The Red Expression

Bad Education

Pedro Almodovar

Spain

2004

Pedro Almodovar, the world renowned feminist director, coming up with a queer film is nevertheless a brave statement about the integrity of women and the women-like men against the politically stronger sex—the male. This 2004 Spanish film is embroidered with the trademark Almodovar expression through red and other warm color-palette about unacceptable obsessions succumbing for at least recognition. Fantastic in most edges of a rubric-cube’s thriller, “Bad Education” is a flamboyant, unpredictable, and an original contemporary film.

Enrique (Felle Martinez) holds one of the most important elements in a thriller film—the POV. Despite that fact, interestingly Enrique is like a five year-old prince in the sense that his objective in the film is too sublime and seemingly too passive compared to the objectives of other major characters. This exclusivity in the POV of the film creates more suspense in the part of the audience for Enrique’s eyes are the viewer’s eyes as well. Unlike other thriller films whose main character or POV-holder do everything to seek for the reason behind the question, this case is just different. Enrique is a little appeased and a little ascertained to move the story. The force providing the thrill in the film is not provided by Enrique’s curiosity to solve the mystery instead by his reaction to the perseverance of the second character—Ignacio (Gael Garcia Bernal). Ignacio wants to play the role of Zahara, the drag queen in his play “The Visit” and obviously he is going to move heaven and earth just to get it. The aspiring actor never got the POV but he is more of the protagonist when it comes to drive to attain a certain goal while the POV-holder’s objectives are not even a quarter of Ignacio’s. The reason why this works is because of the fascinating dynamics between the two characters. Ignacio’s objective depends on Enrique’s decision and Enrique’s decisions are dependent on the past the two of them shared and the apprehension he is developing to his childhood friend. The objectives and conflicts in this film is overshadowed by the director’s style which is not a bad thing neither a disadvantage of any sort. This is definitely not a screenwriter’s film but definitely a director’s film more than anything else.   

This mere shot tells metaphors about the general scheme of the film: the distance between Enrique and Ignacio speaks about the many years they haven't heard of one another and its approaching infringe in the attempt to reviving the friendship and the sunlight on Enrique's side and its absence on Ignacio hints a secret the former doesn't know about the latter.

I am thinking too much about the development in the characters of “Bad Education” and at first I was saddened to figure out that it has been confined much to the suspense genre which equates character development to the mere fact of just knowing what happened. That is probably the weakest part of the film. While Almodovar utilizes the limitless opportunity of complexity in a story which provides quality revelations, the practicality of using what the protagonist would learn eventually in the course has been almost unavailable. I appreciate the deception in the storyline that as we are waiting to finally clarify our assumptions that young Enrique and Ignacio had really been sexually abused by Father Jacob in the orphanage, we are surprised that we never witnessed such scenes explicitly and instead we are taken to a different sub-story, a different pedestal of growing intensity and consequently curiosity.

A flashback scene of Ignacio and Father Jacob which will reveal as the exact scene from "The Visit" which Enrique will be directing.

High praises should be rendered to Almodovar’s use of creative devices. The quasi-flashback at the early minutes of the film juxtaposed with Enrique reading the script Ignacio wrote is trying to convince us that it is not just a mere thought or imagination but a picture of what these two childhood friends have undergone. The contribution of such device doesn’t end there, eventually we would be surprised that those actual sequences are the exact sequences in the film Enrique would be directing and Ignacio would be playing the drag role. This device is one of the most efficient and successful deceit I have seen yet. One of the things in the film that I spent conscious effort to trace its development is whether Ignacio will get the role or not, and I never thought that it has already been answered by that quasi-flashback mimicking foreshadowing with the fake Ignacio (played by Bernal) playing the drag queen character. This device also gives us a hint that the real Ignacio would be incisively like the gay character in “The Visit”. That originative manipulation comprised of reminiscing and fast forwarding at the utilitarian expense of stylized storytelling produced intelligent control over the rhythm of the narrative and that complexity resting on logical collectedness. Such single element at its disposal is automatically a bountiful of Almodovar legacy yet its individuality even raises the bar at the ether.

Probably the most striking shot in the film, the enclosed darkness predicts serious consequence to Ignacio, as Enrique (riding in the red car) learns about the secret.

