Contest Among Wolves

Motorcycle Diaries

Walter Salles

Brazil

2004

"Man truly achieves his full human condition when he produces without being compelled by the physical necessity of selling himself as a commodity."

— Che Guevara, Man and Socialism in Cuba

All roads lead to the heart—a premise Walter Salles used for his 1997 film “Central Station” and has been doing continuously to most of his films. Depicting the time when famous revolutionist Ernesto “Che” Guevarra traveled South America which according to him he only knew in books with his friend Roberto de la Serna, the director ultimately expanded the distance his characters are voyaging. In “Central Station” the journey takes place within Brazil whereas in “Motorcycle Diaries”, we are taken into a humbling immersion from Argentina to Chile, to Peru, and Venezuela. Thus creating a tremendous force that will shake the world’s political philosophy yet at the time latent in the soul of Che Guevarra, the film still position the immensity of the character’s potent into a more personally connecting height.

I really don’t know much about Che Guevarra though I sometimes see his printed face on some shirts my schoolmates in college are wearing. And once or twice I’ve heard his name from few friends telling that he is a communist leader. That for no any excuse penciled in some sketches of an old man in some shabby clothes and untidy beard—in other words, an unlikable man. Probably one of the biggest surprises in my life is to see the youthful Che Guevarra and get swept away by a charismatic portrayal in the film by Gael Garcia Bernal. That must be the first and most apparent good thing about the film. Bernal is arguably the most famous Mexican actor internationally. I have watched a couple of his major movies—“Y Tu Mama Tambien”, “Babel”, “Amores Perros” and excluding “The Crime of Father Amaro” which I have long wanted to see, this is by far and by a hundred mile the best Gael Garcia Bernal I have ever witnessed. It is definitely one of those few moments where you can say that an actor is born to play such role. The recipe is simple; an internationally acclaimed Brazilian director making a film about a historical and internationally influential figure will cast no less than a big name such as Gael. Bernal’s charisma is significantly bountiful to depict such a character like Che Guevarra. I love the fact that while most of his movies are coming-of-age ones which are characterized by gambling, sex, and the happy-go-lucky personality, this is where his character has developed the most while still engaging in the free-spiritedness of his usual roles. 

To see Che in the historical Cuban Revolution is synonymous to watching Frost/Nixon and JFK—in some other words, uninterestingly austere and obnoxiously old. I have not seen those two films yet and I know it’s not fair to say what I said about them but those are what keeping me from making any efforts to watch the two. “Motorcycle Diaries” is not about the sober revolutionist Che instead the young Che in his motorcycle, loving a woman, having fun with some other woman, drinking wine, dancing Tango and Mambo, writing notes on his diaries as his groundbreaking material unfolds. For many times Che claims that the travel they embarked on is aimless however, I don’t find it absolutely true—they have always wanted to help in the advancement of medicine and treatment of the needy. This vaguely distinguished element causes an elementary perplexity in the narrative. The soliloquy of Che mostly at the end part and the over-all treatment of the film support the feeling that Che has found a new passion—something he wants to pursue. And because the film sculptured the narrative with declarations about the aimlessness of the travel and the implicitness of the medical objective, the perceptible transformation Che undergoes seems to be attributed to the goal he has always had from the start. The change the protagonist experiences is his unexpected empathy to the poor and not to the sick because again, his empathy to the sick has always been there. The film could have been more effective and have shown more form through working on the contrast and similarities had the film emphasized that difference between Che’s stance to the sick and Che’s stance to the poor.

The second best thing about Salles’s work is that it is enormously engaging and charming. Accounting all the allure to Gael is of course an exaggeration for the director cunningly represented the character and the adventure in a mutual and fair balance—never the character did overrun the adventure nor the adventure did overrun the character—a friendly combination of a character-driven and a plot-driven story I can say. The events and the places Ernesto and Roberto have been are equally treated plot-wise and narrative-wise. Even the travel by the boat from one place to another has provided a lot of fleshing out of the characters. We see and know them better from every point in their journey. The guileless and profound relationship between the two is adorable, most of the time funny and more importantly—secured. The relationship though between Ernesto and the patients and the rest of the community in the hospital can not be underestimated but perhaps because of its less plot time relative to his adventures with Roberto I feel that the main source of heart in the film is the adventure of the two more than the doctor-rich-privileged and patient-poor-unprivileged affiliation. The later can be the main source however of inspiration for Che himself.

