Matty

The bearded Mastroianni atypically appears in the role of slick con artist who appropriates not only the snacks and trust of the illiterate (and thus easily manipulated) workers, but also the entire film. As an openly leftist comedy about serious issues, The Organiser draws heavily on the legacy of neorealism, but it doesn’t allow the setting or the characters’ existential situations to become the focal point of the story. This is characteristic of Italians’ disparagement of an important struggle by means of farcical humour largely based on the characters’ interaction with inanimate objects in the mould of slapstick. A nice example of the balance achieved between social drama and slapstick is offered by one of the last scenes, when the depiction of a tragic event is disrupted by the “professor” blindly groping for his lost glasses. The subdued directing with long shots, camera movements that convey meaning and tragicomic soundtrack prevents the film from going to extremes. Even without a single clearly defined main protagonist (which is the whole proletariat), The Organiser maintains an uncommon balance throughout its two-hour runtime and, with its broad scope, tempers its conscious social criticism by making light of the differences between northern and southern Italy (for comparison, see the seriously tragic Rocco and His Brothers, which also examines the hardships of southerners in the industrial north). 80%

During holidays and weekends, eighteen-year-old Edgar Wright and his friends made a film that is much bolder than Craven’s Scream in breaking and exposing genre rules. Based on the economic logic of the matter, affiliation with a genre (or genres) is only feigned, the actors step out of their roles according to the needs of the narrative, and the people behind the camera (including the director) are also forced to actively participate. Wright uses the framework of Dirty Harry and Lethal Weapon to ridicule the authorities and “their” high British culture, beginning with an opening moralistic warning about the harmfulness of the content and continuing with splatter effects, tasteless humour and the expressing of distaste for a certain brand of cereal. Wright had even greater disdain for overly clever British crime films (without blood spatter and car chases), to which he responded as a movie fan by making a film the likes of which would probably not be made in his homeland for a long time to come. The protagonists characteristically did not learn their special police methods from their superiors, but rather from American genre flicks, in which lies one of the many similarities with Hot Fuzz, which itself is basically an extended version of Dead Right. As in Hot Fuzz fourteen years later, cop movies are simultaneously parodied and deeply admired, so it’s hard not to give in to Wright’s youthful enthusiasm for the project and admire the director’s imaginative and very mature handling of various formalistic refinements. Let’s set aside the inevitable imperfection of the film’s craftsmanship and not go looking for what kind of cinematic trash Wright devoured before reaching the age of maturity (I assume he had seen a full range of video nasties from A to Z), and enjoy this enthusiastically overwrought mix of action, crime, slasher, slapstick and buddy movie. 90%

Blue Is the Warmest Colour takes a complex approach to depicting several developmental phases in the life of a girl who is becoming a woman. Kechiche could have shown only cause, effect and consequence, but he is more interested in the process and the course of the transformation itself, as well as its duration. Length is one of the many tools that the director uses to break down the barrier between the movie 90 protagonist, Adele, and the viewer. ___ A good eighty percent of the dialogue (and thus of the whole film) is handled through close-ups of faces. The traditionally rendered dialogue scenes consistently reassure us that reality continues outside the frame of the picture. Conversely, we are given the impression of being enclosed in a small space that is more or less defined only by the actors’ bodies. Ignoring the surrounding environment intensifies our connection with the characters, whose intimate zone limits what we see and hear. The distancing of the camera from the character at the end of a dialogue scene then serves as a liberating means of stepping out of the inner universe of interpersonal relationships and into the outside world. Whether the characters’ communication, be it verbal or non-verbal (including sex), is conveyed using the shot/countershot technique or through panning, also plays a role. However random it may seem, the form is always under the director’s control, fully subordinated to the process of bringing the characters together and distancing them both physically and mentally. ___ In multiple senses, a line is crossed during the erotic scenes (love and sex, reality and pretence), each instance of which has its own justification (for example, the sharp contrast between a moment of extreme intimacy and the following scene of a family birthday party, which requires far more pretence). The explicitness of the erotic scenes raises legitimate suspicion of voyeurism on the part of a tyrannical director (whom both actresses have described as a genius, though they no longer want to work with him), while their unusual length is the most extreme expression of the film’s unwillingness to pretend anything in communicating with the viewer. It is no coincidence that Blue Is the Warmest Colour also addresses the limits of honesty of representation (whether in film or in other arts) in dialogue that never descends into café blather that would only serve to demonstrate the filmmaker’s intellectual prowess. References to films such as Pabst’s Pandora’s Box reasonably complement the main motifs of the narrative and concurrently help us to understand the characters outside of the relationship context. ___ I don’t know of many films that could go this deeply and with such physical urgency under the skin of the main character. In my case, the idea of “putting yourself in someone else’s shoes” was manifested with extraordinary intensity. After three hours, I was glad to start living my own life again, but my connection with Adele definitely did not end with the closing credits. 85%

