FILM REVIEW: RIVER OF EXPLODING DURIANS

River of Exploding Durians (2014) is the astonishingly assured debut film from Malaysian director Edmund Yeo that heralds the arrival of a major new talent in world cinema. The film is a complex and poetic portrait of youthful love and idealism, and the struggle for personal and political revolutionary change. The film River of Exploding Durians most recalls is Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day, and like that film, it explores how a country’s history shapes the course of the growth of a group of youth.

Set in contemporary Malaysia, the central event in River of Exploding Durians is the construction of a rare earth plant in a small, coastal community, which leads to fears of radiation poisoning among some of its residents. The three main characters whose lives are most affected by this plant are Ms. Lim (Zhu Zhi-Ying), and her two students Hui Ling (Daphne Low) and Ming (Koe Shern). There are two central stories in River of Exploding Durians which parallel and intersect each other: the troubled love affair between Ming and Mei Ann (Joey Leong), and Ms. Lim and her leadership of a group of revolutionary students, which includes her students Hui Ling and eventually Ming. These parallel stories lead up to an emotionally devastating yet hopeful conclusion that recalls the similarly tragic ending of A Brighter Summer Day.

Like Yang’s film, River of Exploding Durians is an epic yet intimate portrait of a country and its people. Throughout the film, Yeo focuses on breathtakingly beautiful images of the lush, verdant tropical landscape of Malaysia, whose environment is very similar of that to Yang’s native country of Taiwan. Not only does Yeo highlight the visual beauty of Malaysia, but also the rich auditory soundscape of the country, with the calming and vibrant noises of crickets at night, and the lush flows of its many waterfalls and lakes. Indeed, the audio and visual components of Malaysia almost become another main character on the film.

Aesthetically, Yeo constantly experiments with the narrative form, flowing in and out of the interior thoughts of his many characters, in an almost James Joycean manner. In a particularly inventive scene, as Ming and Mei Ann are traveling together on a bus, we hear various snippets of dialogue from them which appeared from another time, but interlaced with them sitting silently in the bus, enjoying each other’s company.

Yeo bifurcates the film neatly into two halves— the first half is an intimate portrait of young love, as Yeo explores Ming’s and Mei Ann’s burgeoning romance, while the second half portrays the attempts by Ms. Lim to lead her students into increasingly violent and unstable protests against the building of the rare earth plant. Both halves of the film begin with the characters filled with hope and promise, but eventually succumbing to tragedy.  Yeo masterfully weaves the two halves of the film together in a touching coda set during a Chinese Lunar New Year Festival, as two of the youthful leads from the film briefly reunite in a moment of pure hope and optimism.

While the first half of River of Exploding Durians very much focuses on nature and youthful love, the second half deals more with the growth of youthful idealism into adult bitterness and disillusionment, as embodied by the character of Ms. Lim. It is in this second half of the film that Yeo employs some of his most radical cinematic experimentation. He stages a series of scenes of students recreating historical events rooted in revolution that recalls the film of Jean-Luc Godard from the 1960s, such as Le Petit Soldat, La Chinoise and Week-End. The use of color and the staging of these student revolutionary recreations most directly recalls similar scenes from La Chinoise. Like Godard, Yeo is exploring how cinema can portray history and revolution in more dynamic and innovative ways.

What makes River of Exploding Durians such an aesthetically accomplished work of art are its poetic moments of pure and at times shocking visual beauty, such as a field of burning durians that morph into a burning pig, a paper lantern rolling into the frame under flowing white curtains, and a flurry of papers on fire that turn into burning books. It is refreshing to see a film such as River of Burning Durians which so confidently combines so many innovative cinematic elements into a seamless, coherent whole. With his debut film, Yeo has breathed new life into cinema, and it will be exciting to see how he continues to expand the language of cinema in future films.

BEST FILMS OF THE DECADE

Now that the second decade of the twenty-first century has officially come to a close (although some still argue that the decade doesn’t begin until year one instead of year zero), it is now time to consider what I think are the best films of this decade. Of course, all these lists are by nature subjective, so instead of thinking of this as the best films of the decade, feel free to re-word it as my favorite films of the decade. My list consists primarily of late career masterpieces by cinema legends, and also two debut films from a pair of promising filmmaker. So, without further adieu, here are my choices.

