2022 Blindspot Pick #2: The Road Home (1999)

Tags

Drama, Foreign, Romance

On foreign roads, I may be led,
No guarantees of food or bed;
I might be kept, a bitter pill,
By duty or against my will;
I may delay on land or foam,
But still I’ll know the way back home.

On dying hopes I may depend,
But they’ll be with me to the end.
For be it distance, sickness, wars
That separates my heart from yours,
I know no matter where I roam,
Our love remains my road back home.
___________________________

MPA rating: G

I would never have even heard of The Road Home if it hadn’t been suggested to me by fellow movie-loving blogger Chris of Movies and songs 365. Sorry it took years to finally put it on my Blindspot list as incentive, but a big thanks for the recommendation! With the exception of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Yi Yi, Chinese cinema is unexplored territory for me, and while action and wuxia are more likely to make a splash with western moviegoers, it’s nice to be reminded of low-key romantic dramas like The Road Home, which can be easily overlooked.

After his father dies, a young man (Sun Honglei) returns home to his rural village and widowed mother, who insists on a traditional on-foot procession to bring her husband’s body back home, since he died in a nearby city. While weighing whether to honor her logistically difficult request, the man reminisces about his parents’ well-known love story and how his mother Zhai Di (Zhang Ziyi of Crouching Tiger fame, in her first major role) first met his schoolteacher father Luo (Zheng Hao). In a creative choice also used in The Phantom of the Opera, the modern time period is presented in black-and-white while the flashbacks to 1950s China shift to bright color, showing how much more vivid Di’s memories are compared with her present-day grief.

The Road Home thrives on its simplicity and the nostalgia of young hearts fluttering after each other. Ziyi is luminous as the young Di, who longs for the village’s new schoolteacher and subtly finds ways to make her affection known. I would say there’s a bit too much of that distant flirting, with far too many repetitive shots of Di staring googly-eyed at her love, which eventually feel like padding for the already short runtime. Still, the performances are excellent, shifting from sentimentality to devoted worry when Luo is taken away by the Chinese government. The film’s real power comes at the end, though, when the impact of one rural schoolteacher on the community is made evident in a show of caring that would make Mr. Holland’s Opus proud.

The Road Home is perhaps too simple a tale to get much notice in a cinematic landscape crowded by superheroes and CGI space battles, but it’s a refreshingly human account of young love. As mentioned, some of the longing looks could have been edited out, and I rather wish we had gotten to see at least a little bit of the happy life that Di and Luo had together, instead of just its preface and epilogue. What we do see, though, is a warm and sweet reminder that our parents or grandparents loved deeply long before we came along.

Best line: (older Di, to her son) “Your father’s gone. He used to worry about you. Our children must leave home. We can’t keep you here forever. As parents, we let you go, but we never stopped worrying. Your father missed you so.”
(Yusheng, the son) “Please don’t cry.”
(Di) “With your father gone, it’s hard not to feel lonely.”
(Yusheng) “I know.”
(Di) “You must work hard and make a good life.”

Rank: List Runner-Up

© 2022 S.G. Liput
776 Followers and Counting

Drive My Car (2021)

Tags

Drama, Foreign

(Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was to write five answers to the same question, leaving it up to the reader to decide what question they answer.)

That I could catch her eye again,
Somewhat wiser than before,
And notice what she wore more.

That I could hold my hasty tongue
From its urge to disagree,
To help her in persuading me.

That I could catch her by surprise
And earn a smile unforeseen
And bask in sharing dopamine.

That I could hold her close once more
To compensate for every shrug
And drown my flaws in that one hug.

That I could part with my control
And sanction her to take the wheel,
Of both my car and how I feel.
__________________________

MPA rating:  Unrated (mostly PG-13-level content but some sex scenes bring it close to R)

Parasite certainly opened doors for other Asian imports to win over the Academy, since it would have been hard to imagine Drive My Car entering the race for Best Picture even a few years ago. A nearly three-hour meditation on grief, language, and regret, it is undoubtedly a “critic movie,” but one that would normally be resigned to the Best International Film category, which it did win at the most recent Oscars ceremony. While I would have preferred Tick, Tick …Boom! to take its place (or that of Don’t Look Up), something must have swayed the nominee voters, and indeed Drive My Car boasts a unique and indefinable poignance that is felt cumulatively rather than from any single scene.

