-cold businessman who rarely seems to take any pleasure in the gangster lifestyle, much different from Henry Hill and his joie de vivre gangsters.

Indeed, Ace takes a very analytical and exacting approach to running his operations, best exemplified in his insistence on the chef at his casino's restaurant to have the exact same amount of blueberries in each muffin. Scorsese takes this same precise approach to the making of Casino, as he documents almost every detail of Ace's business operations in minute details. In one amazing sequence, Scorsese traces the specific trail of the flow of money within Ace's casino, from the gambling floors, through the kitchen, along a hidden location, and into a highly guarded secret vault. At times, this attention to detail can be exhausting, which may have alienated some critics, but Scorsese is doing this to put the viewer into the cold and sometimes heartless mind of his protagonist.

In this way, Casino is one of Scorsese's most demanding films, as it removes virtually any aspects of sympathy and warmth from its characters, and asks us as viewers to truly see if the gangster lifestyle is something we really want to join. Due to its general tone of joviality, it is easy to misinterpret Scorsese's earlier film Goodfellas as being a celebration of the life of a gangster. Casino, on the other hand, is an unrelentingly grim and dark film, filled with brutal scenes of unadorned violence that recall the nihilistic gangster films of Kinju Fukasaku. 

Along with this pessimistic outlook on the gangster lifestyle, Scorsese also employs religiuos symbolism throughout Casino, such as portraying Ace's Las Vegas casino as a sort of Eden-like paradise in the midst of a vast desert (this is exemplified in an astounding shot of the lights of the Las Vegas Strip at night surrounded by the darkness of a seemingly endless desert). Ace is eventually tempted by the Eve-like Ginger, who seduces Ace and manipulates him to bring about his own Edenic downfall. 

Also, Nicky is portrayed as a Satan-like figure, as exemplified by a scene where smoke seems to ascend from behind Nicky after he commits a horrific act of violence. Nicky's rampant amorality heightens this symbolism, and he serves in a way as the instigator for Ginger to destroy Ace's Edenic paradise when he starts an affair with her, much like Satan tempted Eve with the apple to bring about the fall of Adam and Eve from Eden.  

Casino opens with Ace literally falling through the air in slow-motion against flames and the glowing lights of Las Vegas. This image is Scorsese's way of poetically portraying Ace's eventual fall from the Eden of his Las Vegas casino empire. The paradise that Ace controlled was one of his own making, but one that had to end because it was ultimately an amoral, criminal enterprise. 

With its religious symbolism, anchored by Scorsese's Catholic faith, and its morality tale of a man brought down by the sin of his own pride, Casino is very much the counterpoint to Goodfellas' more lively portrait of gangsters. The two films on their own are masterpieces of cinema which need to be judged on their own merits to fully appreciate them. Goodfellas was a reverie of sorts for the exultation of youth, while Casino is more about the more mundane responsibilites of adulthood and trying to keep your career and success in check. Ultimately, Casino is a cold-blooded portrait of a man whose entire life was built upon his own self-interest; something which Scorsese shows ultimately leads to personal isolation and destruction.

FILM REVIEW: THE LAND OF HOPE

While the world is in the midst of a global pandemic in the form of the Coronavirus, and civil unrest is erupting in the United States and beyond due to the tragic murder of George Floyd, there is truly an apocalyptic feel to the start of the new decade in 2020.  Back in 2012 Sion Sono made a film called The Land of Hope, which was eerily prescient of the chaotic and disruptive events of 2020.  The Land of Hope was a fictionalized account about the adverse effects of the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, and how it destroyed the lives of two families.

The two families are the Onos and Suzukis, who are produce and dairy farmers whose lives are uprooted after an earthquake causes a nuclear meltdown nearby. Although the government evacuates the Suzuki family to a shelter, the Onos are told to remain where they are because their property was deemed safe due to being only inches away from the government designated nuclear meltdown danger zone. The Land of Hope explores how the various members of the Ono and Suzuki family respond to the chaos wrought by the nuclear accident.