Almodovar has always utilized scenes where a character or two reveal a secret from the past, and more often than not he opts to concentrate on that character telling the suddenly accessible information without any visual accompaniment. I can recall scenes from “To Return” and “All About my Mother” with such instances. This one however is a bit different, flashback scenes are required to be in the film when Father Jacob who is presently Mr Berenguer reveals how Ignacio died. Such flashback sequence is needed visually and is essential to the total coherence of the form because it is a supplement to the creative device mentioned above, and this time the information is coming from a different major character.  That supplement enables us to see how the real Ignacio looks like as supposed to the character Juan (Bernal) did everything to portray. The second device also counterpoises the balance between the character of the blundered Father Jacob and the untrustworthy Juan, and this time the fault-finding eye of Ignacio’s death looks sternly at Juan, more than Mr. Berenguer. This sequence requires us to be engaged more in a series of never-ending revelation and accusations.

 

 The first appearance of Gael Garcia Bernal as Juan and not as Juan pretending Ignacio. The way he looks so youthful is amazing. The ultra soft lighting, the unnoticeable make-up, and the clean shaved face all made him so youthful.

“Bad Education” is a brilliantly cinematographed film about fervid and clandestine obsessions at the height of religion, education, and socialization. As it speaks controversially, the film should be celebrated more of an artwork than a powder keg of social and religious revelations. The film is the film itself because the director made it his own; moreover, “Bad Education” is “Bad Education” because it is an Almodovar film more than anything else. Probably the drawback of an illustrious modern-day auteur, and the quagmire of a heavily stylized director is the criticism of the difficulty of these films to soar independently without the apparent strings of the creators’ minds. This contemporary Spanish film is undoubtedly adorable I just deeply feel that the director’s extreme ingenuity and expression in absolutely all of his works makes a dark, contentious, worldwide issue of morality a subordinate component of his work.

One Right Too Few

Let the Right One In
Tomas Alfredson
Sweden
2004

This Norwegian vampire-drama film is an inconsistently outstanding film. Although most part of the film I find unnecessary there are also few remarkably fantastic scenes and elements, so good that it compensates the dragging feel of the whole story. Given the chance that it has been cut down to only 20-30% of the entire film, a short film in other words, then this film could have been perfect. Probably my main concern about this Alfredson movie is that the essence of the film is too scarcely found and evident that it gives such an exhausting demand from the viewers to make sense out of those arguably unimportant shots. On the brighter side, I can’t totally hate or dislike this film because it is not bad at all certainly. In fact, “Let the Right One In” happens to be in my Top 100 Movies at least because of those aforementioned fantastic scenes and elements.

One of the chief drawbacks about this film is in spite of having a close to stagnant plot; the story still relied on the plot to move the story. Thus, making a plot-driven movie out of a story that is almost plotless. That very action is nevertheless accountable for some amount of indulgence on something so mundane. Even at the end when we thought the vampire leaves the boy, and thought that the boy will start to fight back for the first time, he still did not and it has to be the vampire to reap the bodies of the boys bullying him. This is not my first time to see such unconventional approach on screenwriting and most of them are almost unforgivable for they are regarded as work of arts, or as original films, and yet you don’t feel it. This film however, is not bad, this is an exception indeed. 

Another drawback is the lack of tension appropriate for a vampire film. Though this is not purely a vampire film, there still has to be not just considerable but overflowing volume of tension. Yes there are those frightening scenes when Eli attacks humans, and when his father kills and drains the victim’s blood for her, but what is lacking is the tension from the community. I understand that there is a cultural difference between Philippine and Norwegian setting because a vampire film in the Philippines will surely have a tremendous tension contributed by the affected neighborhood or community, and that is something I did not feel even a little. There should be no excuse about how a neighborhood or community would react over vampires; it should be more or less just the same, culture therefore should not create less fear of vampires in one country with another country. I don’t understand why I never saw a police in this film. When people from the same community dies strangely how can there be no police investigating it? Why was there only a single person who tried to look for the culprit? Why was there no clamor from a cry-worthy event? These are narrative issues and there should be reasons definitely, however I can’t think of any reason that will justify the hassle of watching and understanding. Does Alfredson want to encircle the film just between Oskar and Eli? I don’t think that works. Vampires are folk-mythology, they can’t be too enclosed and they can’t be too personal.