Based on a few short stories by unconventional Japanese author Haruki Murakami, the actual events of the film could have fit into half the time but are extended by heavy conversations and a naturally unhurried pace. Yūsuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) is a theater director and actor known for putting on multilingual productions in which the actors speak different languages, all of which are shown as subtitles on a screen above the stage. After he discovers that his screenwriter wife (Reika Kirishima) is cheating on him, he comes home one night to find her dead of a sudden stroke. A couple years later, he visits Hiroshima to put on a production of the play Uncle Vanya by Chekhov, which includes a young actor (Masaki Okada) who he believes was his wife’s lover. While Kafuku is quite attached to his red 1987 Saab, he is required by contract to accept a driver, a young woman named Misaki Watari, with whom he develops a gradual bond of shared grief.

If someone were to ask what Drive My Car is about, I wouldn’t know exactly where to start. The description above is literally what it is about, yet it hardly captures the complex emotions on display, the pregnant pauses, the subtle assessments, the heady metaphors that live only in the eloquent soliloquies. Kafuku’s wife introduces a running narrative about a girl obsessed with a boy she likes, and the direction of that tale alone is loaded with potential interpretations while remaining rather opaque as well. Kafuku’s conversations with the actor who also loved his wife defy expectations with how one would expect rivals to regard each other, and the gentle, heartbreaking catharsis that Kafuku and Watari share near the end is too measured and serene to feel at all melodramatic or forced.

All that being said, this is a film that prioritizes subtlety and is not meant to be watched if you’re at all feeling sleepy. The whole first third of the film with his wife could have been left out (the opening credits don’t start until 41 minutes in), yet it provides some needed context when Kafuku listens to a tape of his wife’s voice so that he can practice his lines while Watari drives him. The actual play rehearsals are rather fascinating, pulling in Chekhov’s somber yet hopeful themes while humanizing the actors, including a mute woman who uses Korean sign language and shares an extremely understated yet moving “climax” of sorts with Kafuku during the performance of Uncle Vanya. There are also a host of shrewd details that film enthusiasts can pick apart, like the way the film’s setting of Hiroshima ties into its theme of lasting trauma.

I’m not necessarily against “critic movies” when they have a worthwhile story or execution, and here the execution and dialogue certainly overshadow the story. I can still appreciate and admire a long, acclaimed foreign drama, like 2000’s Yi Yi, for example, and Drive My Car is a film that becomes more than the sum of its parts. Restrained yet intellectually passionate, it’s a melancholy plunge into the depths of the human experience, and while not conventionally entertaining, those with patience will walk away with plenty to think about.

Best line: (Lee Yoon-a, performing from Uncle Vanya in sign language) “We’ll live through the long, long days, and through the long nights. We’ll patiently endure the trials that fate sends our way. Even if we can’t rest, we’ll continue to work for others both now and when we have grown old. And when our last hour comes, we’ll go quietly. And in the great beyond, we’ll say to Him that we suffered, that we cried, that life was hard. And God will have pity on us. Then you and I, we’ll see that bright, wonderful, dreamlike life before our eyes. We shall rejoice, and with tender smiles on our faces, we’ll look back on our current sorrow. And then at last, we shall rest. I believe it. I strongly believe it from the bottom of my heart. When that time comes, we shall rest.”

Rank:  List Runner-Up

© 2022 S.G. Liput
766 Followers and Counting

2021 Blindspot Pick #4: Shin Godzilla (2016)

Tags

Action, Drama, Foreign, Sci-fi

I’ve heard the most dangerous creature is man,
And I suppose that must be true.
We love coming up with formidable monsters
That threaten our whole point of view,
And somehow we manage to conquer the foe
And add to the others we slew.
So if such a creature did rampage and roar
We’ll have all this fiction to clue
Our panicking, delicate, desperate species
On what we should probably do.
______________________

MPA rating:  PG-13

Giant monsters and mech suits have long fascinated Japan and many a young boy, but I honestly have never been a big fan of the genre. In the past, I could attribute this to the poor quality of the old Godzilla movies with their laughable acting and near-visible zippers. Yet I also am not much enamored of modern effects extravaganzas like Transformers or the 2014 American version of Godzilla. There’s a fine line between spectacle and noise, and a human element worth caring about is an oft-overlooked necessity. So why did I add 2016’s Shin Godzilla to my Blindspot list? Well, not only did it win Japan’s equivalent of Best Picture but I’ve heard plenty of people sing its praises, calling it a more realistic take on the classic Godzilla story. And while I agree with that to a point, Godzilla is still Godzilla.