What reminds one of the Coronavirus outbreak are chilling, intimate scenes in The Land of Hope of people trying to lead normal lives in the midst of a deadly environmental disaster; the pregnant wife Izumi Ono (Megumi Kagurazaka) shops for groceries in a full hazmat suit, the elder Yasuhiko Ono (Natsuyagi) cares for his dementia suffering wife Chieko (Naoko Otani) by himself while living right next to the nuclear poisoned zone, the young couple Mitsuru Suzuki (Yutaka Shimizu) and Yoko (Hikari Kajiwara) wander through the eerily deserted and destroyed wasteland of the nuclear meltdown.

Indeed, The Land of Hope is very much about the will to survive and bring about a semblance of normalcy to ones' life while a society is falling apart everywhere. Most of Sion Sono's films are about outsiders who refuse to fit into the norms of everyday society, while The Land of Hope is about people trying their best to rebuild a society to its original roots. However, if one digs a little deeper, Sono may be using a natural disaster as a means to destroy the current society and rebuild it based on new values. It's no coincidence that the younger members of the Suzuki family are more willing to let go of their home and start a new life, while the elder Yasuhiko stubbornly refuses to leave his property even though it will inevitably be destroyed by the nuclear disaster.

While Sion Sono's earlier films like Love Exposure and Tokyo Tribe are filmed in a wild and hectic manner verging on inspired anarchy at times, The Land of Hope is startlingly restrained and constructed in a much more traditional manner. Scenes are allowed to play out naturally and without the use of rapid cuts or camera movements, and Sono is more interested in exploring intimate depictions of domesticity and quiet human interaction than splashy outbursts of cinematic lunacy. 

It isn't until the last act of The Land of Hope that Sono starts employing some of his more avant-garde techniques, with the use of disarming instrumental music and rapidly cut scenes of death and destruction, but until then Sono holds back his more outlandish tendencies. However, The Land of Hope ends on a note of optimism and renewed faith in the general goodness of human nature, something which we don't see too often in a Sono film.

Although it's not as much discussed as his more bonkers films, The Land of Hope is a refreshing change of pace for Sono. The Land of Hope is one of Sono's most humanistic films, as it explores the notion of hope and familial love as opposed to his darker and more nihilistic films about the baser side of human nature, such as Strange Circus, Guilty of Romance, and Cold Fish. Sono uses a fictionalized account of the Fukushima nuclear accident to reveal how human nature can transcend even the most intense forms of suffering. Like Martin Scorsese did with Silence, Sono is taking a break from his usual more frenetic fare to tell a contemplative tale of faith and survival.

FILM REVIEW: GOODFELLAS

Some films you watch once, and their memory gradually fades into oblivion. Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas (1990) is a film whose individual scenes linger in your mind like blissful memories from a more glorious time period. Indeed, Goodfellas ushered in one of the best decades in world cinema (the 1990s), which produced such groundbreaking classics as Casino, A Brighter Summer Day, The Emperor and the Assassin, Ju Dou, La Belle Noiseuse, Underground, Princess Mononoke, and Days of Being Wild. What makes Goodfellas such an essential film is its virtually perfect blend of various cinematic audio and visual techniques to give the viewer an immersive, ground-level portrait of the outlaw culture of the gangster lifestyle.

Goodfellas is based on Nicholas Pileggi's non-fiction book Wiseguy, which chronicles the rise and fall of the former gangster, later turned FBI informant Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), from his youth in the 1950s, through the turbulent and wild 1960s, and into the 1970s and 1980s. The film is grounded by career highlight performances of such legendary actors as Lorraine Bracco as Henry's wife Karen, Joe Pesci as the volatile gangster Tommy DeVito, and, of course, Robert De Niro as the cold-booded killer James Conway. Paul Sorvino also gives a memorably chilling performance as the gang boss Paul Cicero.

What sets Goodfellas apart from so many other gangster films is its genuine passion and commitment to the material. Scorsese didn’t just make a gangster film to introduce another familiar entry into the tried and true gangster genre.  Rather, he created Goodfellas as an homage to all the gangster films he loved, and also as a memoir of sorts to the gangster lifestyle that surrounded him as a young man raised in the Little Italy area of New York. The tone of the film itself, depite its grim and ultimately nihilistic ending, is almost celebratory of this lifestyle, which has caused some to accuse it of glorifiying the violent lifestyle of the mob.  