1. Shoplifters (Hirokazu Koreeda)

Throughout his career, Hirokazu Koreeda has explored the nature of family, and has questioned traditional notions of the family unit. Shoplifters is perhaps Koreeda’s purest distillation of this inquiry into the family unit, and it is definitely his most powerful and emotionally impactful film since Like Father, Like Son. Shoplifters is a searing portrait of a family both brought together and ultimately torn apart by the demands of a harsh, uncaring society. I chose Shoplifters as the best of the decade because it’s the film that most resonated with me on a purely visceral and emotional level, and it also makes us think of what it means to be a family in modern society.

2. Silence (Martin Scorsese)

Martin Scorsese has made plenty of cinematically powerful films throughout his career, but Silence is the most effective of his recent films (although The Irishman was almost just as incredible, but more on that later). What makes Silence such an accomplishment is Scorsese stepping outside of his comfort zone to tell a less flashy and more creatively disciplined, pared down film. By reigning in his more extravagant impulses, which can result in admittedly great but also exhausting films like The Wolf of Wall Street, Scorsese is able to make his themes and dramatic gravitas more incisive in Silence.

3. River of Exploding Durians (Edmund Yeo)

River of Exploding Durians is a modern day A Brighter Summer Day. Like Edward Yang’s masterpiece, Edmond Yeo’s film is a complex and poetic exploration of how a country’s history shapes and affects a group of youth. With homages to Godard and the French New Wave, and various other cinematic allusions, Yeo creates an astonishing work of art that is also entirely his own, unique creation. Like the greatest works of cinematic art, River of Exploding Durians envelopes the viewer in a completely new vision of reality. The fact that it’s the first film from Yeo is even more astonishing.

4. The Dance of Reality (Alejandro Jodorowsky)

Alejandro Jodorowsky is most well-known for his highly surrealistic, hallucinatory early films Fando and Lis, El Topo and The Holy Mountain, but nothing he has made so far matches the dramatic impact of The Dance of Reality. The Dance of Reality, along with Endless Poetry, is Jodorowsky’s most personal film as it deals with his own youth. However, what separates The Dance of Reality from his other films is the unbridled passion felt in each and every frame. Watching The Dance of Reality almost puts you in an altered state of consciousness, as its poetic and powerful barrage of incredible set pieces and imagery flows in front of your eyes in a trance-like rhythm. I have seen many films throughout my life, but I have not really thing anything quite like The Dance of Reality.

5. The Great Buddha + (Huang Hsien-yao)

Sometimes you discover a great film which comes out of nowhere with little to no fanfare, and The Great Buddha + was one of those films. Although it was shortlisted for the Academy Awards Best Foreign Film category, The Great Buddha + never got a wide release or even much notice outside of its native country of Taiwan. This is unfortunate because The Great Buddha + is one of the funniest and most poignant films I have seen all decade about class consciousness (yes, I think it’s even better than the similarly themed Parasite). If you can find it, please seek out this film, as I’m sure you’ll be pleasantly surprised. It mixes dark comedy and social critique like the best films of Spike Lee and Billy Wilder. Huang Hsien-yao is surely a new talent to keep an eye on.

6. The Irishman (Martin Scorsese)

Martin Scorsese is well-known for making brutal and powerful gangster films, but no mafia film he has directed before has been quite like The Irishman. Unlike his previous crime films, The Irishman is a much more introspective and reflective film. While films like Goodfellas and Casino were almost celebratory in their depictions of gangsters (albeit in a cautionary way), The Irishman is Scorsese’s first film in which the lead character actually attempts to come to terms with the errors of his ways. In this way, The Irishman is Scorsese attempting to move away from the violent world of his prior films, and into a more enlightened realm.

7. Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow)

Throughout her career, Kathryn Bigelow has proved herself to be among one of the best action directors of all time. With Zero Dark Thirty, Bigelow has found a real life story that provides an epic backdrop for a harrowing tale of a woman determined to complete a single, history making mission against all odds. In this way, Zero Dark Thirty is like the Moby Dick of war films, and like Herman Melville’s epic story of obsession, Bigelow’s film is a labyrinthine, complex experience that has the feel of classic literature. Zero Dark Thirty culminates in one of the best action set pieces of all time, and solidifies Bigelow’s position among the pantheon of greatest directors of visceral cinema.

