The Tough Guy Reinvention

Pulp Fiction

Quentin Tarantino

USA

1994

This Cannes Film Festival Golden Palm winner has probably been one of the most intelligent and notorious movies ever made to strike audiences from all around the planet since Tarantino introduced it. Honestly, I have never been excited to see the film. Based on most of hearsays, “Pulp Fiction” is a violent film highlighted by Tarantino’s wicked creativity. After seeing ‘Kill Bill 1 & 2”, which are my first two Tarantino films, I somewhat have deduced that “Pulp Fiction”-experience. This deduction though is definitely a sorely curtailed and unnecessary transgression of evaluating a film without actually seeing it; for “Pulp Fiction” is just an overwhelming cornucopia of originality, imagination, and fire! 

Aggression resulting to hostility and brutality driven by unjust motivations and/or unexpected obsessions contoured the silhouette of this appealing and edgy fiction. Despite these very unholy human idiosyncrasies engaging the main characters of the film, Tarantino had delineated his cleverness and originality by subtly channeling the characters from a series of worsening mishaps to the beginning of a tranquil redemption. Seeking salvation, consciously or not, in a world of drugs, guns, and fights sounds as helpless as impossible; however, this film shattered all clichés. What is even more commendable is the fact that all of the things most of the characters do are more likely unintentional. Butch (Bruce Willis) is the only protagonist who sturdily and consistently wanted to break up from Marsellus Wallace’s (Ving Rhames) gang from start to finish. Pitt (Samuel Jackson) certainly has the most highlighted emancipation, but he did not want it from start to finish. There had to be a miracle happen to him to realize that he wanted to stop his business with the gang. Vincent (John Travolta) did not have any redeeming moment in the story; however, the closest would be his desperate attempt to revive the cataleptic Mia (Uma Thurman). I believe that it is an exaggeration to label this brilliant film as happily ended, for likewise in fairy tales, a happy ended story needs the correction of everything. I commend Tarantino for not forcing any corrective measures to enunciate the presence of redemption. He only allowed rectifications and not correction because it takes a semi-God to eradicate such business. Moreover, the alterations detectable in the film are personal and not organizational or social. Butch had made a rectification when he went back to the basement, where Marsellus and he were held hostage, to save his boss who few minutes back was just trying to kill him. So Butch, instead of escaping his gangster boss and live his life in apprehension had managed to receive redemption from him and furthermore receive an implied absolution and signal to leave their business and go. 

I so fell in love with the sleepy and nostalgically colorful cinematography employed in the film. The soft lighting against the dominantly warm colored set and design creates memory-pinning images of the yesteryears. In case of bar scenes, where the set should be colder in color, the lighting still seldom uses hard lighting. The cinematography also uses a variety of colors to accentuate depth. Tim Burton films and “Pulp Fiction” can be both characterized by colorfulness and darkness, but Burton’s are dark, colorful, and bright, this one is dark, colorful, and squashy. Another element that contributed much to the vogue of the film is its hip musical score. These scores are not original; these are popular songs at least in the American pop culture. Assuming that using pop songs will degrade the authenticity of the film may be true in most cases but in this film, it is unnecessary. In fact, it has made the film more memory-pinning, trendy, and intelligently outstanding. The editing is competitive, though I wish I can say something else for that sounds definitely generic. It is hard to notice editing the first time you watch it, and this film has a non-linear storyline, compelling us to pay more attention to the corrects sequence rather than the shot to shot editing.