The truth is that Scorsese is not advocating the life of the gangster, rather he is portraying it without passing judgement on the admitedly morally corrupt characters he depicts. Yes, we see Henry and his cohorts living what seems like a grand and lavish parade of uninterrupted pleasure, but this is only a reflection of the reality of their lives at the time. From the instantly memorable opening of the film, when Henry proclaims over voice-over that he always wanted to be a gangster, Scorsese is making it clear to the audience that he is not making Goodfellas to outright condemn the protagonists of his film. Instead, he is providing us an immersive, ground-level, almost documentary-like portrait of the working grunts of the Italian mafia.

Henry, along with Tommy and James, are not the bourgeois and sophisticated royalty family of gangsters in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather films or even Scorsese's own Casino; they are more like working-class stiffs who are constantly trying to score the next big heist. The lifestyle that Scorsese depicts in Goodfellas is one of a brotherhood of associates who live each day like its their last. We see dynamic sequences of Henry and his close-knit group of outlaws partying at the Copacabana nightclub (which includes one of the most celebrated, uninterrupted, tracking shots in cinema history), staying up late at night after one of their many illegal schemes, and genuinely enjoying each other's company. 

However, Scorsese knows that all good things must come to an end, so after Henry and his gangster associates eventually pull off their most lucrative scheme, the robbing of the Lufthansa vault at JFK airport, their lives start to fall apart due to jealousy, paranoia, and back-stabbing acts of violence. Scorsese tells this epic story of friendship and betrayal using a wide-range of cinematic techniques that have influenced countless filmmakers. He employs almost non-stop background music of various pop, rock songs, complemented by a lively voice-over narration by Henry Hill that serves to not only move the story forward, but also mirrors at times the hectic nature of what we see on-screen. The best evidence of this is the epilogue of the film, in which Henry narrates his increasingly frenzied and drug-fueled activities during the day in which he was finally caught by the FBI and turned over to witness protection as an informant.

Goodfellas is one of those films where every element, from the acting, to the directing, to even the smallest details in the set design, works almost perfectly to create a once-in-a-lifetime cinematic experience. Scorsese himself has tried to emulate this same experience in future films to varying degrees of success, from his follow-up film Casino, to his late career masterpiece The Wolf of Wall Street.  Although these subsequent films are classics in their own ways, none of them match the passion and intensity of Goodfellas, which leaps off the screen as if it was something that Scorsese just had to make. With Goodfellas, Scorsese is showing us the visceral power inherent in cinema, a force which can reach unprecented heights with the right combination of talent and love for the material.

INTERVIEW: JOE BADON

 

In an age when so many major films have escalating budgets that rely on soulless, artificial digital CGI effects to tell their stories, it is refershing when a micro-budget film like Sister Tempest arrives to remind us of the exciting possibilities still inherent in cinematic storytelling. 

Using a budget that is only a fraction of the cost of a typical studio film, the filmmaker Joe Badon uses practical effects, as well as carefully, hand-crafted costume and set designs to tell an expansive story with loads of imagination in Sister Tempest. In this interview, Joe Badon discusses what inspired him to make Sister Tempest, as well as his thoughts on film and art.

Can you talk a bit about your own background as a visual artist and illustrator, and how this inspired your films?

I've been professionally illustrating comics and storyboards for about 13 years. Somebody once called comics the "Poor man's movies". That's basically why I pursued comic illustration for so long. Also, storyboarding under other directors gave me plenty of insight on how to tell a story visually. 

Sister Tempest provides a very unique take on the family drama story of the bond between sisters. What inspired you to create this story?

This story is one of the most personal pieces of art I've ever created. It's me dealing with my personal relationships and also my divine relationships. I have a lot of religious shame from growing up in a Catholic Church to then eventually becoming a Youth Pastor at an Evangelical Church and then leaving the church having to deprogram myself from basically this cult that I was once in. And then after all of that, having to come to terms with and accepting who I really am-- which is basically just a screwed up weirdo. 

I took those experiences and funneled it into this fantasy tale about a torn relationship between two sisters. 