The film is highly patriarchal. I am not sure if it is appropriate to talk about feminism here but it feels so masculine from start to finish. The motorcycle alone is an exceedingly masculine symbol. Their demonstrated flair about women whether Argentine or Chilean adds to it, plus the gun given to Ernesto from his father. Che and Roberto are also highly educated being a graduating medical student and a biochemist respectively. All of their qualities are so asymmetrical to the women in the story. Women are being left, being fantasized, to some extent being sweetly taken advantage; some are reduced to being dance partners, and the worse—being sick, and the worst—being treated by a no less than male doctor. Somewhat and somehow it contributes to the notion that men are the foundation of new ideologies and courageous resistance.

Che conceives a unity for all Latin and South Americans, all people from Mexico all the way down to Magellan strait. Visually this is reflected in the film. The travel took place in at least four different countries and yet the treatment from one place to another is consistent. While it is a common practice in filmmaking to consciously delineate a place to another, “Motorcycle Diaries” consciously unifies those Latin countries, at least visually. The most breathtaking scenery in the film would be the remnants of Inca civilization and even more breathtaking is Che’s realization of how can an empire capable of doing such marvel be swept out to extinction. The most allegorical scene on the hand would be the one where Che after giving a speech on his birthday celebration decides to cross the river which caused a lot of panic to the people shouting at him to swim back for no one has ever crossed that river yet especially on a cold midnight. The nurses and the other superior people on the other side of the river and the more ordinary people on the further cheering for Che to make it symbolizes his foreseen struggle to alleviate inequality.

“Motorcycle Diaries” is a worthwhile movie. Truly a threshold of understanding the famous Che Guevarra in his infamous time, the film gets so thrilling with the most human adventures and so endearing with unsaturated nostalgia. If the purpose of this film is to demonstrate a likeable person against someone who is solely an enemy of capitalists, then I commend the film. Now I can comfortably say that in any case I will take any further reading about Che the only prejudice I will have are the encouraging ones.

There’s No Place Like Home

Up in the Air

Jason Reitman

USA

2009

For him, the air is his home.

In general, I am not a fan of movies based on fiction or novel, or short stories. Literature and film are different media that create dissimilar experiences of art. Almost all of the people I know always say that the book version is better than the film and at extreme and more usual cases that the movie murdered the book. My response would be diplomatic, considering the fact that books and movies are two different practices and along the production of a film comes more than a hundred of cinematic to economic oriented decisions accounting to diversions from the book with of course varying extents. It is undeniable though that there have been a number of great films with adapted screenplays—“Slumdog Millionaire”, “Brokeback Mountain”, “Memoirs of a Geisha” and also undeniable is the fact that there are also disappointing ones. A wonderful book acclimatized to a film will become one that is geared toward the character’s highfaluting and staggering philosophy or campy whimsicalities and the challenge that will confront the director will be the kind of form he will structure the novel. In “Doubt”, the director decided to be minimalist which really many directors would opt to as in a way a kind of preserving the highly-character oriented substance of a book. The most practical and sensible use of this art’s quest for a different medium would be that of a sci-fi or fantasy novel. At least in the popular culture, this is hugely evident like that of “Lord of the Rings”, “Harry Potter”, and “Twilight”. One of the few moments I am seriously gratified by this shifting of media aside from LOTR trilogy and Harry Potter series is David Fincher’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. This type of story is one of those who don’t just need to be visual (for all stories ask for its reader’s imagination) instead needs an extreme and arduous visual treatment and interpretation. 

 The many contrast between Bingham and Keener-age, gender, body built, and beliefs still provide a charming chemistry between the two.

The director of Academy Award nominated “Juno”, Jason Reitman comes back with a film adaptation of “Up in the Air”. I wish I have read the foundation novel before I write this but I find the film too overwhelming to contract time. My professors say that a brilliant screenplay even handled by a mediocre director would still result to a brilliant film but a bad screenplay even handled by a Francis Ford Copolla or an Akira Kurosawa would result to no more than the worst works in their entire filmography. The film is script-wise astounding; in fact, I believe almost entire of the film’s compelling force is due to it. Conversely I can not deny the fact that Reitman did not try to make it look so much of a novel-based movie. The director manage to engage playful cuts, independent cutaways, and purposeful and at the same time resourceful montage which is not a normative standard of movies. The rest is not unnecessarily radical nor in any case tries to be a powder keg of a new novel to book filmmaking guidelines. Instead, what he does is a prudent and innovative delivery of making a novel into a cinematic template that is efficiently persuasive of itself as a film and not anymore of any medium. He achieves it by a spanking youth in technical (at least in editing) manipulation and in general transformation of an already fulfilling fiction into a film fit screenplay.