An unconventional storyline should possess a strong reason for doing so. Sean Penn’s “Into the Wild” had to tell the story in shuffled sequences because he wanted to match his protagonists’ adventures with the different stages of a man’s life—that is from infancy, to adolescence, and finally to adulthood. “500 Days of Summer” is probably the weakest non-linear edited story I have seen yet. “Pulp Fiction” though highly needed that technique. The movie had to start with the Bonnie and Clyde-like lovers planning to rob the restaurant where they were eating, and later reveal to be the exact place and time Vincent and Pitt were eating. The scene had to stop with the female robber pointing her guns while shouting and the next thing we saw was the comic-inspired OBB. It ended with the same scene; the only difference is that we already knew that Pitt and Vincent were also there. As mentioned, Pitt has the most highlighted redemption because it was positioned at the end and we usually remember endings. Aside from that, Pitt’s redemption is spiritual which takes everything into a deeper existential pedestal. Unlike Butch’s redemption which is a lover’s promise-driven one and inevitably commercial, Pitt’s salvation is more artistic and more complying to the artistry Tarantino is doing. The first and the last scene of the film, which is actually a single sequence, provided us with what we need to witness to identify character development. Knowing the reason behind Pitt’s Messianic predicament, permitted us to allow the complexity he is showing. Butch’s story is supposed to happen after that restaurant holdup, but his sequences were edited in the early to middle part of the film. One practical reason is that Butch is a main character and thus, his late appearance will cause disproportionate structure. The shambled sequences are not merely shambled without reasons, instead, it was used to solidify and cohere the many quirky elements of this fervid story into one flamboyant structure of one great film. 

 

Probably the best aspect in the film is the screenplay. The whimsicalities are so foxily planted; either within the character or within the plot. The stories told inside the film, or the rumors circulating among the introduced and unintroduced characters are not as necessary as it should be. It is forgivable though because those are as idiosyncratic as the dominating atmosphere throughout the film. One of my favorite told stories within the film is Mia’s experience as an actress in a pilot of a TV series. Mia was one of the Foxy Force Five, each has their own specialty; the blond one was the leader; the Japanese fox was a Kung Fu master; the black girl is the demolition expert; French fox’s specialty was sex; and she, was the expert with knives and knows a lot of old jokes because her grandfather was a vaudevillian. Moreover, the idea was that she will crack up one joke every episode, but they were never given another episode. Again, this is not really necessary, but it is amusing in that pop-culture-pinning way.  The passion for TV, music, and entertainment is always present in the atmosphere, which again makes the film hip! Another small quirky element in the film but has provided a clever irony is when Vince and Pitt are wearing shirts and shorts in the car and the restaurant. Big and tough gangster men can never be ridiculed enough than forcing them to wear shirts and shorts making them look like dorks.

“Pulp Fiction” is a scorching and ostentatious piece of artwork. Tarantino’s originality transcends in a profusion of transforming human wickedness in an extremely pleasurable and highly entertaining cinematic experience. The menacing colors of a film noir, the outrageous possibilities of what is next, and the undeniable force that compels viewers to be drawn are nothing but the niftiest of all the clever filmmakers I have ever witnessed.

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.

The List of Life

Schindler’s List
Steven Spielberg
USA
1993

Just when I thought I will never see a film more passionate and more beautiful than my long time Italian classic favorite “The Bicycle Thief”, this 1993 Academy Award Best Picture winner struck me like a lightning of humanity at its purest, tore my heart relentlessly nearly close to the sorrow thousands and millions of aggravated, humiliated, and profaned Jews experienced, and most importantly moved me in a place where questions about life and its importance, ironies, ambiguities, and catastrophic evil are constantly breathing intemperately. There have been a lot of films that made me misty eyed, also a number of films that made me cry, but “Schindler’s List” just has been so far the only film I found myself bursting in tears I never thought I contain. The equation of material things like car, watch, and a pin of gold and of a thing as simple yet as complicated like life made me feel that it is extremely unacceptable. In fact, to even think of these money and material possessions as a replacement to or something more important than life is sick and evil. The world has been so intellectual yet decadent and educated yet so greedy. Power seekers in order to be what they want needs to blind and so they become blind, not of their historical goals but of the simpler things like the life of many ordinary people.  The world honestly is gruesomely consumed by the doom of ravenousness and constant ignorance of harmony and humanity. Never in my life though I have believed that we will ever become the absolute peaceful world, the idea is so beautifully Utopian and it is never a characteristic of this planet and so the closest thing that we can do is to minimize chaos and maximize peace. The founding of United Nations is one my favorite historical point in our history.