8. A Tiger in Winter (Lee Kwang-kuk)

Lee Kwang-kuk created one of the most realistic and bitterly funny portraits of the artistic process with A Tiger in Winter. Like the literal tiger that has escaped from the zoo of the film’s title, the two protagonists of A Tiger in Winter are self-adsorbed artists who destroy the lives of everyone in their paths. Lee understands that oftentimes great art comes from unpleasant and self-destructive personalities, and he both skewers and celebrates this bitter truth in his mordantly funny film.

9. Gone With the Bullets (Jiang Wen)

Gone With the Bullets, along with Let The Bullets Fly and Hidden Man, forms a trilogy of films by Jiang Wen that is probably the closest thing to modern day Federico Fellini that we are likely to see. Wen has proven himself to be a formidable filmmaker, and with each successive film, he has honed and developed his voice further. With Gone With the Bullets, Jiang Wen finally made perhaps the purest distillation of his claim as our new Fellini (along with Emir Kusturica). Like Fellini, Wen’s Gone With the Bullets is a carnivalesque celebration of life that is filled with exuberant set pieces and over the top characters. Wen’s outrageous characters and situations almost resemble commeddia dell’arte, with their delightfully rendered absurdity. This may also be the reason why Gone With the Bullets was not well received when it was released, as Wen is making films that recall an earlier time when art was more pure and less polluted by pointless cynicism.

10. Hanatagami (Nobohiku Obayashi)

Nobohiku Obayashi shocked the world with his debut film Hausu, which broke all cinematic conventions in the horror film genre, and his late career masterpiece Hanagatami is just as explosively innovative. Hanagatami is about a group of youth in a coastal Japanese village, and the effects of World War Two on their lives. However, the way Obayashi tells this intimate story is quite unlike anything you’ve ever seen. Hanagatami is pitched at a frenzied pace, and for over three hours Obayashi constantly experiments with narrative structure and visuals, creating a surrealistic portrait of youth that would have made Dali proud. Its experimentation with cinematic form reminds one of Seizun Suzuki’s Taisho Trilogy (Zigeunerweisen, Kagero-Za, and Yumeji), and like those films Hanagatami forms Obayashi’s own trilogy of films (along with Seven Weeks and Labyrinth of Cinema) which expand the language of cinema in exciting ways. From films like Hausu, Sada, and Hanagatami, Obayashi shows us the possibilities inherent within cinema for new methods of narrative form.

FILM REVIEW: KUNDUN

Martin Scorsese has always shown a deep reverence and appreciation for Asian cinema, as reflected in his championing of Asian auteurs like Edward Yang, Tian Zhuangzhuang, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Through his World Cinema Foundation, Scorsese has rescued and restored many important Asian films, including A Brighter Summer Day and The Housemaid. With Kundun (1997) Scorsese made his first Asian themed film, and the result is one of his emotionally resonant and moving films.

Kundun is a biopic about Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. The film explores the Dalai Lama’s life from his youth in Tibet up to his exile to India in 1959. Like Scorsese’s other spiritually themed films The Last Temptation of Christ and Silence, Kundun explores the topic of religious persecution. After the Communist government of China took over Tibet, atrocities against the Dalai Lama and his followers were committed, forcing the Dalai Lama to flee to India.

Throughout Kundun, Scorsese shows the struggles the Dalai Lama faced to maintain his practice of non-violent resistance. As the spiritual leader of his followers, the Dalai Lama has to protect his own people against the violent and oppressive actions of the Chinese invaders. Since the Dalai Lama obviously does not have access to a military or arms to defend himself, he tries at first to meet face to face with Mao Zedong to negotiate a peace deal.

This results in Mao furthering his prosecution of the Tibetan natives, and lecturing the Dalai Lama about how religion is poison. This is similar to the Japanese Inquisitor in Silence chastising Andrew Garfield’s Jesuit priest about how “the tree of Christianity withers in Japanese soil” because it has been poisoned. Indeed, both Kundun and Silence explore how peaceful protagonists confront and deal with oppressive, violent outside forces which view religion as something to be eliminated.

In a Scorsese gangster film, the protagonists naturally will counter violence with even more violent acts, resulting in a vicious circle of incessant death and destruction. Kundun is Scorsese’s first attempt to explore how one can fight violence with peaceful protest and compassion. Amidst the brutal oppression of his times, the Dalai Lama hopes that his example of compassionate resistance will result in peace.