Directed by Hideaki Anno of Neon Genesis Evangelion fame, the film doesn’t waste much time before an underwater disturbance strikes Tokyo Bay, sending the Japanese government into a tizzy. One young cabinet member named Rando Yaguchi (Hiroki Hasegawa) is the first to suggest that a giant creature is the cause, and the way he is scoffed at before being proven correct makes it clear who the main character is amid all the cabinet meetings. Indeed, cabinet meetings are a notable fixture of the film as their bureaucratic hesitance contrasts sharply with the rampant destruction of a radioactive lizard. In this way, it certainly is more realistic, suggesting that a disaster of this scale and suddenness will already have wreaked its havoc by the time the government figures out what to do about it. Hope seems lost but for Yaguchi’s bold efforts leading a brain trust to develop an innovative way of stopping the monster once and for all, aided by an attractive envoy from the U.S. (Satomi Ishihara).

Shin Godzilla is effective in its satire of government inefficiencies, though its cabinet meetings grow tedious with repetition, but what of the creature itself? Unlike many Godzilla films where the monster pops out of the ocean fully formed, this version actually goes through several stages of rapid evolution, all of which leave destruction in their wake. I realize it’s unfair to compare Japan’s special effects with Hollywood’s, and the scenes of toppled buildings and flying rubble are top notch, but the Japanese effects do fall short in depicting the creature. Its snake-like first form especially is almost laughable with its googly-eyed stare, and while the later versions are more menacing and massive, I feel like Godzilla’s unblinking eyes still make it feel somewhat fake. That being said, the final battle to take out the giant is appropriately awe-inspiring in its scale, giving the humans a chance at heroism rather than just panicking and reacting.

Shin Godzilla (or Shin Gojira to use the famed monster’s Japanese name) can be translated as “New Godzilla,” and it indeed tries to start from scratch, doing away with any past films or the reinvention of the creature as some kind of protector fighting other monsters, which is the direction Hollywood took with the recent American films. While the film has its merits, I must admit I fail to see why it would warrant major awards attention, outside the technical categories. I suppose Godzilla just looms larger in the Japanese consciousness, especially since the film incorporates scenes that echo real-life Japanese tragedies like the 2011 earthquake and tsunami just as the original Godzilla films derived from concerns over nuclear fallout. Shin Godzilla may not reinvent the giant monster movie, but its satirical take on the genre makes it a worthwhile member that is far better than the days of men in rubber suits.

Best line: (one of the bureau directors) “Man is more frightening than Gojira.”

Rank:  Honorable Mention

© 2021 S.G. Liput
738 Followers and Counting

2020 Blindspot Pick #12: One Cut of the Dead (2017)

Tags

Comedy, Foreign, Horror

If actors in movies are merely fakes,
How do you manage to up the stakes?
How do you take the viewers’ slump
And get their blood to truly pump?
How do you take a film’s façade
And prove it’s more than just a fraud?

Reality! I’ve said it here;
It’s not enough to fake a tear,
To cry on cue, to feign a scream,
To cheapen what should be extreme.
I want a shark that really bites,
Real zombie hordes with appetites,
A true disaster caught on tape
From which the cast may not escape.

Alas, such things we can’t get at,
With contracts, laws, and things like that,
But if real danger should appear
Why not record the drama, fear,
Reality?! No thought for taste,
Let no disaster go to waste.
_______________________

MPA Rating:  Not Rated (probably R for bloody violence and F words in the subtitles, though there’s clear fakery to the gore)

At long last, I have reached the end of my 2020 Blindspot list, and once more I tap the trite but apt phrase “better late than never.” I didn’t intend to wrap up the list with this Japanese zombie film; it just happened to fall to last place, which only makes it even more surprising that it turned out to be my favorite of all the Blindspots from last year. In case there is doubt, I am typically averse to extreme violence in movies, so zombie flicks are far from my cup of tea. Yet I did love Train to Busan, and the 100% Rotten Tomatoes score for One Cut of the Dead gave me hope that this one might be something special. It is.