We have some common understanding about the vampires: they are afraid intensely of the sunlight and may even burn; they are pale because they are not lit by sunshine and when they are hungry for blood; they look strange and awkward; they vomit human food (in our case—candy); and they have supernatural abilities of climbing and jumping. In this film though we learnt of new things about them: they are not cold at all like they can go out in the winter snow without having anything on their feet and any other gears to keep them warm; and that they have skills in solving a Rubik’s cube. The most important catch about vampires in this film is the fact that they can teach us some valuable lessons even though it is something violent—to fight back.

The story is not really focused about vampires, instead about a boy bullied at school and his unlikely friendship with a vampire and yet the vampire shares that spotlight with our main protagonist. Chiefly because there is no much power the protagonist holds that is why the vampire becomes a strong element. This reflects back to the flaw its narrative is ailing.

Mentioning that it is not bad at all despite of all the faultfinding I made, there are still a number of good things about this vampire-drama movie and some are very good. The last scene, which is the golden tooth in a mouth of decay, where Oskar still does not fight back against his classmates bestows and revives the age-long buried concept that human instincts still can’t kill, and when they can, one would be enough. Violence are only reduced to quirks as what I can see in this film and the only ones who hurt and kill are the non-human, a vampire, and any savage being. The actors are likeable it is actually keeping me from continuing watching. Though you are dissatisfied with most of the parts, it is always going to be hard to despise the film. Kare Hedebrant playing Oskar and Lina Leandersson playing Eli helped me get by. I find the film a little above average one. It has an independent film feel. Definitely not the tailor-cut, easy-to-watch movie, also the easy-to-find-fault one, and interestingly still-likeable, this film is really got me baffled not in how I understand the movie but in the sense that I don’t know why I hate it and yet I like it.

Jane the Champion

The Piano

Jane Campion

New Zealand

1993

The whole world has always wondered why great movies are directed by male directors, especially in Hollywood. In fact, Kathryn Bigelow has just been the first and only female director to win the Academy Award for Best Director after almost a century. However, I find Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” painful and inconsistently cooked, some parts are well-cooked, and others overcooked and mostly undercooked. This is not the first time that I’ve been disappointed with the hope of seeing a great movie from a female director though. Sofia Copolla’s “Lost in Translation” is completely unsatisfying at least for me. Not just that it is capriciously indulgent it is also uninspiring. I really did not see what other people and some of my colleagues saw with those two films. Traveling back 17 years from now, and a decade from those two failed attempts, Jane Campion has just shown the world and all women directors how to make a great, exuberant, rich film. With “The Piano” which won the prestigious Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, Campion proved to be one of the most important contemporary directors, and arguably the best among women directors.

Campion’s “The Piano” which is cinematographed by Stuart Dryburgh is intoxicatingly gorgeous. The photography is really stunning. I tried to scan the film and look at some opportune scenes. Every frame contains unbelievable amount of sultry and exciting passion. What is even more interesting and commendable about it is that even the temporal photography of the film is gorgeous. I am not inclined technically about music but the tempo of the film is just so powerful that even a relatively unknown man about music would notice rhythmic evidences in the film’s photography. The audio-visual treatment to this Victorian period film has nevertheless been fantastic. The cold and palette of colors compliments excellently the sober and mystical atmosphere needed in the story. Campion with the help of Dryburgh have successfully made the film flamboyantly cold.

I can compare the film to Wong Kar Wai’s “In the Mood for Love”, both are sexy and dazzling beautiful. The main difference though would be the colors. Kar Wai used saturated red-orange-black palette which conveniently delivered the heat of the repressed love affair in the story while Campion used dark blue and dark green with the eternal black and some other dark-cold colors. Between the two “In the Mood for Love” is more sentimentally-driven and delicate while “The Piano” is more ablaze and harsh therefore making me believe that between the two red-orange-black is an easier combination to portray the latter film. I find red a harsher color than dark blue and I find dark green more delicate than orange. Probably it is the culture of the country that resulted to those color decisions, but what I am trying to explain is that the combination Campion and Dryburgh chose is very interesting, intelligent, and edgy. Over-all, “The Piano” just knocked out the other.