Shanghai Express is similarly narrative as a museum tour. The main and basically only exhibit is Marlene, who apparently travels with her entire wardrobe, as she only needs to change six different outfits (plus nightgowns) on her way to Shanghai. On the one hand, the performative dimension of the constant changing of clothes sets Lily apart from the world of the other characters, who remain in the same clothes throughout the film; on the other hand, it complements the important motif of playing roles, mistaken identities and passing off the fake as something real. Most of the passengers are hiding something or pretending to be someone else. Shanghai Express is not without content, but its core comprises that which would merely be a supporting device in a conventional film, namely the exposing of a fetishised body and role-playing. Marlene is playing only for the sake of playing (as she does). What’s important is not who she plays, but that she plays. Sternberg maximally prioritises this over both the structure of the story and the formalistic rendering of individual shots. The film can also be seen as a series of examples of how to effectively place Dietrich in a given space. The intentional overcrowding of the mise-en-scene with numerous overlapping planes (a visual element that is also accentuated by the atypically slow dissolves) comes across as unrealistic, as if it was “made” specifically for the film, like the wonderfully surreal Marlene. There are hundreds of narratively more cohesive and thus less sluggish films, but I am not aware of many better instructional films on the subject of “making a star”. 75%

–Cuban? –Mexican. It’s such a shame that Rodriguez didn’t have the balls to shoot the whole of his Mexploitation flick as crudely as he filmed the über-muthafucka prologue... I found that regrettable until the scene with entrails. The film’s superficial refinement only draws attention away from the self-confident (and self-conscious, as evidenced by the involvement of the uncensored internet) contempt for common sense, good taste and every conceivable kind of political correctness. Machete is an exploitation movie for multiplexes, but that doesn’t mean that it would lack machetes, machine guns, boobs, gore, sexy nurses, a murderous nun, a one-eyed avenger, Steven Seagal, Tom Savini and a  pissed-off Mexican with a weed whacker. You can either accept this film in all its simplicity and bombast and enjoy the ruthless fun, or look for a more sophisticated view of the world. This time, I’m giving a strong four-start rating and posing a simple question: why always complicate things? 85%

The historic Russian people, every man, every woman, must come together under the leadership of their powerful ruler (no individualism) in order to crush (no offensive) the imagined Germanic beast (no humanity) threatening their beloved motherland. (Of course, the priests with the swastika embroidery stand at the very top of all rottenness.) Each of them brandishes their sword for themselves only during the battles, which are rather more frolicsome than terrifying and wonderfully turn in favour of the Russians as a matter of course. At least from the formalistic perspective – the fighters facing their faceless, helmeted enemy are filmed in separate shots. With every theatrical gesture, Eisenstein’s first film with sound is anti-German propaganda, which brought the legendary director praise from Stalin himself (“You’re a real Bolshevik, Sergei”), allegedly to his own dismay, and rescued his career after the failure of his Bezhin Meadow project. All of the action in the film is subordinated to the idea of “we will defend ourselves”. The battle is coming for an hour, the battle is fought for half an hour, and then the battle subsides for twenty minutes. Nothing complicated. Neither the presence of Eisenstein’s trademark shots (a character filmed in profile with great depth of field with the distant landscape in the background) nor Prokofiev’s rousing music nor the masterful synthesis of image and sound in the scene with the cracking ice changed my conviction that Eisenstein’s silent films (Battleship Potemkin, Strike) were more impactful. 70%