Now, what made me abhor this never-ending asymmetrical relations of the powerful and the powerless and the conventionalized sacrifice of many else’s life for the power-seekers when from the start I know it is an incurable plague? I can’t be any more satisfied and inspired to that brilliance exceptionally delivered by Steven Spielberg—a director I first considered seriously good in the nostalgic “Artificial Intelligence” (with my favorite child actor ever—Haley Joel Osment), and then I admired in the groundbreaking “Saving Private Ryan” (with the Hollywood Apple of my eye—Tom Hanks), and now I adore in my favorite film of all time and all nation—“Schindler’s List”. The amount of wonder Spielberg added in the film is unthinkably great. After hearing a lot of stories from his grandparents, and some friends and acquaintances who have experienced the wrath of the Second World War, he conducted ardent research about the Jew survivors of the Holocaust that until now continues as he founded the Shoah--a visual library where all the conducted interviews of all living Jews retell the painful and harrowing experiences. The setting, the Jews of the 2^nd World War or the Hitler War as I am fond of substituting, is the best backdrop any storyteller can choose or have if you want to feel the spirit of life in its most unadulterated anatomy. These aggravated people of Jews forced to surrender their businesses and lands, robbed of their properties, detested in front of fellowmen, and scorned by (at least) the Nazis, perhaps alongside with soldiers at war, have brought forth the most exceptional amount of empathy I can manage to produce. Even with their seeming passivity, their downright hope and desire to survive with their family and loved ones definitely deserves respect. Their eventual inhumane and unnecessary death makes reviewing what the world provided them really painful and poignant. The cause of their horrifying death doesn’t cease with the end of the war which makes things very disturbing and worrying because the cause is nothing more or less than discrimination and it still plagues our society, and it may happen again. 

Spielberg makes Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) the absolutely perfect imperfect man to save 1,100 Jewish lives and to learn one of the greatest lessons ever covered in films. Schindler is a war profiteer, when the Nazis ruled Poland, they confiscated all Jew-operated and owned businesses. Being the wise man, he convinced the Jew owners of these businesses to transfer everything to his name thus making it a legal German-owned company. With the help of the accountant and a Jew Izthak Stern (Ben Kingsley) and Jewish working for the cheapest rates, Schindler makes more money than any man can ever live luxuriously for the rest of his life. If there is one thing that really made me emotionally and spiritually connected to this black and white film is its premise of money buying people and gold buying ideology. As of now I can’t think of any other as inappropriate yet dramatically striking irony in life than life and money, life and death is not even half of it. Schindler is able to send some Jews from other concentration camp to his factory and route trainload of Jews instead of transporting them to some other camps through bribing. It is not a rocket science; the more Schindler can bribe the captain of a camp, the more people he can get for his factory. At first, he wants Jews to work because their labor is too cheap that you don’t even feel you’re paying them but before the transfer to Auschwitz, he then wants more and more Jews in his factory not to earn anymore but to save lives. Schindler’s list is the list of life, it’s allegory to the book of life is wonderful. The transition between Schindler the businessman and Schindler the savior is ambiguous when I think it should be distinct. However, t is not a drawback at any serious ways instead it only interprets how discreet one German should be in sympathizing with the Jews.

One of my favorite scenes is when Schindler welcomes the male Jews off the train from the old camp to his new factory and said something like—“…inside are bread and hot soup waiting for everybody.” I will cry with those words if I am one of those Jews who wake up every morning to spend the rest of his day working harder than any animal while waiting for arrant Nazis to shoot him to his death. That bread and hot soup is not simply bread and a hot soup but words that will promise them that there is hope for them to live again like human beings. That factory is a sanctuary, the safest place for any Jew, and it is so overwhelming that those thousands of lives depends on one, only one person, and his money. While the train of the male Jews are safely routed to Auschwitz, the train where the female ones are ridden for some mistake have been transported to a different camp where sure they will die after some time. Stern tells Schindler about the error, and the lives of hundreds of Jew women and children, in a matter of hours or minutes, will either be saved or perished.

