The Sun Witnesses the Constant War

I Saw the Sun (Günesi Gördüm)

Mahsun Kırmızıgü

Turkey

2009

Turkey has always been a strange place. I mean compared to USA, Japan, UK, France, and Spain, I know much less about the country.  All I know is that Istanbul is its capital city, and that majority of Turks are Muslims and that it is located at the end of Asia almost near Europe. Seeing a movie from a foreign country for the first time is like visiting it for the first time. Difference between visiting through a film is that you will not see the country in its most arrogant edifices, recreations, and weather, instead you will meet its people and you will gain knowledge of what is inside them, be it good or bad, likeable or dislikeable, true or false. The film is one of the best movies I have ever watched. If this is the first Turkish movie I’ve seen, then I can’t wait to see a dozen more. Turks just made me realize how Hollywood gets so pathetic and way beyond overrated.

            At the opening of the film, a message from Che Guevarra is projected, something like--Above all, try always to be able to feel deeply any injustice committed against any person in any part of the world. This gave me the idea that this film is greatly universal, ubiquitous in a sense. “I Saw the Sun”, is a story of a family who are forced to live their homeland mountain because of the civil war going on. In the city, Istanbul, they struggle to live as normal as possible but each one of them realizes that the war didn’t leave them, rather it just transformed itself into something we can call a societal war. Generally the film is about brotherhood, and why brothers kill each other—a narrative template of all civil war films, and which parallels the civil war we have here in the Philippines between our Muslim brothers in Mindanao. The film answers that question—it is from beneath (of us).  We kill each other in many ways, whether we mean it or not, whether we are related by blood or not, whether we are bad or not. “I Saw the Sun” swept me off my feet by its unrelenting take about the globally and historically collective humanity that has never been vivid in anyone’s understanding.

            The film has a lot of characters and the first challenge for me is to distinguish one from another especially when foreign people seen for the first time usually have to look the same, and the names Ramo, Mamo, Kado, Berat, Ahmet and Havar are like Turkish counterparts of Peter Piper tongue twister. But what makes it brilliant is that the many characters have conferred a reservoir of experience so huge that mirrors the universality of the film’s theme. “I Saw the Sun” became a great film because it is not a worldwide social-issued film pretending to be one. The film has been so authentic and even exotic all throughout. Second level of its decency is that no matter where these many established characters go they all lead to the same adjoining conclusion that people are always in a war and that as of now its defeat still remains to be very elusive. The sentimental togetherness of a Turkish family is an ingredient that automatically makes us understand how this group of people is spiritually connected to their homeland and that it is where they are supposed to spend the rest of their days. Even until they move to an industrialized Istanbul or even to the European cities of Denmark and Norway, you will still feel the alienation.

            Brothers kill brothers, from the early scene where Davut’s two sons Berat and Ahmet where on two opposing sides—the guerrillas and the Army, we know that the film will be haunted by this premise. And the haunting has been incredibly intelligent, that will make “I Saw the Sun”, one of the most honest and bravest films of all time. Three brothers, Ramo, Mamo, Kadi, together with their father, Ramo’s wife, and six children are adjusting to their life in the city of Istanbul. The conflict between Ramo and Mamo is nought, but Mamo has a stern despise to their queer brother Kadi, who later on transforms herself into a bisexual, though Mamo is more accepting of their brother. Mamo kills Kadi in a very powerful scene . In a deserted bridge, Mamo points a gun to the female-dressed Kadi. The transvestite takes off her clothes, wig, crying and ready to die, as she pulls up a local flower she picked the day they left their native. According to the conversation Kadi had with a transvestite friend, the flower grows every winter and once it sees the suns, it simply withers up and dies. Kadi believes that the flower is in love with the sun. Mamo is so frustrated and mad to see what Kadi made himself into, Kadi daring and unafraid, he asks his brother to shoot him and a bullet at his heart causes him to fall down and Mamo to run after the brother he consciously but unintentionally killed. Kadi has the flower in his hand and before he draws his last intricate breath, sun appears in front of him. The children of Ramo, five women, together with their blind grandfather are left to take care of their youngest and only boy sibling that their father longed for solemnly. By ignorance and innocence, they placed their baby brother into the washing machine to have him washed after a diaper change. This reasons Ramo to almost die, but the astounding understanding of Ramo to the circumstance soars tremendously with what the world is lacking tremendously—forgiveness.

            The film is a collection of parallel stories all leading to the principle that we kill each other and that whether we have the intention or not, we will never be happy about it. Some people will no longer see the spark of sunshine in their life in the lost of a loved one, some people will try desperately to have a grasp of that, but with what people you know do, and other people you don’t know do, there can actually be rainbows at the end of the horizon, a scene that is actually evident in one of the final scenes. “I Saw the Sun” is an extremely purifying film. With soothing music and commendable direction, this film is a memoir of everyone. It seems so vast, so infinitely numerous, but that is the enchanting part of the film. “I Saw the Sun” is going to be timeless work of great passion and deep understanding of a very poignant life.