We never see explicit depictions of the violence committed against the Tibetan people, except for one brief vision by the Dalai Lama of the corpses of his fellow monks. Instead, Scorsese fills Kundun with quiet but visually astounding imagery inspired by Buddhist philosophy, such as a breathtaking scene of an elaborate sand mandala being created and blown away. Kundun is an almost ethnographic exploration of the Dalai Lama’s culture, as Scorsese faithfully depicts the many rituals and traditions of the Tibetan people.

Throughout the film, Scorsese emphasizes the fragility of the Dalai Lama’s peaceful existence. The film’s earlier, more elegiac scenes of the Dalai Lama’s youth contrast with the more disruptive, frantic scenes of the Chinese army and government gradually infiltrating Tibet, such as an astonishing scene of the Chinese army marching ominously through the streets. This temporal nature of existence is emphasized throughout Kundun, as Scorsese is showing how life itself is transitory, and so are violence and suffering.

The last act of Kundun, as the Dalai Lama escapes to India, is an almost wordless sequence of events that depicts both the tragedy and ultimate hope of the Dalai Lama’s life. Just as he is about to cross the border into safety, he speaks these haunting words, “I think I am a reflection, like the moon on water. When you see me, and I try to be a good man, you see yourself.” Following the example of these words by the Dalai Lama, Scorsese emphasizes images of peace instead of violence in Kundun in the hopes of reflecting human nature’s deeper good.

FILM REVIEW: 6 UNDERGROUND

Many have stated that Michael Bay is the Antichrist, and that he is emblematic of all that is wrong with Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking. His latest assault on the senses, 6 Underground (2019), is not likely to change many people’s negative opinions about his infamous reputation as the master of cinema as mass destruction. With that being said, 6 Underground is so deliriously over the top in its very Michael Bayish nature that there’s almost something fiendishly enjoyable about it.

For a Michael Bay film, you really don’t need to provide a plot summary about them, since they’re essentially all about blowing expensive crap up, but I will provide one anyways. 6 Underground, not to be confused with Emir Kusturica’s masterpiece Underground or a film about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad, is about a wealthy entrepreneur known only as One (Ryan Reynolds), who fakes his own death so that he can go undercover with a covert group of operatives to take out the most evil people in the world. It would have been brilliant if their first target was Michael Bay himself, but that would be too self-reflective for Bay.

But, really, 6 Underground is about Michael Bay spending Netflix’s millions of dollars so that he can go on a coke-fueled rampage with all his usual tools: one dimensional macho male characters who live in a world where all the women are lingerie super models, lots of shots of cool looking people standing in front of sports cars, scenes where characters do things that are so illogical that you wonder how they could figure out how to get out of bed in the morning...you get the point. And yet, despite the grating Michael Bayish nature of it all, you simply can’t take your eyes away from the insane mayhem on screen.

The opening car chase sequence is so viscerally exciting and well-staged that for a minute you might think you’re watching a vintage John Frankeinhemer action film. Bay literally throws every car chase cliche in the book at you, and event comments on them in an almost satirical manner, such as when he slows the film down to have our protagonists purposefully narrowly avoid hitting a woman with a baby and a pair of puppies. Bay also shows civilians getting mowed down all over the place, which is in contrast to Hollywood’s usual convention of car chases where miraculously no pedestrians are hit. 

For a moment, you almost think Bay is making a film that is a deconstruction of Hollywood studio action film cliches, and then he’ll cut to a close-up shot of a woman’s rear end in a short skirt, and you remember that you’re still seeing a Michael Bay film. That is not to say that the other action set pieces in 6 Underground don’t live up to the opening sequence, because they surprisingly do. I don’t want to give away too much, but Bay stages an escape from a skyscraper in a manner that you have not seen before, and ends the film with a sequence involving a magnetized yacht that is almost surreal in its bonkers nature.

The best way to describe 6 Underground would be to call it an R-rated Looney Tunes cartoon. The frenzied and gravity defying action scenes almost recall the vibrant creativity of Frank Tashlin films like Son of Paleface and Who’s Minding The Store? However you want to define it as, an integral aspect of cinema is about the illusion of movement, from August and Louis Lumiere’s 1896 silent film The Arrival of a Train, which caused audiences to jump out of their seats because they thought the moving train on screen was real, to the frenetic action films of John Woo. I’m not saying Bay is as innovative as the Lumiere brothers or John Woo, but he is a highly skilled practitioner of depicting action film mayhem and destruction, and that is something that not everyone can execute successfully.