 

The ultimate best scene in the film and perhaps of all scenes from films I’ve ever seen is the long sequence at the end of “Schindler’s List”. The war ended and Schindler being a German needs to escape in that absolved factory, before he would take his car Stern and several other Jews melted a gold tooth and mold it into a ring with inscriptions saying—one who saves one life saves the world entire. His workers also make a letter explaining Schindler’s unbelievable predicament to the Jews in case he get caught, and every single Jews in the factory signed it. Schindler starts to cry saying he did not do enough. Stern consoles the man he has always seen the goodness even from the start asking him to look at those over a thousand he has saved. It wasn’t enough for Schindler, he wasted so much money before for wines, women, and good and sinful times, when all those money could have doubled the numbers of Jews who could have survived the war. He starts to begrudge at his car, saying that it could have saved ten more people and even at his Swastika gold pin which could be used as a bribe for at least one more life. Schindler bursts into tears as his people around try to hug him and comfort him, as the simplest way to thank him for letting them live the greatest gift the Lord gave us—life. As I break into tears alongside this cinema’s and history’s significant moment many thoughts outpours in my head, most of them I mentioned in the first paragraph but what makes me weak is that people will still continue to kill people for reasons conscious or unconscious, the Turkish film “I Saw the Sun” made me realize that. But as the film suggests, anyone can still do something, a change, a change that may no be perfect, universal, and absolute. We are not God to completely change the world, but we do have our spaces in this world, and there are people in the proximities of our hearts, our aspirations, and soul. No matter how small that change was for as long as it benefited even a single person provided with the purest intentions then the Jewish proverb—“one who saves one life saves the world entire”, will be our friend.

Adolf Hitler is the main and the most obvious culprit in this one of the history’s most dreadful and atrocious period in our world. The 2004 German film “Downfall” allowed me to reserve certain respect for this man they call the 2^nd Anti-Christ. For how monstrous he had done in our history, he was still a man, almost like a God the German nation trusted. Watching “Schindler’s List” doesn’t make me utterly hate Hitler after all. As a disclaimer, it is unsatisfying to learn that there is no accurate and absolute studies about the reasons why Hitler hated the Jews. Therefore while Hitler may have hated and wanted to eradicate the descendants of Jacob, I have to agree with some studies believing that the world have their own different share of this consummate hatred. Hitler is just one of those who hates even before he became Fuhrer of the German nation. Hitler was not the only one, all the people who are bigots, hypocrite, envious, narcissists, and ignorant are the real murderers. As I mentioned earlier, these different figures of evil have not been buried with the millions of body-casualties and this evil in the form of discrimination will still haunt millions of lives today and in the following generations to come.

I can’t thank the Lord well enough for destining me to witness this purifying film I now officially declare as my #1 in my Top 100 Films of all Time and Nation, Steven Spielberg and every single names in the credits of the film for producing a life-changing poignant work of art and history, the Video City near our house where I rented this DVD which even though I paid for a day of penalty is still worthy and even worthier than all of the movies I ever rented there combined, and all of the universe conspiring for this one in a million cinematic experience emblazoned in my heart and soul. More people should see this heart-rending, soul-breaking, moral-provoking black and white Holocaust masterpiece. “Schindler’s List” proves Hollywood’s undeniable power and influence and Spielberg demonstrates the universality of human experience. You don’t have to be a Jew yourself and you don’t have to have a family thrown at Kraskow ghettos, all you need to have is the heart for all the hundreds of thousand of Jews massacred in the Hitler War and some swamping deluge of cinematic talent of course. The frame by frame shots, composition, black and white contrast, simple camera movement, adept film editing, excellent sound design, and touching score still put this film in a heavenly pedestal. This movie simply made me so proud about my passion and enthusiasm for films.