Understanding Beauty of Death—a Japanese Treasure

Departures
Yojiro Takita
Japan
2008

“Departures” in simple words is the best film I’ve ever watched made in the 21^st century. Passionate, highly-emotional, and enlightening, Takita expands the beauty and importance of this sentimental film by a skilful direction and unmistakable understanding of life, delivered through immense cinematography by Takeshi Himada and a breathtaking music by Joe Hisaishi. Winning the Best Foreign Language Film Award at the Oscar 2008, “Departures” and lots of others from different part of the world, this film celebrates the uncelebrated—the   misunderstanding of a job responsible for preparing a dead person in his coffin; and its opposite—the understanding of such job and which realization is way beyond the most overwhelming warmth of a sunshine.

Daigo (Masahiro Motoki) is desperately looking for a job after the orchestra where he is playing and working for is dissolved. He lands himself in a funeral service. He is hiding his job from his wife Mika (Ryoko Hirosue), but as how it is expected she learns about it, and she doesn’t like it, and she wants Daigo to abscond the job. Daigo though has started appreciating the concealed and undervalued meaning of his job. When a family friend needs the professional service of Daigo and Mika witnesses for the first time how her husband does in his untamed occupation, she realizes and perceives it now the way her husband does so. Daigo never had his father after he was six and this brought lots of prolonged torments to him. When he learns that his father has just died, he is definite to say that he is not going to see him. But Daigo works for the deceased and their loved ones, and he can never really miss the chance of doing what he does so well in his estranged father.

The film is an emotionally monster film. Every single movement in the film is filled with feelings that have gotten themselves from a long journey as long as life. “Departures” is so beautiful that none of all those people who cried in the film looked so hopelessly pathetic, that no single moment in the film is a bore, and that no single scene in the film departed from the very lovable and coherent narrative thread of the story. Wonderful is the film in the sense that the main character Daigo’s (Motoki) life is not the focal source of all the rejuvenating conclusion of tears but rather his character prompts all the supporting cast and elements in the film to be in their most powerful form without overshadowing the lead character. This in return, gives the audience easy time to understand why Daigo has grasped the fulfilling scenery of his employment. The scene where he and his boss prepared the body of the first woman in front of her family is extremely commendable. Takita knows how primacy and recency effect works. The first job assignment of Daigo in the house of an old woman who died unknowingly for already two weeks doesn’t give the so called beginner’s luck for our main man but gives the beginner’s unlock instead. The second assignment, the one I mentioned earlier then provides the compensating nature of the work. The mother who died, aside form having recall from the death of Daigo’s mother, shows off what the film’s strength is—emotions. It becomes really amazing how these people (loved ones of the deceased) grab my towering empathy and feelings despite the fact that we only see them in a single scene or a couple of scenes. Even the scene where a father has died and all his loved ones are women and they all printed kiss marks on the face of their father causing smiles and pure laugh followed by sudden deluge of bereavement causes me to cry as well. Before making a conclusion, I want to add as an example the final scene where Daigo called his dead father ‘dad’, indicating forgiveness. The answer is simply—death draws all of the humanness we humans have inside. It is a powerful anthropological constitution that usurps all the pride and anger from the human heart, and bestows all the love we never thought we had for a person, and even when we think we already love a person very much, in time of the inevitable hour, we will be surprised that we don’t even really know how much we love them because our love for them becomes immeasurable and unthinkable.

 

“Departures” has a very coherent and very complementing form. So rigid that it holds and shapes and guides the viewer’s emotions carefully and precisely. The screenplay is just superb and since I am afraid to use the word perfect then let me just say it is near perfect. There is difference between a story and a screenplay, though many people think that it is basically the same, because the screenplay holds the story. I have to agree, it makes sense. But screenplay is a higher form of story, a more cinematic term for it, where a story is figured to a shape of how the film will become full of life. In simple words, a screenplay is a combination of a good story and good storytelling. “Departures” simply got a heart-warming story but what I am really loving about the film is the storytelling. With that, I am particularly referring to its form, and as according to Bordwell and Thompson, film form is the interconnecting system of all the elements in a film. Daigo as a cellist is a fantastic characterization made for the protagonist because it provides an instant logic to the sound and music that will accompany the film all throughout aside from the fact that the beginning part of the movie looks very sophisticated. Living in Tokyo and moving to his childhood house is also a harmonizing metaphor to a big decision and life-changing future waiting for the two. Daigo’s internal conflict with his father, appends emotional alarm to the story even though what is happening in his life is rewardingly positive. The no-father-figure issue of Daigo keeps us aware that our protagonist won’t be doing his occupation for a long time without being able to do it to someone a part of his life. I was actually expecting either his wife or his boss to be the next person Daigo will be working on to, but to have his father dead is nevertheless a good turning point in the film to release Daigo from all the long-buried pain and as well as his father’s. The film is highly-semiotic: the octopus represents a decision; the bath house signifies an old custom struggling for survival similar to Daigo’s love for music; lifeless people in coffins correspond ironically to the increasing understanding of Daigo’s job; the pregnant Mika positively recoils the relationship of Daigo and his separated father; and the most important aspect of the film—death is a beginning, a departure from the world to a new and better life.

