White Material (2009)

The workers have reluctantly agreed to help. Five days at a coffee plantation as violent conflict happens. An unnamed African country. Rebel soldiers and the military fighting. The French colonialists have withdrawn, only Isabelle Huppert’s character stubbornly staying behind for a business that she married into. One more yield before they pack up and leave. Regular employees have left, fearing for their safety. The new workers have been promised money, and Huppert shows them to their quarters. The water pump is over there, there’s a wheelbarrow of supplies and a torch is handed to one of the men. The light spotlights little more than dirty mattresses in the room. This is all they can expect. They look on hesitantly.

A great scene in director Claire Denis’ White Material (2009), showing the exploitation of Huppert’s character, or just the unthinking treatment of her employees. Despite the violence in the air, the threat amassing around the gates of the coffee plantation, this is what they get. What more would they expect? White Material observes Huppert going on her rounds, doing everything she can to make the business run despite the social upheaval. We follow Huppert but the film is meditative and observant, considering and critically eyeing the colonial legacy of the white industrialists. Chickens coming home to roost. When the violence happens, there is impact in the framing and editing; Denis and her collaborators are not sensationalist, and death can be sudden, with or without warning. A knife draw on a sleeping child soldier. Workers shot down without hesitation.

Huppert is magnetic underneath the observant gaze of the camera. It’s lovely to see Christopher Lambert in a dramatic role like this, as her ex-husband, more concerned about the oncoming danger. Regular collaborators of Denis appear such as Michel Subor as the sickly father, the original manager of the plantation, and Isaac De Bankole as a wounded rebel leader on the run. Score by Tindersticks once again.

Available on Mubi (US) and Tubi (US). Recommended.

I Do Not Care If We Go Down In History As Barbarians (2018)

I was a fan of Romanian director Radu Jude’s Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, and was reading recent interviews with him about his next film doing the festival rounds. This compelled me to track down some of his earlier films, and the only one available on SBS On Demand is I Do Not Care If We Go Down In History As Barbarians (2018). The title is a quote from Romanian Minister Mihai Antonescu in reference to his approval of ethnic cleansing of Jews and Roma in Odesa during World War II; the title is even quoted directly to camera at one point as an actor recites the larger speech it’s from. Jude clearly wants to draw attention to the event, and not let it be forgotten – but his self-reflexive approach also deconstructs and playfully debates the idea of using art to make such political commentary.

The film is a contemporary satire where a film director Mariana (played by Ioana Iacob) is organising a piece of public art about the Odessa massacre sponsored by the art council. To the council organisers, it’s a military re-enactment to commemorate the soldiers, but to Mariana, the plan is to re-create the massacre of the Jews to highlight this uncomfortable war crime in the country’s past, out on a parking lot in front of the Royal Palace of Bucharest.

Similar to Bad Luck Banging, this film functions like a Godardian essay following characters as they wander through the military museum, or outside amongst the tanks and actors rehearsing, often observing discussions and debates about the theatrical production. Incorporated throughout are texts, from historical photos and films, some of which are of actual wartime atrocities, nationally produced films produced under Communist rule, and even reading out quotes from books – historical observers, philosophers, deep thinkers – referring to the events or ideas around depicting the truth. The film highlights this dark historical event to counter and critique blind nationalism, yet is also ambivalent and often critical about the impact of spectacle, and how it is received. Adding to the film’s effect is the sense of dry humour, and jokes throughout, mainly in the way characters act and react to what they are planning.

Iacob is great as the headstrong director, marching through crowds and arguing with the actors, and most engagingly the slyly laidback artistic director played by Alexandru Dabija (another great performance) who requests her to change the focus of the recreation. It’s an uneasy movie, but I found it funny and thoughtful while being unsettling and deconstructionist. While I may not have understood or known all of the references to Romanian history and politics, it feels comparable to any country where the national focus is on heroes and sacrifice, rather than owning up to state-sponsored massacres. I am keen to see Jude’s next film, and some of his earlier work. I appreciate his messy approach, bringing things together to create discussion and often using meta-techniques to distance emotional effect. Recommended.

Transit (2018)

Transit (2018) is the third film I’ve watched of German director Christian Petzold and at this point, I have to say that I’m a fan. There is something very direct about Petzold’s filmmaking style, it is not too showy or over-the-top; there’s a degree of elegance, though for some it might also be close to being prosaic. What Petzold and his collaborators have pulled off in Transit seems straight forward but is actually something of a magic trick, particularly the ways in which it could have failed or been overstated. Adapting Anna Seghers 1934 novel about refugees in hiding during German occupation of France in World War II, the specifics of people trying to escape Marseilles as the German army invades has been reasserted into a contemporary context. There is no unnecessary detail or parallel universe details here. The costuming and hairstyling at certain points may refer back to the 1940s context of the novel, but the events in the world of the film transpire in today’s world; the signifying threat being metro Police in modern day tactical gear. One inspiration I’ve read Petzold cite was Chantal Akerman’s Portrait Of A Young Girl, and telling a 1969 story within the clearly visible 1990s location shooting. Here, the plight of war and the refugee experience blurs the past and the present. All of this takes place in the background while the story is centred around its characters. Our major entry point is Georg (Franz Rogowoski) who is in hiding and relies on a support network who all live in fear with the encroaching “spring cleaning”. When Georg is tasked to deliver letters to a famous writer, Franz Wiedel, in a hotel, he discovers that the writer has killed themselves. Smuggling himself to Marseilles in the hope of obtaining a “transit” to Mexico, Georg takes the writer’s belongings and inevitably takes over his identity when an opportunity of passage due to the writer’s status presents itself. While in Marseilles, Georg’s loneliness finds himself drawn to a make-shift family unit – the wife and child of a dead comrade – who he becomes friends with, and the wandering figure of the writer’s wife, Marie (Paula Beer), unaware that the husband who she left is dead and that Georg is now using his identity. There are thematic parallels to a previous Petzold movie I’ve watched, Phoenix, and this film also takes in people’s movements and their presence against space, often in daylight. I became quite absorbed by Transit, particularly due to Rogowoski’s soulful performance in the lead, and the connection he has with Beer (they also starred as lovers in Petzold’s next film, Undine). I also responded to the use of narration by an outside observer (Matthias Brandt) and the plaintive score is provided by Stefan Will. Available to stream on Mubi and iTunes. Recommended.