Waking Up From a Beautiful Dream

Spirited Away
Hayao Miyazaki
Japan
2001

Everytime I watch animated films my first question would always be—“Why animate this thing?” Many answers may be given: in “Finding Nemo”, it needs to be animated because no production company can ever really shoot a real clownfish doing what Nemo the character is supposed to be doing under any ocean; in “Waltz with Bashir”, the Golden Globe-winning film has to be animated to achieve the high amount of surrealism in its visual interpretation of the Palestine Massacre. This film called “Spirited Away” from the home of the animes and mangas—Japan, requires the medium of animation because of its extremely highfaluting spectacles, from the grandiose castles and to the breathtaking changes in the landscape, to the bizarre creatures legendary, original, and archetypal, and up to the gaga temperament and eventual exhibition of powers by these strange creatures, thus creating the impossible and fantastic more possible and still fantastic. A related issue may arise though—in the advent of staggering technical achievements in film, is animation still acceptable? The early 21^st century marked the awesome and great effects of “The Lord of the Rings” and few more years later the eye-popping and completely unbelievable “Avatar”—an achievement the world has never accomplished yet. However this very attainment creates a little room for animation, at least for adult animation for venturing into the hundred of thousand still drawings and dubbing of human voices can reduce the animation as an excuse to technical limitations instead of artistic intentions. Just imagine watching an animated version of Avatar, isn’t it beyond dismay to resort to drawings instead of the live action people and their real movements?  In this sense only the animations intended for the children will be exempted to this critique. “Spirited Away” is thoroughly entertaining and has an excellent, competitive and edgy production value with respect to its time. Yet, seeing the film in a live action version with all of Japan’s or of the world’s greatest cinematic inventions will nevertheless bring this fantasy/adventure movie into an important Japanese cinema milestone. Filmmakers planning to produce adult animations need to be prudent and should have significant reasons in doing so because we don’t want animation to be a surrogate of cinematic inadequacy or worse, financial restraints.

“Spirited Away” is a highly amusing piece of film and I mean it seriously. It is outrageous and yet it remains adorable, more importantly it is oozing with audacity and charisma and most importantly it is flamboyantly edgy. The trancelike and surreal atmosphere of this other world where Chihiro and her parents are trapped is absolutely beguiling. It has an appeal of something that is present in every child’s most adventurous and wonderful dreams, a dream that even I used to have. The characters are also very interesting—the dragon-transforming green-haired ever-friendly but mysterious Haku , the hawk-like flying Yubaba with humongous head almost occupying half of any room, the ghastly yet friendly patron called “no-face”, the outside-world ignorant giant baby, the bouncing triple-head in Yubaba’s office, and a lot of others allow this adventure to leisurely continue and satisfactorily unfold. I honestly don’t believe that this film has the best storyline among all adventure movies in the world. What makes this film very appealing is the alienation of a supposedly normal girl into a world of strange and grotesque characters in a world decorated with generous resemblance into our own world with an extra fantastic touch. Even the tension created by the film is also amusing; it is not something that will keep you breathless but something that will give a smile on your face. Probably because this is arguably a family movie which is not suppose to generate anxiety and unnecessary trauma to the children that is why the excitement being produced is always cushioned with charm. 