I believe that in any extent Reitman did influence the qualitative amount of interweaving elements from the novel to the film. It is also not too far from believing that he wanted to create more sense of contrasts and variation which is truly commendable because that is the most faithful to the form of cinema that you can do to translate a content from other media.

An amalgam of character-reflective metaphors, character and philosophy clash, dynamic swing of wane and recreation of them, far-fetched twists, and tons of intelligence covered with collected wit describes this stirring tale of life with relationship, dream, and passion at the core. Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) works as an employment sheriff. He travels all year long from different cities in the country—Omaha, St. Louis, Wichita, Tulsa, San Francisco, and a lot more. With his new co-worker who is trying to revolutionize their traveling work into a more cost-efficient virtual termination of employment, Ryan is tremendously displeased with her scheme so gearing to the business while directing away the serious psychological effect of the terminated workers which Ryan believes will only be reduced with a person to person communication. There are a lot of differences between Ryan and Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) however it is a joy not see them take it personally. The occurrences where the two are together talking about life and how they argue with their definitions and standards are very exciting. Appealing also is the fact that neither one of them has been favored by life ahead of them. Even Ryan, the main protagonist doesn’t hold the claim of truth or his philosophy as the superior or his beliefs as the closer to life itself, nor does Natalie. Both of them are proven wrong and right at some points by the other. I also find the double twists so enhancing of the watching experience. Ryan decides to follow Alexis and have a chance to have the wife and family he never wanted and then learn that Alexis already has a husband and kids. Few scenes before that, we see Ryan and Alexis having so much of times that conceive a future wedding of their own.Natalie also at the late part of the film seems to have won with her virtual termination scheme and then later on decides to quit the job after learning that a previous terminated employee committed suicide. These twists and twists again crisscross from the two or three main characters in the film structuring an interesting and intricate body of complimenting rudiments. 

 Ryan's sister asked him to take a picture out of cardboard of her and her husband in the places Ryan visits.

This is a metaphor of Ryan's incredulity about marriage.

The worst thing the director could ever do in this film would be appointing actors who will fail to bring these characters with the most ostentatious and rigid words out of their mouth to come to life. It is legal for “Doubt” to brag about the acting component of the film as Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Davis just did not do anything wrong about their assignments. Following such tradition, George Clooney together with supporting role players Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick does a performance so provoking, so pounding like a hammer and most importantly so grasping of empathy. At this point in time of Clooney’s career I never expected anything this appropriate a role for him as much as I don’t anticipate any role that will re-launch the 12-year starvation of Tom Hanks’ career.

“Up in the Air” is one of the most, if not the most engaging Hollywood film last year. Though it is easy to have such riveting nature adapting a screenplay from a novel of Walter Kirn, the film is a satisfying success for its deeply nurturing temperament becomes an experience of lyrical consciousness. It made me feel so alive.

I Love You, 10 or 11 Times More

Paris, I Love You
Various Directors
France
2006

“Paris, I Love You”, the film in English translation is a luscious and enticing splatter of 18 pleasant short films about different pairs of lovers in different occasions, forms, age, sexuality, religion and nationality all in one romantic city called Paris. 18 seemingly unrelated short films are edited together and the final cut is a sweet, delightful and mesmerizing vignettes of love as the most universal concept the history of mankind has ever known. With over a dozen of directors from the vanguard of contemporary cinema, the film soars captivatingly high as the extremely popular romance drama has been elevated to the pedestal of great films still retaining the mush in its seducing and tantalizing authority without ever, not even a single second, letting the viewer remind them of the synthetic mush popular cinema has been feeding its skeptic and/or hopeless romantic audiences.

The following are the 18 short films comprising the lovely “Paris Je T’aime” (in exact order as they appear on the film)

1. “Montmartre”

A man ranting about him being alone when everyone in Paris is with someone finally meets someone.

The first course to this extremely fine dining unlocks the beginning of all the love stories ever—the first meeting. It establishes the worldwide notion of Paris as a lover’s city when the man notices that he is alone in the city and even affirms it when he finally sees one. A simple yet effective way to start the film and would even be more effective after we draw its contrast with the final part at the end. The creativity in shots is also noticeable in “Montmartre”.