The special effects, as well as the set and costume designs, for Sister Tempest were very impressive. Can you talk a bit about the budget for Sister Tempest, as well as some of the visual and cinematic influences on your visual design for the film?

I wanted this film to be a cinematic mixtape so each layer of the movie had to have a distinct style. BUT we were on a VERY tight budget of $25,000. So I decided that the best way to pull off big ideas on a tiny budget was to keep everything retro looking and kitschy. 

I remember that I told my special effects guys that I wanted us to pretend that we're in the 70s and we're trying to pull off this big sci fi film with only the available resources and style that would be available to us in the 70s. I'm not sure if I pulled that off but that's what I was aiming for, at least. 

With the family drama, we wanted a 70's tv show sitcom meets Wes Anderson style. My wife Tonya really helps me with the look of my films (sets, costumes and wardrobe). So we both looked at shows like The Brady Bunch and One Day at a Time for the sets, wardrobe and hairstyle of the family drama aspect of the film. 

For a lot of the fantasy and choir sequences, we referenced The Color of Pomegranates because I am obsessed with that film. It's a perfect visual style that is obscenely underused. 

For the Kaiju sized Spaceman sequences, we studied Godzilla (of course) but also the TV show Danger 5 for its miniature work. 

There's a Space Council in the film. That was mainly inspired by the space council from the film The Evil Brain From Outer Space with some Zardoz and Zeta One sprinkled in there. 

How did you find the performers for your film?  In particular, the lead actress Kali Russell gave a very powerful performance.

I put out a casting call on Facebook and that's how I found the vast majority of my performers from both the films I've made. 

And Kali NAILED her video audition. Then she came over and read for me and I was convinced because she could change emotions on a dime and completely convince you. She's classically trained and because of that, she makes it look effortless. Plus, she was EXTREMELY easy to work with. She was up for anything you needed her to do, any last minute changes or requests-- she just went with it. 

Your own films have very elaborate and impressive production designs but on a limited budget. Would you ever want to work on a huge budget Hollywood studio film, and if so, are there any film franchises, books, or existing characters you would like to make with this increased budget?

Honestly, I really just want to get my own stories out there instead of working on someone else's creation. It feels weird. Not to say that I wouldn't do it but it just feels weirdly unfaithful to tell any stories other than my own.

BUT for shits and giggles, in another reality: 

Maybe take a stab at Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune. I know I'd fuck it up severely but it'd be fun to shoot! Dr. Phibes would make a fun remake that everyone would probably hate. Maybe lovingly remake Exorcist 2: The Heretic because Boorman is incredible and that was an incredibly underrated film. 

Oh and Krull...that has so much potential for sci-fi, psychedelic, fantasy insanity. 

Can you talk about any future projects you are working on now?

God, I'm just trying to get through promoting, marketing and selling this one. I do have quite a few story outlines, plus I've shot a quarantine short film (that may stretch into a feature) but right now I've been devoting all my time to the post and premiere of Sister Tempest. 

Plus, I need some slightly bigger investors for projects moving forward, mainly because I want to pay all the cast and crew a living wage. I'm tired of having to have people pretty much volunteer their time. They need to be paid better. 

Thank you for your time, anything else you would like to mention?

Thank you so much! I appreciate you taking the time to watch the film and interview me! You can check out Sister Tempest at sistertempest.blogspot.com or look us up on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Just search for Sister Tempest.

 

FILM REVIEW: SISTER TEMPEST

The astonishing film Sister Tempest (2020) is not for the faint of heart, nor for those with limited imagination. Instead, if you crave films that will sever your carotid arteries, as well as warm up your still beating heart, then the absolutely gonzo and brilliant filmmaker Joe Badon has created something that will satisfy your love for the blissfully strange. Sister Tempest recalls the 1970s midnight cult films of Alejandro Jodorowsky with its startling scenes of hallucinatory depravity, and its non-linear, trippy narrative ranks with the best of classic surrealists like Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel. But, in the end, Badon has constructed an absolutely idiosyncratic and unique cinematic experience that is entirely his own. Sister Tempest is a visual feast and a new cult classic that reminds us of the immense possiblities still waiting to be discoverd in cinema. 