For starters, One Cut of the Dead is gleefully meta, being a film about the making of a film about people making a zombie film when real zombies appear. It is also the kind of film that is hard to talk about without giving too much away, but I’ll try to avoid spoilers. Director Higurashi (Takayuki Hamatsu) is trying to wring emotion out of his actors as they shoot an ultra-low-budget zombie flick in an abandoned factory. While the cast and crew grow weary of his demands, actual zombies suddenly appear, and he seizes the life-and-death situation to bring realism to his film, insisting on keeping the camera rolling as the undead move in.

That synopsis alone probably doesn’t seem particularly innovative, but let’s just say there’s more to it. The film’s most impressive achievement is that the first 37 minutes are all one long tracking shot with no cuts (a favorite technique of mine), following the characters from zombie chases to Higurashi’s sabotaging of their escape attempts. As impressive as this is, the film’s low-budget status is evident from the awkward pauses, stilted dialogue, and schlocky violence that largely stays off-screen, building into increasingly funny absurdity. Yet the rest of the movie adds so much more to the initial film within a film, providing context of what happened beforehand and what happened off-camera, making the proceedings even more hilarious, quirky, and (as strange as it may sound) heartwarming.

Modern comedies rarely hold a candle to the older classics, in my opinion, but I’ll admit that One Cut of the Dead had me grinning much more than I expected going in. What seems at first like a groan-worthy wannabe horror turns into a celebration of film and the enormous effort put into it, and I loved how even seemingly insignificant details were given amusing explanations as the story unfolded. Even the director’s name had me wondering if it was an oblique reference to the classic Higurashi horror series.

As much as I enjoyed the film, I wasn’t quite sure if it warranted placement on my list; then I found that there was actually a follow-up sequel of sorts from last year called One Cut of the Dead: Remote Mission, in which the same cast made a short film from their homes during COVID lockdown. Just revisiting the characters and their quirks made me smile all over again and confirmed to me that One Cut of the Dead should be List-Worthy. As a comedy masquerading as horror, its inventive plot, endearing characters, and brilliant execution make it an instant classic in my book.

Best line: (Higurashi’s wife) “Pom!”  (You’ll get it when you see it.)

Rank:  List-Worthy

© 2021 S.G. Liput
719 Followers and Counting

I Lost My Body (2019)

Tags

Animation, Drama, Fantasy, Foreign, Romance

A hand without a body or a man without a hand –
Which would be more piteous or prone to reprimand?
The hand is guiltless, lacking fault; its owner bears the blame
Of entering a situation liable to maim.
The hand is helpless, lacking mind; its owner bears the thought
That they may wish to clap and clasp two hands and yet cannot.
The hand is listless, lacking will; its owner bears the task
Of moving on and living life behind a fragile mask.

The former owner bears so much, yet his lot I’d prefer
Than that poor hand that cannot even know how things once were.
Pity the hand but love the stump and all to it attached.
At bouncing back from tragedy, we humans are unmatched.
____________________________

Rating: TV-MA (should be PG-13)

I take the Best Animated Feature Oscar perhaps more seriously than others do. After superb anime films like Your Name or Maquia have been spurned in recent years, I take notice when the Academy deems other foreign films worthy of the honor of nomination. The seventh French production to earn such a nomination was last year’s I Lost My Body, a strangely poetic meditation on loss that happens to involve a severed hand.

At first, we don’t know how the severed hand came to be, though; the film starts out with the appendage “waking up” in the macabre fridge of a hospital and figuring out how to walk and jump with its fingers, like a more mobile Thing from The Addams Family. Cut then to the past and sullen pizza delivery guy Naoufel (Dev Patel in the quite good English dub), whose childhood of joy and trauma is recounted in flashback throughout the film. In failing to deliver a pizza, he becomes acquainted with a librarian named Gabrielle (Alia Shawkat) and takes up a job as a woodworker to get closer to her. Edited into this more grounded story, Naoufel’s future hand (which is evident from a scar they both have) makes its way across Paris in search of its owner.