2. “Quais de Seine”

A French college boy studying history sees the hidden beauty of a Muslim college girl studying Journalism.

College is one of the most romantic age the modern lover’s cinema has witnessed. I love the fact that with the help of cultural diversity in a contemporary city takes over the generics of this type of love story. The Muslim college girl is indeed beautiful and it’s not hard to believe in what the college boy sees on her. I also love the French sun mellowing Caucasian skin and sensationalizing that of an Eastern skin.

  3. “Le Marais” by Gus Van Sant

An artist feels the urge to talk to someone he thinks is his soul mate. 

Seeing Gaspard Uliel again will be enough to watch this film, after his impressive portrayal of the young Hannibal Lecter in Hannibal Rising. This may not be the most outstanding of all Gus Van Sant works, probably because of the little time he has. However the director is still able to cover this short film with the same mystifying force we have seen from his Cannes Festival winning film “Elephant” and introduce the character in its best effort to direct a very personal, almost inexplicable, sensitivity to someone nothing really more than a stranger.

4. “Tuileries” by Joel & Ethan Coen

An American traveler learns to avoid eye contact to people standing around in the Paris Metro.

 

Seeing Steve Buscemi in something like this is not surprising, instead satisfying. Twice the satisfaction is the Coen brothers comic genius in this tourist-local cultural-oriented conflict. “Burn After Reading” remains to be the closest to perfect comedy film at least for me from the brothers though this one is of course worth the watch.

5. ”Loin de 16e” Walter Salles & Daniella Thomas

A mother leaves her baby to the public nursery to go to her baby-sitting job.

 Walter Salles utilizes transportation again as a mean of magnifying a distance between two worlds. If you remember his Academy Award winning film “Central Station”, its premise—all roads lead to the heart—is still applicable to this one. Looking too mundane and shallow is my first impression but if you have watched the director’s other films, you will definitely incur more sense about this short starring the stunningly beautiful Catalina Moreno.

6. “Porte de Choisy”

A sales man comes to a Chinese beauty parlor to introduce their new products.

 

Tricky and surreal, it definitely borrows the narrative aesthetic of early French experimental films. Aside from the dazzling cinematography, such as the shot above, the film is rich with remnants of French film history expanding from Post War art movements to Orientalism era and its marriage by the timeless concept of love.

7. “Bastile”

A husband planning to leave his wife learns of her terminal disease and all the love lost through time has been found.

 

A heartbreaker I didn’t see coming, this part is a recreation of love. Unlike the previous shorts which are about the exhilaration of love at first sight, this one is already a dozen of steps ahead. Just passed the stage where love almost died and that is later redeemed by the awareness of a nearing death.  A man in love is a sweeping picture, with this one, when the man possesses the endurance mostly only women can handle and it doubles the empathy the husband is receiving from the audience. Undeniably, it is one of the best among the 18.

8 “Place des Victoires”

A mother grieves for the death of her son finding strength from a transient moment with her son again.

Carrying over the death from the preceding short, this one deals with the after death. Juliette Binoche stars as a mother who just lost his son. The mother is devastated, almost insane, which I am in favor because it displays Binoche’s caliber. The hallucination scene which I always attribute to the French New Wave is a little over-designed, and its transience reflects the mother’s transient recovery from the loss. An almost dying mother in denial, anger, and grief passed all the way to acceptance in just a matter of minutes (whether plot time or running time). That is too hard to have it work in a less than 10 minute-short film.

9. “Tour Eifel”

A young boy tells the love story of his mime parents.

 

The reverence for the early 20th century film French entertainment—pantomimes, brings along the magic of silent films and some American romance films in Paris (Audrey Hepburn films) and the supposed pleasure and cuteness of mimes in modern Paris as told be their adorable son. This film realizes the big cross of vanishing pantomime golden days that their children bear.   

10. “Parc Monceau” by Alfonso Cuaron

11. “Quartier des Enfants Rouges”

A drug user finds a drug pusher supplying her another drug—love.

This short is vulnerably daring as any film with drug-addiction themes can get. I haven’t really seen any movie with such theme that has really brought the subject matter’s darkness into enlightenment. I am not looking at character’s redemption, what I am looking for is a cinematic template that fosters the darkness of drug addiction into a pleasantly consumable experience. “Trainspotting” is not even close; “Manila” is also not, as well as this one.  I don’t think a love story as unceremonious as this one would even reach Step 1. Conversely, the oddness between these two people will be beneficial for the next short and contributes hugely to the over-all coherence of the film. 