A television series written and filmed with the same conscientiousness with which Walt cooks Blue Sky. The following selection from the SPOILER-packed observations that I have written over the course of all five seasons isn’t intended to be a comprehensive analysis, but a means of partially covering what makes up the extraordinary nature of Gilligan’s achievement by breaking down several constituent aspects of the series. ___ Throughout the series, the development of the narrative seems to be determined by Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty. Based on the anticipated direction of development (from victim of external events to manipulative monster), it’s impossible to guess when something will go south and who will undergo a change in personal character. Breaking Bad is not accommodating toward viewer expectations in that it rejects the usual narrative formula. It disconcerts us with its efforts to raise the plausibility of ongoing events, creating the impression that almost anything could happen. However, it does not discourage us from forming our own hypotheses. On the contrary, through the “forward looking” scenes in the prologue, it rather encourages us to actively insert what we see into the narrative as a whole. Suspense is created based not only on the viewer’s uncertainty with respect to what will happen, but also on the knowledge of what the character knows or doesn’t know. The series’ creators work with multiple narrative focal points and pit the characters conflicting interests against each other, so that the characters frequently have to face risks coming from different areas (immediate and extended family, institutions, the underworld). The transformation of our perception of the characters is tied to what we know of them, how much we respect them and how many moral transgressions we are willing to forgive them for. It is fascinating to watch the purposeful “dirtying” of the protagonists. In the final season, it will be hard for you to find a character who is without guilt. The increasing risks taken force the characters to think farther ahead, thus making them better players. The self-stylisation and pretence don’t do any good for Jesse in particular, who is perhaps the weakest personality, but he is also the one to whom the most powerful cathartic effect is bound in the final episode. ___ The real antagonist of most of the characters is their own potential, which they either fail to fulfil (through their own fault and that of the system, which repeatedly discourages them) or they fulfil it at a disproportionate cost. The protagonists are also united by their ambiguity. Each of them can step out of his role, whether he accepted it voluntarily or under duress. Because nothing is fixed and we are forced to assess the given choices of a given character in the context of his previous actions, it is possible to also doubt Walt’s admission in the final episode that taking care of his family was only a pretext for choosing a life of crime (on which he embarked for his own selfish reasons, not to provide for his wife and son). Was his motivation from the beginning really anything other than power and money? We are aided in the reassessment of our opinions on the characters by the use of parallels (Hank as a substitute father for Walt Junior, Walt as a substitute father for Jesse), which lead us to see similar situations in different contexts and point to some key themes of the series. ___ Through his career as a drug kingpin, Walt vents the aggression that he has built up from numerous sources. He failed as the breadwinner of his family, nor did he fulfil expectations as a father figure (his son gets advice on how to be a man from Hank). Through his other life, he also compensates for the breakdown of his own body. He makes money outside of the system also because he was excluded from it due to his illness. He is rejected by society because, as a person with cancer, he signifies death (the “other”). Cooking meth makes it possible for him to overcome the substitute father and husband figures and to put his exceptional intellect to use at least outside of the official structure. He holds on to his faith in the traditional, or rather obligatory model of the family for a long time. Only in the series finale, no longer bound by anything, all-powerful and capable of anything, he can give full expression to his potential and fully transform into the person he was perhaps destined to become from the beginning. ____ The extraordinary thematic scope of the seasons makes Breaking Bad rewarding material for a sociological study on the anxieties of contemporary America (drugs, money, terminal disease, an ineffective social-security system). Those who want to make it cannot respect the law and must endlessly build up the façade of an upstanding citizen through hundreds of small lies. Many times, the series relativises the distinction between “big” lies with broad reach and small family lies. Hypocrisy is the essence of both. Instead of learning greater openness, the protagonists become ever more adept at constructing alternate worlds and coming up with reasonable stories (Walt as a gambler). As everyone gradually finds out, however, the real drama plays out behind these false fronts. It is fascinating to watch how the screenwriters lead the characters into a multi-level web of lies and how they deal with their various degrees of knowledge about the existence of particular worlds and their supposed inhabitants, family, the underworld; these worlds are at first more distinctly different also artistically, but all of them gradually “darken” into the same colour palette). ___ Breaking Bad is also extremely satisfying in terms of its style, which changes not only in the course of single episodes, but also in individual scenes (through recontextualization and/or the revealing of new information, we are prompted to see a given scene from a different perspective). With the graphic continuity of shots, action played out on multiple planes and creation of meanings through camera positioning and movement, the series’ creators succeeded in doing much more than many Hollywood productions with a hundred times the budget. I could endlessly watch the Scorsese-inspired edited collages, while the emblematic space of New Mexico hasn’t been used for such a thrilling dusting off of classic western motifs (the train robbery) for years, and in terms of directing, the final episode can boldly compete with any of Hitchcock’s better thrillers. There is much that could still be written, but the tone would remain just as praiseful. Breaking Bad contains so much that is positive that I consider it to be petty to mention its few minor flaws. It doesn’t often happen that a series allows you to be practically uncritical. And I give thanks for that! 100%