So, in summary, the question remains— is 6 Underground a good film? It all depends on how you define good. If you define good as being a film that is complex thematically and deals with deep philosophical issues, then 6 Underground is embarrassing. If you define good as a film that is entertaining and which knows how to keep the viewer involved in its elaborate action set pieces, then 6 Underground might be even better than good.

You can say what you will about Michael Bay being the most destructive force of nature to arrive on our planet since the invention of stinky tofu (which I personally like), but you can’t say that Michael Bay isn’t consistent in the very Michael Bayishness of his films. With 6 Underground, it feels like Michael Bay is taking all the criticism that has been thrown at him throughout his career, and purposefully amplifying it on a whole other level of Bayhem. Bay seems to live in a world that most of us don’t see, and that world may even be Hell, but at least he’s doing what he loves.

FILM REVIEW: PARASITE

Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite (2019) is like the wild and crazy evil twin of Hirokazu Koreeda’s Shoplifters. While both films deal with a family in poverty who resort to extreme measures to survive, their cinematic methods are polar opposites. While Shoplifters is a quiet and subtle film, Parasite is a rapidly paced and boisterous dark comedy/thriller. Koreeda makes more introspective arthouse family dramas, while Joon-ho is a practitioner of more audience friendly genre films; this is reflected in the drastically different approaches to the topic of class inequality in Parasite and Shoplifters.

Parasite is about a financially struggling family of con artists who infiltrate themselves into the lives of a wealthy family. Joon-ho’s regular leading man Song Kang-ho plays Kim Ki-taek, the father of the con artists, while Jang Hye-jin, Park So-dam, and Choi Woo-shik play the mother, daughter, and son, respectively. Lee Sun-kyun and Cho Yeo-jeong play Park Dong-ik and Choi Yeon-gyo respectively, the easily manipulated father and mother of the wealthy family. Parasite is best enjoyed with less revealed about the plot details, but it is essentially about a power struggle between the con artist Ki-taek family and the prosperous Dong-ik family.

In a way, Parasite is like Luis Bunuel’s parodies of class warfare as directed by Quentin Tarantino, as it mixes social commentary with homages to popular genre tropes and scenes of almost cartoonish violence. This is both a strength of the film and a drawback, as Joon-ho’s attempts at creating a deeper social examination of class inequality are not as well executed as his action/suspense set pieces. As expertly crafted as the thriller and suspense aspects of Parasite are, where it falls short on are its attempts at social criticism and character development.

The characters in Parasite, from the destitute yet noble Kim Ki-tek to the wealthy but elitist Park Dong-ik and Choi Yeon-gyo, never reach anything beyond one dimensional caricatures. Also, the social critique and analysis of class warfare never penetrates deeper than surface level generalities of the wealthy taking advantage of those less fortunate than them. Parasite aspires to be both a mass entertainment thriller, while at the same time being an examination of societal divisions, but it doesn’t offer a more nuanced portrayal of this issue as Koreeda’s Shoplifters did.

Joon-ho wants us to feel justified outrage for the crass materialism and insensitivity of the wealthy class, but he does so in an overly obvious and heavy-handed manner. We see scenes of the Dong-ik family wallowing in their material wealth and looking down upon those outside their class, but everything in Parasite is portrayed in a black and white good versus evil level, without any shades of grey or ambiguity. In addition, because Joon-ho didn’t take the time to develop his performances beyond caricatures, we don’t have enough emotional investment to care about the characters for the last act of the film to work effectively. Instead, the conclusion of Parasite, which takes a turn into soap-operish drama, feels long and drawn out and wallows in sentimentality.

With that being said, where Parasite excels at is Joon-ho’s masterful handling of action and suspense scenes. As revealed in his previous films, Joon-ho is an expert at creating tension in elaborately designed set pieces; he does so through ingenious staging of the actors and their movement relative to camera placement and angles. This is best illustrated in a nerve wracking scene where three members of the Ki-tek family hide from the Dong-ik family under a table. Through clever use of dialogue and incisive blocking, Joon-ho creates a master class in ratcheting up tension in a set piece that would have made Alfred Hitchcock proud.