The less said about Sister Tempest's story the best, as one of its chief pleasures is to see how the plot steadily reveals more and more surprising layers. Its framing story involves two close-knit sisters who have to fend for themselves after a family tragedy. Anne Hutchinson (played by Kali Russell in a powerful performance) watches over and raises her younger sister Karen (Holly Bonney) as if she was her own daughter. After Karen mysteriously disappears, Anne's life falls apart until she meets and develops a sisterly relationship with Ginger Breadman (Linnea Gregg), a young student of hers at an all-girls art school. Eventually, Ginger's relationship with Anne starts to mirror her previous relationship with her missing sister Karen, whom Anne has never fully gotten over.

Built around this central framing story is a dark and twisting deep dive into the inner psyche of Anne, whose fragile mental state steadily falls apart until we are essentially viewing the mind-scape of what may be a schizophrenic. Badon fills Sister Tempest with alternately shocking and aesthetically gorgeous visual tableus that reflect Anne's deteriorating mental state. We are witnessing both an unsettling portrait of a woman gradually descending into insanity, as well as a blissful examination of the bonds of familial love. 

The visual references in Sister Tempest range from Japanese kaiju films like Godzilla, to 1950s cult classic science fiction Hollywood films like the Day the Earth Stood Still and The War of the Worlds. Major figures in Anne's life manifest themselves as pop culture representations from the world of cinema, painting, as well as comic books. Badon, who is also an accomplished visual artist himself, stages several scenes in Sister Tempest against colorful, animated backdrops, giving the film the feel at times of a live-action manga. Near the end of Sister Tempest, Badon even includes a clever reference to Marvel superhero films and Japanese anime.

What makes Sister Tempest such an astonishing achievement is that Badon has been able to create eye-popping special effects and set designs at a fraction of the cost of a typcial Hollywood blockbuster film, but with even more imagination and visual flair. Badon created elaborately constructed miniature sets for many of his major locations (as an homage to similar sets from the classic Toho Studios Godzilla films), and the psychedelic costume and creature designs fit his overall pop-culture, retro 1950s aesthetic. Oftentimes, the digital CGI effects of modern day Hollywood films feel hollow and artificial, but Badon's practical effects and hand-crafted set design feel visually alive and authentic.   

Most of all, Sister Tempest is a reminder that there are still possiblities for cinema to continually innovate as an artform, and to embrace new forms of visual and narrative storytelling. Sister Tempest's continuous parade of hallucinatory sequences can enduce an almost trance-like state in the viewer, resembling what Jodorowsky was attempting to accomplish in his late career films The Dance of Reality and Endless Poetry. Like those films, Badon approaches cinema as the ultimate, mind-altering experience. Indeed, at times the dream-logic and startling use of colors in Sister Tempest resembles an acid trip; one that begins as a horrifying nightmare, but gradually evolves into a peaceful dream about sistery love.

FILM REVIEW: DA 5 BLOODS

With Da 5 Bloods, Spike Lee has made one of his most powerful and thematically complex films. Da 5 Bloods is not only an effort to give typically suppressed minority voices in war films a much more prominent role, but it also deals with such issues as intergenerational conflict, family strife, and the evolving nature of social change from the 1960s to the current era. Stylistically, Lee employs varying film stocks and aspect ratios to tell a dynamic and compelling story about how war can destroy a person and a country, but also result in much needed reform for a better future.

Opening in modern times, Da 5 Bloods is about four African-American Vietnam War vets who return to Vietnam as older adults on a mission to find the remains of their fallen squad leader Norman (Chadwick Boseman), and also to locate a buried chest of gold bars that they left behind during the war. The four veterans are Paul (Delroy Lindo), Melvin (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), Otis (Clarke Peters), and Eddie (Norm Lewis), and the main focus of the film is on Paul and his inability to completely resolve his post-traumatic stress disorder from after the war. Paul's estranged college aged son David (Jonathan Majors) joins the squad on their journey, along with Vinh (Johnny Tri Nguye), their Vietnamese guide.  