I always divide adventure films into three parts: the background of the adventure, the middle part or the adventure proper, and the backlash from the adventure. The film is very much conventional in terms of the structure and genre which reflects the economic fact that it is nothing much else but a commercial family film though I fancy it as something more than that and this animated Japanese film is the best of its league. The background of the adventure is interesting. Chihiro is not very excited about their new house for one thing is certain—she misses her friends. Reluctant about looking forward for a different chapter in her life, she finds herself in the most bizarre place which will be her home for the next several days or weeks. The adventure proper is all about saving her loved ones—her parents who decadently turn into the fattest pigs I’ve seen after eating the tempting food displayed on the food stalls, and Haku, the mysterious boy who helped her escape their world. This is definitely the most obvious value the film wants to teach its children viewers. To survive and to survive the hope of returning back to her world with her parents she needs to be employed in that weird hotel for the mythic gods and goddesses. Chihiro’s objectives though becomes easier and easier for as time passes we realize that Tycoon is not really that ruthless, evil, and cruel. In some points I think everything seems surmountable because Yubaba reveals her real good-hearted character. But an objective should never be surmountable that is why the conflicts presented in the film are multi-layered because one would not be enough (one can’t be so convoluted and austere for a family movie). There is the introduction of Yubaba’s twin and her infringement with Haku, the devastation of Haku and his anticipated possible death, and the eventual effacement of her memories.  All of these conflicts are needed to consume our protagonists hope and trigger her determination. The backlash from the adventure is actually the part I am most looking forward to because this is the chance where many unexpected emotions may arise. This is also the part where you will feel torn apart—it is either you feel nostalgic about ending and leaving a lovable adventure or you feel hopeful about how your adventure is going to change your future. Backlashes are either tragic or triumphant, anything that has both is great (juts like what Terrence Mallick did in the last part of “The New World”), and anything that is neither is a waste of time. Family/children’s movies are all the time happily ended and I don’t think there any exceptions. “Spirited Away” definitely has a happy ended fate but what adds another pound of edge on this film is its sentimental spirit that is interestingly exclusive only with Chihiro, the breeze, the grass, and the trees, not including her parents. I felt the nostalgia of being forced to leave a world which at the first place you have always wanted to leave but you have eventually and subconsciously fell in love with. 

This adventure film has a beautiful and carefree spirit. It is an adorable, pleasant, and scrumptious animation. Satisfying the inner child among us all, “Spirited Away” is like a collected dream from all the adventures we were all dreaming of when we were young. A dream that will make us feel a hero of our own, something that makes us excited and proud telling it to our friends and playmates, a dream you wish you will dream every bedtime. This movie reminded me so much of the distant picture of my childhood, the lazy afternoon at the yard, the milk before turning off the bedroom light, and the beautiful mornings I have woken up with those overwhelming happiness from adventurous dreams. That is what this film is about—to remind us of the forgotten joy of dreaming like a child.

The Ballad of Guiseppe and Pasquale

Shoeshine

Vittorio de Sica

Italy

1946

Three years ago in the darkened Videotheque of the Film Institute where only the projected images in black and white lit the 70-seater room, there sat a first year student destined to be swept, captivated, and deeply moved in the next one and a half hour by the 1949 Italian film being shown—a classic film called “The Bicycle Thief” by the neorealist master—Vittorio de Sica. For the longest and most significant period in my life, that movie remains to be the ultimate and still unprecedented cinematic experience I ever treasure. Appreciating the Auteur Theory by Andre Bazin, there’s nothing like hoping to see another work of de Sica and there’s nothing like the three-year wait to finally see one for these Italian Film Classics are unfortunately too rare. Just like real precious gems, these films you really have to dig extensively to find.

Socially and morally provoking, “Shoe Shine” is a story of two unfortunate shoe shine boys who are jailed for being involved innocently in some trade of stolen goods. A deconstruction of the crimes, misdemeanor, and mistakes of the adulthood with some apparent references to the government and judiciary system which are both obviously operated by the adults, the film is a harrowing tale of children’s impending tragedy the grown-ups perpetuated. Definitely admiring that there is no blatant appointing of the culprits, instead de Sica focused on the two boys and their fellow juvenile prisoners and never, not even a single second that he visually blamed someone in the film. The question—“Whose fault really it is?” is story-wise of the particular adults which are Guiseppe’s brother and his friend, but the subtlety I am talking about makes recognition of the exact culprits irrelative instead it initiated an overwhelming arrest of all the culpable in a much panoptic scope. 