 

The film is significantly semiotic. A lot of metaphors campaign over the almost two-hour movie. The environment of Ada’s new home: the agitated ocean, the serene shore, the uncongenial trees, and the despicable mud are all physical and logical metaphors of Ada’s own world clashing into the real world. Saving Ada from the cold and apathetic sea is also a symbol of her rebirth—a chance where she can leave all her sexual incompleteness and liberal control over her life. Ada’s shoe tying on the Piano after they drop it in the ocean symbolizes a part of her that will always be with her old Piano. The ultimate metaphor of course—the piano, is the metaphor of her life. This musical instrument is her voice. The piano allows her to release her feelings, anxieties, hopes, and most of all her silenced passion. I have a high regard for the scenes where Ada is playing and Baines is watching him. The music coming from the piano is the only essential sound occurring and those moments are so enchanting, almost heavenly. There is like an orbital of passion coming from Ada transported to the piano, and the piano diffuses it in the air through music, and Baines collect all those warm orbital of passion which sprees and fills his shabby hut. The piano allows us to know a character who can not speak, a device I’ve never yet seen used so charmingly.

Feminism is definitely the most apparent film theory we can apply in this Jane Campion movie and it is always interesting to create a feminist review of a film created by a woman. When most feminist films grab the opportunity to expose the interminable ego or the overrated evil of men, this film engages on the two sides of men—a technique to utilize the avoidance of feminine bias sometimes feminist fell into. The first type of men here is the one of Stewart (Sam Neill), the Englishman, who is educated, business-minded, and inevitably conformist. Those men treat their wives as properties and punish them whatever they feel like. Campion apparently made an effort to belittle that unpleasant side of men quality. At the beginning of Ada and her child’s stay at the place, Stewart even tries to project some fatherly gestures to Flora (Anna Paquin). The fact that he accepted Ada and her daughter even gave us a clue that those seemingly bad men are not bad at all and that Campion has no absolute negativities about that first type of men. The second type though would be that of George (Harvey Keitel), the native muscular guy, appealing, lover, and he who can make a woman happy. For the second type of man, I’ve seen any type of resentment embodied by George, no flaw and no loophole. In the circumstances where he can be a hero, Campion either cuts the scene or use a child to stop him. In a scene where Stewart goes into George’s hut we are all surprised to see that George is alive and Stewart is out of the picture. This obviously implies that former have either accidentally or purposefully killed latter. That scene is cut because it will certainly mark George as the hero and Stewart the bad guy (after cutting Ada’s finger) who has to be punished. The role of men in “The Piano” is not pretentious, no strong opinion instead a closer opinion most people with fair understanding might agree with.

Acting-wise, Holly Hunter is phenomenal winning the Best Actress award at the 1993 Academy Awards. I love the awkwardness and all the other element of mystery and strangeness she contains. She is radiating with pale yet dynamic aura like she is a gritty and quirky Mona Lisa or something. Hunter doesn’t just use her face to compensate for her verbal restraints rather she used her face and body. The pauses she makes after moving and the way she directs her eyes to a co-actor and they way she redirects them are so divine, so fluid, done like a real Victorian-era woman. The young Anna Paquin though is the apple of my eye also winning in the 1993 Oscar Awards winning the Best Supporting Actress award. She has brought overwhelming innocent, playful, and youthful energy in the entire film. Her ostentatiously loud charisma compliments Hunter’s mystifying silent aura. Paquin definitely is one of the best child stars I’ve ever seen grown in Hollywood. She is on par with Haley Joel Osment when he impressed the world in M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Sixth Sense”.

“The Piano” is a film that has an interesting story and staggeringly dexterous direction. Campion has chosen an impeccable period to tell a story of a mute female pianist, a breathtaking landscape to provide the artistic interpretation of her story, and a satisfying ensemble to give life to her lovely characters. This Cannes-winning film is not angry in the backdrop of identifiable tensions and violence; instead it continues to be vigilant inside. I admire Campion because she knows what to show and what to cut, she did not cut the scene where Ada lost her finger because that allows us to see Stewart’s power over Ada, her helplessness, her possible incapacity to play the piano anymore, and most importantly the mean side of Stewart, for us to have a catch of the bad guy. Jane Campion needs to do more films. I never thought she is as good as this.