Zeros And Ones (2021)

I wonder what viewers not familiar with director Abel Ferrara’s work would make of Zeros And Ones (2021). “From the director of King Of New York and Bad Lieutenant” is advertised in marketing and trailers, but this film has more in common with his later works like New Rose Hotel, Mary and 4:44 Last Day On Earth. All of these Ferrara productions exist in a fog between artiness and amateurism, themes hashed out across strongly dramatic scenes and sketchy digressions. In Zeros And Ones, we follow a soldier in dystopian Rome, J.J. (Hawke), and from the empty city streets, you can tell this was basically filmed during the COVID pandemic, masks and temperature checks are also part of the on-screen world. Searching for his twin brother (also Hawke), an activist in possible connection with a terrorist plot to blow up the Vatican, the dual roles allows Hawke to play both sullenly moody (the soldier) and loudly polemic (the revolutionary). It’s a murky movie both visually and story-wise. I guess that’s part of the point though with how political allegiances change and larger, and shadowy forces leave individuals on the ground twisting in the wind. This is a spy thriller the way New Rose Hotel was a cyberpunk movie by which it doesn’t satisfy any standard genre conventions. Sean Price Williams is the cinematographer (Good Time, Her Smell) and applies his digital aesthetic to the nocturnal empty streets and dimly lit interiors; it’s also embedded in the movie’s themes with Hawke as a soldier carrying around a digital camera as well as a gun, and the act of recording and observance becomes part of the film’s style. Several moments feel like digital art, a grainy aesthetic of surveillance. Of course, it’s all a bit pretentious, and often gets goofy (at one point the soldier is held at gun point to impregnate another agent played by Ferrara’s wife, Cristina Chiriac). Powering through it is an excellent prog-rock score by Ferrara collaborator Joe Delia which adds considerably to the dystopian atmosphere and mood. Your mileage will vary on your tolerance for Ferrara and Hawke in post-First Reformed mode. I was into it, particularly being taken off-guard by its concluding sequence, which despite being anti-climatic has a clear visual and thematic point. Bookended by Hawke as himself talking to the camera about the movie (a technique Ferrara used in Welcome To New York), the breaking of the fourth wall weirdly gives it a sense of closure that the story might not have had on its own. Available to rent/purchase on iTunes and on DVD. Recommended for the Ferrara-heads out there.

Godzilla (1954)

I have this vague memory as a kid, reading that the original Godzilla (1954; aka Gojira) was on SBS during the day, maybe a weekend, and trying to watch it, feeling bored by the black and white footage and tired of waiting for the monster to show up. How wrong I was. Watching Godzilla in its entirety for the first time – another notch on the belt of the movies I haven’t seen from Danny Peary’s book Cult Movies 2 – I was amazed by how quick the pace was. In comparison to the recent American versions, overburdened with exposition and unnecessary characters that feel stretched at over two hours, the original movie just clips along. Ships have gone missing out in a mysterious spot within the oceans near Japan. Families are distraught and the government is clueless. Only a small fishing island reveals the mighty Godzilla’s emergence, a reptilian creature unearthed from deep in the sea by H-bomb testing. Generally considered the first kaiju movie, Godzilla has a broadly stated metaphor of the nuclear devastation wrought on Japan at the end of WWII, the references to the war and the melancholy moments involving war veterans and survivors give the movie depth and historical currency. Even though it might be a big puppet and an actor in a suit, Godzilla is an unstoppable disaster – not the people’s hero of later movies – and there’s a darkness to the night scenes, the gigantic monster lit by tank fire and explosions, presiding over a city on fire. Watching it now, it was also great to now recognise Takashi Shimura (from Akira Kurosawa films) as the zoologist who wants to study Godzilla. With monster movies I always wonder why would we care about the human characters? But I cared about Shimura’s distraught face as people intend to destroy this creature rather than learn from it. I also loved Dr Serizawa (as played by Akihiko Hirata) and his striking eyepatch look; his mysterious character holds a key to humanity’s salvation while also reenacting the ethical crisis of the scientist who might create another weapon for humans to destroy themselves with. And the main theme by composer Akira Ifukube is still such a killer piece of music. Directed by Ishiro Honda and visual effects by Eiji Tsuburaya. Streamed on the Criterion Channel. A delight. Recommended.