Parasite is a nearly great film that is prevented from being a masterpiece through its wobbly character development and strained attempts at social criticism. Joon-ho is still relatively early in his career, with only eight films completed thus far, so he still has time to develop and hone his craft as a filmmaker. Spielberg, who Joon-ho resembles in many ways, also took some time to find the right balance between expertly crafted action/thriller sequences and deep, incisive social critique, so Joon-ho needs to continue to develop as a filmmaker. Once he does master his art, I am sure we will be seeing some groundbreaking and innovative films from Joon-ho.

FILM REVIEW: SILENCE

Martin Scorsese struggled for decades to adapt Shusaku Endo's 1966 novel Silence into a film, and the result is a dark, brutal, and powerful masterpiece about a man's struggle with his faith, in the face of almost unbearable suffering and persecution. Although I am not a particularly religious person, what I connected with in Silence (2016) is its depiction of someone whose faith in a transcendent force guides his every thought and action. This force can be "Jesus," or "Buddha," or "Allah," but what Scorsese is trying to portray is a belief in a higher force that allows us to transcend the darker, more destructive side of human nature. 

Set in the 17th century, Silence is the story of a mission by Portuguese Jesuit priests Sebastiao Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Francisco Garupe (Adam Driver) to find Father Cristovao Ferreira (Liam Neeson) in Japan, who has been rumored to have renounced his faith after being tortured.  Although they know that they are entering a country which at the time was targeting Christians with violent religious persecution, the two Jesuit priests nevertheless carry out their mission without hesitation.  In the process, the priests befriend a group of Japanese Christians, who practice their faith in secret under fear of being tortured and even killed.  Eventually, the two priests are captured by the Japanese, and Father Rodrigues' faith in a higher power is put to the ultimate test.

While the leads of Silence are the two Jesuit priests, Scorsese also gives equal time to the many Japanese actors in the film.  The standouts are Issey Ogata as the cruel and manipulative Inoue Masahige, Shinya Tsukamoto as the passionately devout Christian Mokichi, and Yosuke Kubozuka as the conniving and self-centered Kichijiro.  Shinya Tsukamoto gives a particularly powerful performance as a long-suffering Christian who is able to maintain his faith even under the cruelest forms of punishment.  Indeed, Silence is all about the struggle to maintain one's sanity and strength in the face of overwhelming brutality.  

Filmed in the verdant landscape of Taiwan, the natural scenery as shot by cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto is gorgeously rendered.  Scorsese contrasts the beauty of nature with the cruelty of the human world, and he doesn't flinch from showing us the bloody and brutal extents to which the Japanese inquisitors will go to torture and persecute the Jesuits priests and their fellow Japanese converts.  Silence continues Scorsese's examination of religious persecution, which he explored before in The Last Temptation of Christ and Kundun.  In this sense, Silence completes Scorsese's spiritual trilogy of films, with the connecting thread between the three films being a protagonist who struggles with keeping his faith in a world where the most atrocious and inhumane forms of destruction and violence exists.  

Although Silence is on its surface a religious film, its message of compassion for those who are suffering is a universal one.  Rodrigues is not only seeking to maintain his faith in a society that has outlawed it as a symbol of Western imperialism and control; he is ultimately seeking to transcend the cruelty and brutality of his time by not giving into his darker impulses to violently rebel against or physically attack those who are persecuting him.  Rodrigues is able to do this by never letting go of his faith in a higher power, which he views as a positive symbol of peace amidst a world filled with violence.  

Throughout the film, Rodrigues views his mission as one of bringing peace and love to those who are less fortunate than him; hence his willingness to take in the suffering Japanese villagers at the beginning of the film and allow them to practice their faith in peace.  If we take away the subject matter of Christianity and religion, we can also see Rodrigues as someone who views it as his life mission to be compassionate to all.

Indeed, throughout the film, Scorsese contrasts the more peaceful actions of Rodrigues with those of the inquisitors.  After one of the Japanese prisoners is horrifically beheaded for refusing to renounce his faith, Rodrigues gives forgiveness to another Japanese prisoner who is clearly a scoundrel and a liar.  Rodrigues sees the goodness in everyone as a guiding force in his life, while the inquisitors use violence and torture to maintain their worldview, much like the outlaw criminals in Scorsese's gangster films.