It’s hard to call any movie about an animate severed hand anything but strange and morbid, but I Lost My Body treats it as an extended metaphor, which, as I said before, grows surprisingly poetic, heightened by a memorably haunting score. The close calls of the hand’s travels across a dangerous urban landscape provide thrilling visuals, while Naoufel’s struggles offer bittersweet human drama. Naturally, the film’s ultimate lead-up is to how the hand and its owner were separated, which is both cringeworthy and deeply symbolic.As an art film that happens to be animated, I Lost My Body’s main drawback for me is how open-ended it is, not offering much closure beyond what viewers choose to interpret. What does the hand represent? It’s up to you, I suppose. At one point, Naoufel is criticized for not knowing another character is sick and accused of not truly caring; the film never mentions it again, so I guess the film doesn’t care much either. Despite this, I’ve often said that I enjoy animations that can delve into mature themes without wallowing in mature content, and I Lost My Body fits that laudable mold. Amid last year’s nominations, Missing Link was the weak link that should have been replaced last year, preferably with Weathering with You; while imperfect, I Lost My Body is a worthy nominee.

Best line: (Gabrielle) “Once you’ve dribbled past fate, what do you do?”
(Naoufel) “You try to keep away from it. You run blindly… and keep your fingers crossed.”

 

Rank: List Runner-Up

 

© 2020 S.G. Liput
697 Followers and Counting

 

The Wandering Earth (2019)

Tags

Action, Drama, Foreign, Netflix, Sci-fi, Thriller

(Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was to write about items gathered during a walk. In my house, I latched onto a nearby globe and decided to write about the planet at large, even though the film is more about disaster than discovery.)

What ancient cartographer could have imagined
A world as small as this?
Back then, the maps ended without a true edge
In blurry oblivion. One would allege
A brand new discovery, and they would wedge
The new land upon the abyss.

And now we know everything, satellite-view;
No land is left to miss.
But now we look upward and see a frontier,
More blurry oblivion. Scorning the fear,
We still must endeavor to find what’s not here.
We just can’t abide an abyss.
___________________________

MPA rating: TV-MA (it’s a PG-13-level movie, but the English subtitles have more F words than the original Chinese for some reason)

When you think of Chinese films, science fiction isn’t a genre that immediately comes to mind, but The Wandering Earth might change that. Based on a 2000 novella and released through Netflix outside of China, this big-budget blockbuster is like Asia’s answer to Michael Bay, a solar-system-spanning disaster flick that is just over-the-top enough to work.

Anyone remember the Spongebob episode with the Alaskan bull worm threatening the town, where Patrick says they should just take Bikini Bottom and push it someplace else? Well, that’s the brilliant idea the future world leaders in this film came up with to escape an expanding sun. Studding the earth’s surface with enormous rocket engines, they push the planet out of its orbit toward a safer system while most of the population retreats underground to escape the freezing surface. Years into the journey, the roaming planet gets caught in Jupiter’s gravity, forcing young adult Liu Qi (Chuxiao Qu), his sister, and their accomplices to fix one of the failing engines and save the world, while his father (Jing Wu) on a space station tries to do the same.

With tiny people causing planet-level effects, everything in The Wandering Earth is on such a humongous scale that even its semi-plausible elements seem utterly ridiculous, yet the earnestness of the characters and coolness of the visuals make the suspension of disbelief possible. In creating China’s first big sci-fi movie, the filmmakers certainly went all out with their emulation of similar Hollywood blockbusters: collapsing ice towers, a single-minded AI to fight, huge explosions, questions about saving the many vs. the few, last-minute heroics and touching sacrifices.

There’s a reason it made $700 million, making it the third highest-grossing non-English film ever. (Netflix has an English dub, but I’d only watch it if you absolutely can’t stand subtitles or want fewer obscenities.) I don’t know how the current pandemic will affect China’s film industry, but The Wandering Earth is proof that it can compete with Hollywood on special-effects extravaganzas. I wouldn’t say it’s better than films like Armageddon or Sunshine, but it’s certainly bigger.

 

Rank: List Runner-Up

 

© 2020 S.G. Liput
679 Followers and Counting

Parasite (2019)

Tags

Drama, Foreign, Thriller

We take what we can when a chance is in reach.
‘Tis not a behavior we humans must teach.
We covet and crave and we grasp and we use,
And somehow find ways to ignore and excuse.