A revolting setting, repulsive crimes. Corruption, brutality, fascist practices. Dead people, wounded animals. The situation is bad and it will get even worse. There is no brighter outlook. And floundering in this cesspool is a half-sober Auteuil. French directors are world champions in abusing their protagonists, as seen not only in torture-porn horror flicks, but also in extremely bleak crime thrillers like The Last Deadly Mission. Marchal is not interested only in the body and the possibilities of its deformation, but also in the soul, thanks to which the contrived despair is at least “theoretically” underpinned by existential philosophy. The only constants are birth and death, both of which the director ruthlessly throws at us in the climax, which with its affected grand tragedy (he will be named Louis) locks all of the film’s realistic qualities (which were initially present) in a small, dark chamber. I had to laugh at the pretentious seriousness of the final minutes, though of course I didn’t find the depiction of a human being as eternally drowning in shit to be entirely unlikable… 70%

Or Laďa Kerndl’s trip to Banat in Romania. In terms of its aesthetics and content, St. Helen’s Island  fits perfectly with the tabloid portraits of celebrities (or rather those who would like to be famous for a moment longer), but a more precise genre classification isn’t so simple and probably even its creators are not sure about that. For a psychological drama, it is a shamefully simple work – the protagonist does not undergo any change and, at the end, he seems just as incapable of living without his personal chef and laundress as he did at the beginning. As a special episode of a TV travel show, which the middle part of the film closely resembles, it is incredibly drawn out, as if – in the interest of Czech-Romanian friendship – its creators did not want to cut out a single shot of the landscape or a single deep truth uttered by a village elder. This programme filler is tolerable thanks to its length, endearingly lousy scenes such as Kerndl versus the pizza with ketchup and the thrilling anticipation of Vilhelmová finally appearing as promised by the credits. 30%

“È solo un trucco.” Sorrentino picks up where Fellini left off. The exchange of views between Jep and Wilhelmina the girls from the convent school, separated from the protagonist by a screen, is strikingly reminiscent of the ending of La Dolce Vita. Whereas Marcello is only just entering the world of Rome’s upper crust, Jep Gambardella has already been there and done that, and (later) understood that authentic life is lived on the other side, not only in the spatial sense, but also in the temporal sense –  the protagonist takes refuge from the all-pervasive emptiness in memories of his childhood, when he was still unknowledgeable, when he was only just becoming aware. If his wandering as a unknowledgeable flâneur, which we are witnesses to, teaches him anything, it’s the fact that we cannot deny ourselves or our own story. ___ The most spiritually valuable moments of Jep’s profane existence are not the direct confrontation with religious symbols, but encounters with innocence (girls, lovers kissing) and with passing time (the time-lapse photography project) and brief glimpses into reality, which is just as fleeting as beauty and love. A very brief encounter with Fanny Ardant, who elegantly carries with her the characters from every film in which she has appeared, brings about an hour-long visit to a church. During these moments, Jep perhaps realises that though he may know everyone and can go anywhere, the values that are worth striving for remain difficult for him to attain. ___ The Great Beauty is a film of a time and society without narrative potential. All of the stories had already been told, so what remains is only the recycling of familiar situations and mechanical alteration of the actors, roles and props. Time and movement became irrelevant. Despite that, Sorrentino managed to make a film that pulsates with life, though it is about a world that rejects two basic characteristics of cinema and also about a life that has no direction. ___ Thanks to the ceaseless movement of the camera, the surprising alternation of shot types (the various ways in which they are linked would be worthy of a separate analysis), the placement of unexpected objects in the mise-en-scéne and the lively soundtrack, which doesn’t distinguish between Bizet and Italian pop, The Great Beauty never stops flowing and doesn’t let you leave the cinema until the house lights come up. Only later you can start to process the implied ideas and fill in the empty space that has been spread out before you. 85%