The use of physical forms of religious belief is displayed throughout Silence, in the form of Bressonian-like close-ups of hands in prayer, and various paintings and likenesses of Christ.  These physical manifestations of religious iconography are presented as forbidden symbols of spiritual expression in a wider society that forbids them.  Eventually, Rodrigues is forced to renounce his Christianity by stepping directly onto a likeness of Christ in an act of apostasy.  Interestingly enough, Rodrigues' struggles to communicate with God seem to stop after he steps on this physical form of religion.  Scorsese is showing how Rodrigues is finally able to transcend the outer realm of belief and internalize it into a deeper, spiritual inner world.  

Ultimately, Silence is a film about a man who struggles to maintain his faith in a benevolent, higher power amidst a world filled with death and destruction.  Scorsese shows us this struggle in masterfully directed scenes of betrayal and spiritual turmoil, but throughout Silence is a deep, unyielding belief in the goodness of humankind.  Without giving anything away, the last image of Silence shows Rodrigues literally holding onto a symbol of compassion and love, long after he has struggled with being able to outwardly reveal his faith in God. Scorsese's Silence shows us how even in the darkest of times, we should never let go of our better selves.  

FILM REVIEW: SHOPLIFTERS

Hirokazu Koreeda’s Shoplifters (2018) is a heartbreaking film about a loving yet dysfunctional family that has the emotional resonance and raw power of Italian neorealist classics like Bicycle Thieves and Bitter Rice. Like those films, Shoplifters takes an unflinching look at the lengths those living in poverty will go to survive. There is no easy resolution to the characters’ situations in Shoplifters, and Koreeda doesn’t shy away from showing how morally ambiguous at times his leads can be. By asking the audience to identify with characters whose actions can be criminal at times, Koreeda is forcing us to reckon with our value systems when it comes to our perceptions of what proper society should be like.

Shoplifters is the story of Osamu (Masaya Nakagawa) and his wife Nobuyo (Sakura Ando), the heads of a non-traditional family of outcasts from society. Osamu trains a young boy named Shota (Kairi Jo) to shoplift, which becomes their main source of sustenance. This surrogate family lives in a small shack that is owned by an elderly woman by the name of Hatsue (Karin Kiki), who survives off of her deceased husband’s pension. Also living with this family is Aki (Mayu Matsuoka), a young woman who works at a hostess club. After Osamu takes in a young girl one night to join the family, the existing fissures in this makeshift family begin to crack, culminating in a series of tragic occurrences.

By creating this eclectic family unit, Koreeda is asking us to consider what does a family mean? Although the family in Shoplifters is not wealthy and must struggle to get by, they are depicted in the first half of the film as being close-knit and happy with each other. Koreeda carefully weaves together intimate and touching scenes of this misfit family genuinely enjoying each other’s company, and expressing true love for one another.

Then, in the second half of the film, Koreeda pulls the rug out from under us, and forces us to question our perceptions about this family. Without giving anything away, the true nature of the family’s living arrangement is revealed, and the former veneer of domestic bliss is stripped away to reveal a more cynical and troubling reality. However, Koreeda carefully reveals how despite the questionable motivations for the formation of the family, what makes them a real family is the genuine love and strong bond they feel for each other.

Koreeda contrasts this family with the more cold and distant family of the girl they take in. Although the girl’s biological family is more prosperous,  there are hints that they are guilty of neglect and abuse towards her. Indeed, the innocence of the girl and the other child character in Shoplifters, Shota, form the moral compass of the film.

Although Shota is taught to shoplift by his surrogate father, he ultimately realizes the errors of his ways, and is the one who later forces the family to reconsider the legality of their lives. Like in his previous films, Koreeda uses youth as a metaphor for the optimism of the future, and as a counter example for the corruption of some members of older generations. Adults in Koreeda’s film are oftentimes depicted as being not aware of the needs and desires of their children, who are left to fend for themselves.

Just as bucolic and peaceful as the first half of Shoplifters is, the last act of the film is an emotionally devastating portrait of the surrogate family being torn apart. The emotional highlight of the film is an almost unbearably painful monologue by Nobuyo, as she tries to justify her actions and at the same time come to terms with her fate.

For Koreeda, the sins of the parents give way to an uncertain and yet hopeful future for the next generation. The makeshift family unit in Shoplifters was one filled with love and affection, and yet also shunned by the wider society which they had no chance of fitting into. Ultimately, Shoplifters is a plea for more compassion and understanding for those who exist on the margins of society.