Speaking of death, this actually gives reference to Japanese masterpieces of Akira Kurosawa—Seven Samurai (1954), Ran (1985), and one of my my favourites—Rashomon (1950). These movies essentially include death especially in Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952). “Departures”, just like its Japanese filmic ancestors, has a good tone affixing humour to drama.  Masahiro Motoki is radiatingly good. His free-flowing movement in his profession ritual is magnificent. He shows awe in dexterity and most importantly the respect he pays for the dignity of the ones who depart. A crying man is a big apple, it has to be treated with utmost sensitivity. With the great direction from Takita, Motoki’s in-tears performance when he was wiping the face of his long unknown and now dead father is as resounding as a masterpiece that is surely going to be timeless. Another great scene from Motoki happens when he is dispirited by his work and he arduously embraced and kissed his wife. A beautiful picture of demonstrating how a man mellows, and how he becomes passionate and how he becomes as helpless as a lost soul resorting to the security of a woman’s love and of her soft body becomes a very memorable part of this exquisite film.

“In the tradition of understanding life and death way back from its great cinematic influences of all Japanese artistry of Akira Kurosawa, delivers a riveting, unbelievably moving, and deeply enlightening interpretation of knowing life in the most unexpected place. Beautiful and heart-warming, simple and truthful, artistic and cinematic, “Departures” is a film that makes me love films more unfathomably.

PUBLIC ENEMIES

Director: Michael Mann
Country: USA
Year: 2009

Oscar Elite Circle

In a couple of months from now, Academy Awards will be again naming the best of the films made in the recent past year of 2009. Film enthusiasts are already very excited about this. That is why many predictions have been made and uploaded in the internet about the movies that may be garnering a nomination or a couple or a number; lucky a movie of course if it will receive a nomination by a double digit. One of the noisiest films as of now expected to be in the elite circle of Oscar finalists is Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies”.

Lead by Academy Award multi-nominated Johnny Depp alongside Academy Award Best Actress winning Marion Cotillard and the most recent actor to play Batman, the popular Christina Bale, how could this movie go wrong?  Based on the book of Bryan Burrough, the movie is about the notorious John Dillinger (Depp) as he lives his life of bank-robbing, and nothing else perhaps after he met the beautiful French-American Billie (Cotillard) and the serious assignment of Melvin Purvis to chase the elusive, gun and escape-wise Dillinger.

The Assassination of John Dillinger by a Nobody

The film is not the best movie I’ve watched ever, but I will be honest to say that it is a  well-made film, and only if it is not a  true to life story the movie could have outstretched its form into something that is absolutely stunning. But since the makers of the film I believe have been stuck to delivering the truest possible platform of the film from the real people within the real happening of the events almost a century ago, which is actually something that I can’t blame, “Public Enemies” though still remains to be a very good film jeopardized its overwhelming potential. I am particularly referring to the ending of the movie where Dillinger was shot. The scene is not a mess, but what happens is a mess, and that is nothing less but the fault of the undistinguishable cinematic roles of the people who are trying to blow the fatal shot to Dillinger. His death is very corrupted, at least cinematically; proof would be the sudden uselessness of Purvis in the film after the incident; and the necessary role of Agent Winstead from out of nowhere. Elemental zero to supporting hero is not welcome though in the world of narrative cinema. I am upset about this one and the only thing that is keeping me from going mad is the fact that it is what really happened in real life.