And many believe some are worse than the rest,
More prone to wrongdoing, more quick to detest,
And common it is to believe that such foes
Are less than a human, the lowest of lows.

Yet sins such as these are not tied to one class,
One race or one creed or one crowd to harass.
We humans are kindred, for better or worse,
And vice is the same in a world this diverse.
______________________

MPA rating: R (for language, violence, and sensuality)

My mind has been ruminating over Parasite ever since I saw it in the theater three weeks ago, trying to decide what exactly I think about it. After hearing people gush over this obscure Korean film that was becoming increasingly less obscure, I was surprised and curious when it managed to snag a Best Picture nomination. It was the last nominee I saw in the theater this time around, and I liked it well enough. Yet in the days that followed, my opinion of it kept edging higher, its layers of meaning and metaphor being peeled away in my head. And then, lo and behold, it went from dark horse to Best Picture winner at the Oscars, the first non-English-language film to do so!

The Kims are a lower-class family of four struggling financially, doing what they can to make ends meet. When son Ki-woo gets an opportunity to tutor the daughter of the affluent Park family, he jumps at the chance, even though he must lie about his credentials as a university student. Soon, his self-justified fib morphs into an ongoing plot to provide his whole family with jobs in the Park household:  his sister as an art therapist, his father as a chauffeur, and his mother as the housekeeper. Their scheme goes well at first until things begin to unravel as untruths and unkindnesses pile upon each other.

I’ve been trying to pin down why Parasite is so critically beloved, at least in terms of its cinematic style. In some ways, it’s like the Korean equivalent of Jordan Peele’s Get Out, its thriller elements leavened by occasional humor and underscored by a potent social message. But I think the best and most flattering analogy is that it is a mixture of Hitchcock (exploration of human nature’s dark side, methodical direction) and Shakespeare (fits of mania, mistakes leading to disastrous consequences), both critical darlings themselves. Bong Joon-ho made history winning Best Picture, Director, and International Film at the Oscars, and, although a part of me considers it potentially a politically correct choice, I can’t deny that it’s deserving.

With public opinion increasingly turning against the rich, Parasite feels like the right film at the right time to earn its acclaim, and the stark class divide in South Korea also makes its story work best in its Korean setting, making me hesitant about the upcoming American remake. Yet there’s a balancing act at play as well, in which neither the poor Kims nor the wealthy Parks are pigeonholed as good or bad. There are sympathy and blame to go around, deceit and a distinct lack of empathy at work in them both, as well as other characters I won’t spoil. At one point, while reveling in the Parks’ home while they are away, the Kim matriarch declares, “If I had all this, I would be kinder,” yet within minutes, she is offered a choice between harshness and mercy and chooses poorly. From themes of escalating class rage to man’s knack for long-term shortsightedness, the plot is replete with subtlety yet remains entertaining as it embodies the saying, “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”

Typically, I know my own opinion of a film by the time it ends or within a day or two if it bears rumination, so it’s a rare thing when my opinion continually goes up for reasons unknown. I still consider 1917 to be a more technically impressive film that I enjoyed more (and Sam Mendes definitely should have won Best Director IMO), but, despite my mild disappointment when Parasite won Best Picture, I’m okay with its win. I’m still not a huge fan of its violent climax, but I can’t help but admire Bong Joon-ho’s cinematic craft, from the brilliant bewilderment of its central twist to the setting and composition of the Park home, which deserves a place among notable houses in film.

Parasite is proof of the director’s memorable line from his Golden Globe acceptance speech: “Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.” Even if it’s not destined to be a personal favorite of mine, this is not just a quality Korean import but a quality film, period. For me at least, Parasite attaches itself too strongly to ignore.

Best line: (Kim Ki-taek, the father, referring to the Parks) “They are rich but still nice.” (Kim Chung-sook, the mother) “They are nice because they are rich.”

 

Rank: List Runner-Up (though it comes closer to List-Worthy than I expected)

 

© 2020 S.G. Liput
662 Followers and Counting

 

Under the Shadow (2016)

Tags

Foreign, Horror, Thriller

The night is black,
A bleak throwback
To when the world was without shape.
A shadow shifts,
The darkness drifts
And snares your eye with no escape.