12. “Places des Fete”

A rescue volunteer has the coffee on her hands but the man wishing for it together with her just died. 

Absolutely, another one of the best in the roster of 18, this short film is another heartrending one. A volunteer tries to rescue a stabbed man, during the course, the man asks her whether she remembers him making the woman surprised. It cuts back to an earlier scene where the man is revealed to be a janitor in a parking lot where the woman is working. Before the woman finally leaves the lot, the man tries to ask her for a coffee, to bad she is too far already to hear it. With the man humming the same song the day they met on the parking, the woman recognizes him. Back on the rescue operation, the female volunteer asks for two cups of coffee. But few seconds before the two cups of black coffee would come, the man is declared dead.

The flashbacks in this film works good though I don’t think it is already on its 100% mark. Some information could have been placed somewhere else and there is also a POV shot at the start that doesn’t conform to the succeeding shot but even though I have these comments I can’t stop myself from getting drawn to this one because content-wise and structure-wise it is a knock-out. Continuing with the “oddness” I mentioned above, this is the first time I felt that something is done to surmount that mountain standing between two lovers.

13. “Pigalle”

Wise exchange of dialogues, canny similarity and differences between today’s culture and the characters’ culture of their prime years, this one is as witty as most French films are. Except for some weird feelings of being obliged to love the characters and their resentments, this part is generally one of the most French among others.  

14. ”Quartier de la Madeleine”

A traveler sees a vampire and falls in love with her.

This one is a stand-out, combining the famous horror genre and love story with an overflowing metaphor from start to finish. An explorer to Paris witnesses a vampire sucking fresh human blood. He falls in love with her and cuts his pulse for her to suck but the woman vampire seems to care about the guy not to be like her though it is obvious that she like him. Having cut his pulse, the explorer fell of the stairs and loses a lot of blood. The vampire on the rescue bits herself and replaces the man’s blood with her own. Thus, inevitably making him a vampire like her, the two are now of the same kind.

Elijah Wood is a little typecast for this short film but it is a huge delight to see him not a Frodo but someone else. The genre is highly dynamic, so classic with American famous horror genre of the 60s or 70s, German horror films of the Pre-War, and also some elements of Hollywood noir—the insanely red color of the blood perhaps. The film is rich from start to finish I don’t think there is anything in the short that has no use--the stairs he is climbing at the start is also the stair he fell upon at the end, the motorcycle where he hides probably is the victim’s ride. The metaphor of lovers’ difference is their vampire-human difference, and not just that there is an effort to surmount that, this is the first time that such disparity has been gone 

15. “ Pere Lachaise” by Wes Craven

16. “Faubourg Saint-Denis” by Tom Tykwer

A blind young man receives a phone call from his girlfriend breaking up with him and remembers their love story.

This scene reminds me so much of the director’s earlier phenomenal film “Run Lola Run”. I see this part as more of a possible continuation of the preceding short—where they are able to outdo the lovers disproportion but ends up realizing that a romance should be over. The short is fast-paced not only pointing to the intertextual personality of the director he is applying to his film but also because of the ostensibly fast-paced love story between the two. The montage at the middle to late part is very interesting as it significantly coheres to the over-all behavior and bravura of the film.

17. “Quartier Latin”

18. “14e Arrondisement” by Alexander Payne

An American traveling by herself discovers an unprecedented feeling she has never yet felt. 

This part is the main attraction and yes, the best, and the most consolidating of all. An old maiden traveling in her long-dreamt city—Paris, sees the beauty of solitary eating, walking, watching, and living. She walks to places visited by people with companies, eats where everyone eats with family or friends and contemplates the could-have-been in her life. Until one day while sitting on a park with her sandwich, a sudden feeling came through her, a feeling of joy and sadness, of sadness brought by something missing in her life, and for the first time in her life—she feels so alive. That’s the time she knows she has fallen in love with Paris, and Paris has fallen in love with her.

Going back to the beginning of the 17 shorts, this final short has already stopped from looking for someone to love. What makes this one extremely poignant is the beautiful shape-shifting deviation from love with someone to love with something, or to somewhere instead. The short is captured vividly and as alive as the main character’s realization. Nothing less than a chicken soup for the soul, this short film add another groundbreaking definition of the world’s greatest subject matter—love in the location most renowned for its loveliness—Paris.