 

Born in Italy after the dreadful and devastating 2^nd World War, Italian Neo-Realism is a cinematic movement tackling the life of those in the margins, or of the working classes from the most mundane to the most sensible minutes of their life. Attempting to center the attention to this preface, neo-realists interpret their films in a simple narrative structure such as in “The Bicycle Thief” the story is simply about the search for the stolen bicycle. No multi-layer POV or time-frame needed like in an Alejandro Gonzales-Inarittu films for creating a more convoluted storyline would rob the audience of the empowering potential of a prosaic experience. However, “Shoeshine” doesn’t really fall much to such criteria. A certain level of complexity is thus present in this 1946 classic. Two shoeshine boys are imprisoned separately on two different cells. Interrogated by the police, Pasquale thought that the policemen are beating Guiseppe and made him confess that it is his friend’s brother who asked them to sell the fabric without knowing they are stolen. Guiseppe on the other hand misinterpreted the situation and blamed Pasquale for thinking that he betrayed him and his brother. This complexity mirrors the world of the adulthood making such part in the film so heart-rending and saddening. All of the elements in this part work interestingly—the jail as the piece of space they are spending youthful days of their lives, the fellow minors as the alike fragile souls, the policemen as the apathetic authorities dictating their deportment, and the legal system as the intangible God shaping their becoming elusive future.

One of the best things I really admire about De Sica is that he delivers a beautiful earthy atmosphere to his works. There is a consistent patch of gloom scattered from start to finish and relieving splash of humor from time to time. “The Bicycle Thief” and “Shoeshine” are films telling stories from a different time and country but it incessantly look and feel so earthbound and exquisitely unglamorous. An impalpable emotion perhaps is this feeling that I feel so alive in these two films (though I felt more significantly alive with The Bicycle Thief).

The most “neorealist” part in “Shoeshine” arguably is the provoking uncertainty at the end. In “The Bicycle Thief” the camera closes up to the face of the protagonist after stealing someone else’s bicycle and being chased by the town people. The restless and hopeless look in his face leaves a question to us what is in future for him? Extremely parallel to the worry of what future the Italians are going to experience after the war? In “Shoeshine” Pasquale furiously whipped Guiseppe thinking that he is trying to runaway with the horse the two of them bought when in fact he is only trying to escape from the policemen. Guiseppe accidentally fell on the bridge and hit his head to a stone from avoiding the wrath of his friend.  Guiseppe seemingly dead already, Pasquale crying and shouting his friend’s name, and the horse running and fading away into the darkness.

Any film lover from the Philippines in the 21^st century would lie if they say they never ever felt the power and influence of Hollywood in the country’s cinema or even in their general idea of movies. One of the things that made watching De Sica films a lot easy and entertaining is the fact that it is already almost similar to the Narrative system of Hollywood—a storytelling Filipinos and most people in the world are very familiar, so familiar that it makes non-Hollywood Narrative films nothing but an artistic crap. This is also another reason why I enjoyed “Shoeshine” better than Ingmar Bergman’s “The Virgin Spring”. Bergman’s work I believe has more virginal and more timeless content in a simpler form than De Sica’s however, the theatricality Bergman embellished “The Virgin Spring” is verging on obsolete today. There are over-exceeding frames in some scenes and unfortunately lacking in some others like the scene where the maiden protagonist has been raped by the two herdsmen. Some camera angles are unhelpful to what is taking place on the story failing to capture the total intensity of the scene. I am sure there is an explanation to that Bergman film but pegging the contexts today then it is an odd film. “Shoeshine” on the other hand even being released 13 or 14 years earlier than “The Virgin Spring” is more timeless in terms of the many elements in filmmaking. The “corrupt-looking” editing is almost zeroed.

“Shoeshine” is a pleasant and provoking film. Though aboveboard, I wish to humbly express a feeling of a slight disappointment not inside the film but of that inevitable expectation I unintentionally collected all throughout the years. “The Bicycle Thief” remains to be the most important masterpiece at least from out of all films I have seen and “Shoeshine” is a little bit not even half of the former but again, I can’t emphasize it that much—this film is certainly very good on its own.