You crane your neck
To merely check
That all is well outside your bed.
And pray no face
Or graver case
Will give you reason for your dread.
________________

MPAA rating: PG-13

I’m not really into horror generally, but it’s become something of a tradition for me to watch a scary movie alone at night, just to review it for Halloween. Like The Conjuring, The Babadook, and Lights Out in years past, I decided to check out an acclaimed creepfest that focuses more on atmospheric tension rather than gross-out gore. This time, though, I went outside the English-speaking world to watch Under the Shadow, a Persian-language horror (with a 99% on Rotten Tomatoes) set in 1980s Tehran.

Of course, 1980s Tehran wasn’t the best place to be, especially during the increasingly frequent bombings of the Iran-Iraq War. It’s already a tense setting, as the inhabitants of an apartment building must head downstairs into the basement at the sound of bomb sirens, much to the chagrin of mother Shideh (Narges Rashidi) and her daughter Dorsa (Avin Manshadi). Disgruntled by her country’s rigid decrees keeping her from becoming a doctor, Shideh is further unsettled when her husband is sent off to war, and as strange events start to occur late at night, she wonders if there is indeed something haunting her family.

In many ways, Under the Shadow is exactly the kind of horror movie I like, with a creeping dread serving as the main source of fear, knowing that something could happen at any moment and jumping out of your skin when it occasionally does. There’s zero blood on display, and it doesn’t need it. While it taps into the mythology of malevolent air spirits or djinns, it’s surprising how well the frights work when they stem from what is essentially the most minimalist ghost, a floating sheet (technically a chador, a Persian women’s cloak). The uncanny fear conjured by its sudden appearances is potent stuff.

However, there’s nothing especially notable about the story itself, aside from its unique cultural setting, which is itself a danger, since Shideh can be punished for even fleeing her home without a head covering. Yet the plot isn’t too far from that of The Amityville Horror, and the mother/child dynamic, while showing growth, has been done with better closure elsewhere. Even so, Under the Shadow provided exactly what I look for in a scary movie, while excluding what I avoid in the genre. Well-acted with a slow-burn anxiety, it’s an excellent addition to my Halloween reserve, even if it’s made me look over my shoulder more often than before.

 

Rank: List Runner-Up

 

© 2019 S.G. Liput
652 Followers and Counting

 

Chicken with Plums (2011)

Tags

Drama, Fantasy, Foreign, Romance

(Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was for a mournful elegy about the physical rather than the abstract. Thus, I focused on the everyday grief that doesn’t always make itself visible.)

I grieve every day but don’t show it.
None see it, of course, but I do.
No moistened eyelashes,
No sackcloth and ashes,
It’s deeper and yet no less true.

I grieve in the taste of the chicken
That never tastes quite like it did
When Mother would heighten
My senses and brighten
My day with the lift of a lid.

I grieve at the sound of the classics,
The ones that my father proclaimed
Were better by far
Than the modern songs are,
To which I agreed or was shamed.

I grieve at the touch of an afghan,
Hand-knitted with love in each thread.
Its knots and defects
Made the knitter perplexed,
But now they are precious instead.

I grieve where the world in its hurry
Has left things of value behind.
Don’t doubt I’m sincere
If I don’t shed a tear;
They moisten my heart and my mind.
___________________

MPAA rating: PG-13

It was three years ago this very month that I reviewed Marjane Satrapi’s animated drama Persepolis as part of NaPoWriMo. That film was such a refreshingly unique experience that I knew I had to check out her next film, which, like Persepolis, was also based off her own graphic novel. Chicken with Plums may not be animated, but its similarity of style is equally praiseworthy, just on a far less consistent level than its predecessor.

Told in French and set in 1950s Iran, Chicken with Plums is the story of a man who decides to die. After his critical wife (Maria de Medeiros) smashes his beloved violin, the famed concert pianist Nasser-Ali (Mathieu Amalric) loses his will to live, lying in bed awaiting death and dreaming of the past and future. The narrative is far from linear, interspersed with subjective thoughts of how his children will grow up, memories of his success, and bizarre fantasies (hugging a giant pair of breasts, for example). It’s a weird mix as the tone swings wildly from obnoxious slapstick to pensive reminiscences, and not all of it works.