One of the most important aspects of Da 5 Bloods is Lee's decision to cast minorities (African-Americans as well as Asians) in leading roles. There's the aforementioned African-American leads, who all give powerfully nuanced performances, but there's also the Asian roles that Lee gives important roles to. Throughout the film, Lee cuts to Hanoi Hannah (Van Veronica Ngo), a disc jokey who uses her radio show to voice her support for the African-American soldiers fighting in Vietnam. Otis visits his former girlfriend Tien (Le Y Lan), a savvy and successful businesswoman, who it is revealed has a now adult daughter with Otis. The guide Vinh is portrayed as a strong and confident man who provides a steady hand for the squad during their journey.

By doing this, Lee is showing the interconnected cultural and at times personal (Otis, Tien, and their mixed-race daughter) connections between both African-Americans and Vietnamese. Both of these races were caught in an American-led conflict that sought to oppress them and destroy their lives. Da 5 Bloods, with its portraits of minority characters trying to rebuild their lives after the devastating Vietnam war, is Lee's attempt to empower those who were formerly forgotten and exploited by colonialist and imperialist forces. 

The Vietnam war was ultimately an American venture that was supported by French colonialist, who viewed Vietnam as being a country they wanted to conquer for their own. This aspect of the war is cleverly symbolized by the character of Desroche (Jean Reno), a morally shady French businessman who has volunteered to help the soldiers to illegally export their buried treasure safely out of Vietnam, although the soldiers continuously question his ulterior motives. Near the end of the film, we see Desroche wearing a Make America Great Hat, and he is purposefully made up to look like a carbon copy of Donald Trump. Without giving anything away, Desroche is portrayed as seeming to be more interested in maintaing power than helping the former soldiers. Lee is revealing how the oppression of minorities by Western powers still continues in the modern era, far after the Vietnam War has ended.

The hate fueled by the Trump administration is revealed in the lead character of Paul, who is an ardent Trump supporter who views outsiders (including the Vietnamese) as hostile forces, and Paul's every action seems driven by this animosity. By contrast, the other ex-soldiers are revealed as being more open-minded and accepting of others, and even eventually welcome in a rag-tag group of people from other ethnicities into their circle. Indeed, the last half of Da 5 Bloods reveals the separate paths Paul and his companions take in their journey; Paul becomes consumed by hatred and an indomitable need for power over others, while the other members of the squadron work together with an ethnically diverse group of outsiders to maintain peace and harmony. 

It's no coincidence that Da 5 Bloods culminates with Paul alone and separated from his group, while his racially eclectic companions end up in a tranquil Buddhist temple. This schism reflects the state of modern day America under Trump, with half the country living in a state of constant loathing towards outsiders, and the other half living in harmony with different races and genders. This concept of peaceful inter-race relations is best exemplified with Da 5 Bloods' subplot of Otis reuniting with Tien, and finally meeting and welcoming in his mixed race daughter into his life. Lee reveals that this state of harmony is also generational, as Paul's son David ends up siding with and being accepted by the more peace-loving group.

All of these thematic concerns would not work if Lee had made a film that wasn't aesthetically accomplished, and Da 5 Bloods is also a major cinematic achievement. Lee blends various styles of filmmaking, mixing newsreel footage from historical sources, along with different frame rates and film stocks, to create an astonishing and powerfully effective montage of race relations and generational conflict from the 1960s Civil Rights era, all the way up to the modern day Black Lives Matter movement. Da 5 Bloods is an urgent call for peace and love in a modern era that has become consumed with xenophobia and hate under a President that stokes these malicious flames. By connecting the current era with the turmoil of the past, Lee is guiding us into a future hopefully filled with more love and understanding for our fellow human beings. 