The Dark Knight versus John Dillinger and the Overrated Role

Having Johnny Depp sided by Christian Bale is an exciting commercial move by Universal Pictures. Casting the two of them in rat-cat plot will automatically create tension even in the slightest-set encounters. In the film though, I was very looking forward to the meet-up of the two. I love the cut to cut sequences of the free and symbolically prisoned John and of the bold and courageous Melvin. The feel that the two of them haven’t met yet but narratively, with the help of technical manipulations to the editing generates tremendous power to a very electrifying climax. I literally couldn’t wait for the two to clash. I ended up getting disappointed. Their first encounter when Purvis take a look at Dillinger at the jail is a very lame respond of director Mann to a supposedly real scorching hot encounter that will mark the beginning of an accelerating pressure to the two sides. Another missing element I came across with watching the movie is the lack of urgency in the part of Purvis to catch the bank notorious criminal. I really didn’t feel the intense, unrelenting, death-defying passion to catch Dillinger. This is something that I have always been looking for in a character after I have seen Jake Gylenhaal in David Fincher’s “Zodiac”, the problem doesn’t lie in Bale’s acting or whatever, he did his job good enough though. The problem is with the realization of the character from the script. The extrinsic role of Melvin Purvis is only a major one from the first hour of the movie and at the end keeps doing nothing but to deteriorate. If we are going to be stricter, I can even say that there has been an over-appreciation to the role that is manifested in the man-of-the-hour-introduction-to-the-press establishment for Purvis after defeating Pretty Boy Floyd, which is the exact reason why the film is eluded by the convincing success but actually irrelevant success of the character. The solution could have been simple—make the most out of Purvis. If only there is no need for keeping the real events in the story, then a more rigid, more nerve-racking, and more competition for survival and achievement could have been pulled up and more solid conflict by a solid protagonist and a solid antagonist. This is major problem in the “Public Enemies”, everything seems to be so clear but as deceiving as a Poison Ivy may be, you truly won’t recognize who these characters are. I am expecting a gigantic face-off between Dillinger and Purvis but it never happened in the film.

John and Billie

A love story within a crime-epic drama is not unusual, but this inclusion to the film makes possible its edge. The scenes between John and Billie are overpoweringly sultry, classy, and steaming. Very passionate making of the scenes for Mann, cinematographer Dante Spinotti,  and even musical scorer Elliot Goldenthal. Also, the scenes of the two during the most private of their times or we can say the times they, especially John is most human. These are also the sequences that we witness the transition of John Dillinger to the simple John. But still on the other hand even though I see John in his purest moments, I still can’t dig up to his psyche. He seems very far, like he has his own world and that there is now ay to unlock it. I am not sure if this is such an intention, but if it is, then I commend the director and Depp for the very good job done, but if it is not, then I don’t commend myself for not appreciating the attempts of both Mann and Depp to make the character be real but I commend myself for recognizing the difference between filmmakers who can deliver any message straightforwardly and those who inevitably experienced an unusual difficulty. This is not my favourite performance from Depp, until now I still believe that his single best performance is really in “Finding Neverland”. He as John Dillinger, is not a bad thing but I don’t think it really helped him in his career because he isn’t brilliant in it at all. He has just been mediocre from start to finish. He looks harassed all the time and this is frustrating for me because I like Depp but his interpretation probably is not really suiting what is supposed to be suit or probably his personality simply just don’t suit that of John Dillinger. Marion Cotillard as Billie, John’s lover, on the other hand is fantastic. She is very beautiful from her initial to final scene. She has persuaded me that she really loves Dillinger, but the frustration commences for I can’t see the reason why she loves Dillinger. Sometimes we are under a wrong impression that when we hate a hate a character and that character is a villain/villain-hero, then that means that the actor had done his job really well. In my opinion, it should not be. You will love a character whether he is a villain or a hero. There is a difference between loving an evil character and hating one

The Sentimental Redemption

John Dillinger is a stiff and austere guy. The biggest challenge is underneath the endeavour of showing that this type of personalities can also feel warmth and that as much as any human being does, he can also love. The axis of emotion depends on his attraction to a woman Billie and I thought it wasn’t enough to compensate for all the apathetic reservoir of Dillinger. After the first hour and a half of the film, I was already worried by the lack of emotions I feel. He is in love for most part of the film however, that love didn’t lead him anywhere though until the time he cried when he sees her girlfriend arrested by the cops and he couldn’t do anything—one of two best parts of the film because it is the only time I realized he is human. The other one would be when he died and he whispered—Tell Billie, bye bye  black bird (Black Bird is the title of the song to which the two loved to dance).

           

Cinematic Versus Historic

Talking about the technical aspects of the movie, sound recording and design are actually impressive. The musical score is also awesome especially when it comes to the chase scenes and the sensational moments between the two lovers. The cinematography is also good. I love the shadows all throughout the film, it is very consistent and complementing to the bank robbery the gang has been doing. The choices of shots are also good. There have right and important calls to when a close-up shot should be given especially when it comes to the flaunting dexterity of Purvis to shoot or when it comes to the craggy skill of Dillinger to fire a larger gun. The technical part is actually the better part of the film than the creative. If the film is going to have a good shot at the Oscar 2010, I am not placing my bet on it, but if ten nominees will be allowed this year, then probably. Technically it is good, and creatively it is not really bad, and it has the “heart” (even though very late in the film it appeared). Personally, I am sure that the final product Michael Mann and his team produced is only 40% of what it can really be had he prioritized being more cinematic than historic. I can’t blame him though for choosing the latter, but if I were him, I just won’t direct Public Enemies.