However, what does work is outstanding, at least on a visual level. The settings and overall aesthetic have the dated, magical aura of yesteryear, with a carefully crafted artistry that I could compare to that of Wes Anderson if he had half the idiosyncrasies. Satrapi’s vision of 1950s Iran oddly has the look and feel of Europe, reminding us how western-leaning the nation was before the Revolution, as detailed in Persepolis. And the acting is certainly on point, with Amalric of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly fame once more proving his thespian skill.

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of Chicken with Plums up until the ending, where the story takes a sublimely bittersweet turn that is crushing in its emotional resonance. It’s a rare and beautiful melancholy replete with the story’s themes of music, heartache, and loss; it may not quite fit with many parts of the film but still ended it on a high note of poignancy.

Best line:  (Nasser-Ali’s music teacher, speaking of his initial music) “Sounds come out. But it is empty. It is barren. It is nothing. Life is a breath; life is a sigh. It is this sigh that you must seize.”

 

Rank: Honorable Mention

 

© 2019 S.G. Liput
626 Followers and Counting

 

I Am Dragon (2015)

Tags

Drama, Fantasy, Foreign, Romance

(Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was to present “a scene from an unusual point of view.” Thus, I took the fairy tale terror of a dragon carrying off a young maiden and provided the dragon’s angle.)

I am the dragon, the lizard of lore,
So hated and feared by mankind.
From the sky do I hunt,
And I take what I want
From the men who wince under my roar.
From the day that I hatched,
I’ve had power unmatched,
A monster by nature designed.

Now in my talons, I carry a girl,
Flown higher than humans would dare.
I made my attack
With the thought of a snack
And escaped with my prize in a whirl.
Her kin now must mourn,
For their cold-blooded thorn
Has taken her back to his lair.

Gladly, I’d deem her my prey to devour,
As dragons by nature must do,
And yet in her face
Is a vestige, a trace
Of a feeling confronting my power.
No man is my match,
But this woman I catch
Offers something I cannot subdue.
_______________________

MPAA rating: Not Rated (could be PG, maybe more PG-13)

It’s rare that a film feels like a fairy tale, not just a Hollywood version of one but an original fairy tale with its roots firmly planted in romance and the fantasy culture of a nation. In the case of I Am Dragon (or He’s a Dragon), that nation is Russia. Based on the Russian novel The Ritual, the result is a film that tows the line between epic and sappy but is beautifully mounted and appealingly dignified compared with what I imagine a Hollywood version might look like.

A prologue explains how a dragon once terrorized a medieval village, carrying away the innocent maidens offered to him as sacrifices until the day a hero slew the beast. Fast forward then to the arranged wedding of free-spirited Princess Miroslava (Maria Poezzhaeva), or Mira, who is none too thrilled with her appointed husband. In a case of unwise history-rebranding, someone thought it would be a good idea to use the old dragon-summoning song during the ceremony, and everyone is shocked when the dragon reappears to carry Mira away. Mira soon awakens on the dragon’s remote island lair, where a handsome young man she names Arman (Matvey Lykov) proves to be a charming but conflicted host.

I won’t say any “spoilers” outright, but as you can probably surmise from my description, this is like a Russian version of Beauty and the Beast, with some very clear echoes to the Disney version of events. However, with a dragon taking the place of the Beast and an almost Game of Thrones-style aesthetic, it’s a successful variation of the familiar tale, which is also leagues better than Disney’s cringe-worthy live-action version.

As for the romance, there’s certainly chemistry between Mira and Arman, the former headstrong and adventurous, the latter self-loathing and in need of love. The island setting, though, along with Arman’s perpetually shirtless self does make the romantic scenes feel like something out of a Harlequin novel, albeit one with surprisingly grand production values, atmospheric music, and impressive CGI. (I even included the above image from this film in the top right picture of my fantasy banner.)

It really depends on your capacity for potentially mawkish love stories, but for me, I Am Dragon had enough high fantasy to outweigh the few corny moments, and the romance was still engaging and carried weight while thankfully keeping things PG for the most part. I’m glad to have stumbled upon this admirable fantasy, which makes me think that little-known Russian cinema can hold its own against Hollywood’s more publicized output.

 

Rank: List Runner-Up

 

© 2019 S.G. Liput
626 Followers and Counting