  

FILM REVIEW: EL PEPE--A SUPREME LIFE

Throughout his career, Emir Kusturca has always been drawn to stories about utopian dreamers and outlaws, so it's no surprise that he would make El Pepe: A Supreme Life (2018), a documentary about former Uruguayan President Jose "Pepe" Mujica.  Like the charismatic protagonists from Kusturica's films like Underground and Black Cat, White Car, Pepe Mujica was a revolutionary who worked from the margins of society to upend the dominant social order.  And, as in his previous films, El Pepe: A Supreme Life is very much a celebration of life and the human spirit amidst seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

El Pepe: A Supreme Life was filmed after Pepe Mujica retired from his Presidency, which lasted from 2010 to 2015.  As the President of Uruguay, Mujica was known as a plain-spoken "man of the people" and social rights reformer; he was able to reduce the national poverty rate from 40% to 11%, the unemployment rate from 13% to 7%, and he raised the minimum wage by 250%. Before his became President, Mujica was a guerilla fighter as a member of the MLN-Tupamaros movement during the 1960s and 1970s, when he fought against the authoritarian Presidency of Jorge Pacheco Areco. During this period, Mujica met Lucia Topolansky, a fellow revolutionary fighter who would become Mujica's lifelong companion and partner (Topolansky would go on to serve as the Vice President of Uruguay from 2017 to 2020). As a result of his guerilla activity, Mujica was eventually aprehended by the authorities and spent over 10 years in prison.

All of this biographical detail is covered in Kusturica's documentary, as he mixes archival footage with modern day recollections of his life by Mujica himself.  As the film opens, we see Kusturica and Mujica sitting outside Mujica's garden, as Mujica silently prepares a drink for the two of them. Indeed, what makes El Pepe such a fascinating film is Kusturica's combination of intimate personal details about the post-Presidential life of Mujica, with narration about his fascinating guerilla years and rise to the Presidency.

We see Mujica reflect on his regrets, such as never having had the opportunity to have his own children, as well as his thoughts on the state of the modern world, which he sees as being consumed by capitalism and greed. By following Mujica around in his daily life, such as visiting the construction and eventual opening of housing and a new school for those living in poverty, Kusturica and Mujica himself invite us as viewers into his altruistic worldview. For Mujica, money is not important, as he donates 90% of his post-Presidential salary to efforts to help out the poor.  Instead, what he values most, and what Kusturica himself does also in his own films, is a vision for a more equitable sense of community on a global level.

After his own country of Yugoslavia was torn apart by the Bosnian War during the 1990s, Kusturica became an exile from his own country after many accused his film Underground of being pro-Serbian propaganda.  Since then, Kusturica has tried to regain a sense of belonging in his native homeland by building his own village in Serbia.  This village, named Kustendorf, was created as a utopian vision of (in the words of Kusturica himself), "an open place with cultural diversity which sets up against globalization."  In this sense, we can see why Kusturica was drawn to creating a documentary about Mujica, as he saw a fellow utopian visionary in the former President of Uruguay.

Like the history of Yugolslavia itself, Kusturica saw Mujica's ascension to the Presidency as a long and arduous path to heal a country torn apart by violent strife.  And, after trying his best to unite the various factions of his country into one united whole, Mujica spent his post-Presidential years continuing his utopian vision of the world with his efforts to help out those living in poverty in Uruguay.  Throughout El Pepe, Kusturica keeps the camera at a deeply intimate and close level, allowing us as viewers to become fully engulfed in the unique and inviting society that Mujica is creating before our own eyes.

Throughout his tumultous life, the one constant in Mujica's life was his lifelong partner Topolansky, an extraordinary woman who was not only Mujica's political adviser and confidant, but also his soulmate.  This is the most touching aspect of El Pepe, as Kusturica reveals the deep love and connection the couple have for each other, from their early years as guerilla fighters in the 1960s, through their years as the leaders of Uruguay, and into their twilight years as an older couple enjoying each other's company.

El Pepe ends with a very moving visit Topolansky and Mujica pay to a restuarant, where they are serenaded by a band, as onlookers watch on.  It is personal and intimate details like this that make El Pepe such a powerful and emotional documentary.  Although it is very much a political portrait of a country and its history, El Pepe is ultimately the story of a man and a woman whose love and respect for each other sustains them into the last years of their lives.  Although both Topolansky and Mujica are still alive at the time of the making of El Pepe, Mujica acknowledges in the film that he feels like his life is coming to an end.  But, with Kusturica's deeply humanistic and poignant film El Pepe, we can only hope that Mujica's message will continue to inspire future generations.